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OT: for retired posters, how\when did you make decision to retire?

I took me some time to adjust to retirement. However, a few months ago a friend asked me, "Are you staying busy?" My instant reply, without thinking was, "Busy enough". I knew I had finally figured this retirement thing out. 🙃
 
And when a 9am breakfast milk stout makes perfect sense.
My wife was directly involved in several re-orgs (as a decision maker) and it takes a toll releasing a 15 year person with kids our kids age. The randomness and quickness of these re-orgs moved us to debt free living. Do I want a GT3? Fvckin right I do, but i think I’ll be ok lol :)
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I drove a ‘97 Ford Escort (manual with windows you literally had to roll up) for close to 20 years and now drive an ‘07 Jeep Liberty. A Toyota would be like a GT3 to me!
 
I drove a ‘97 Ford Escort (manual with windows you literally had to roll up) for close to 20 years and now drive an ‘07 Jeep Liberty. A Toyota would be like a GT3 to me!
I drove this everyday for 7 years. I’d still have her but moms was worried I’d die if hit. Miss her dearly. Bought brand new for $18,5k 2010.
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before the Miata, drove this
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I drove this everyday for 7 years. I’d still have her but moms was worried I’d die if hit. Miss her dearly. Bought brand new for $18,5k 2010.
T1oGVgT.jpg
I donated the Escort to the Make a Wish Foundation. I actually kinda miss it sometimes. As I’m typing this, I just realized I have turned into my dad! He drove an early 70s Plymouth Valiant well into the late 80s. I hated that thing. Ours was black.
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I would look into is how is your cost for health insurance. This monthly cost could be a heck of a surprise. If you have no debt, and have accrued 25x your last annual salary in investments , it's a possibility, when considering a 4% withdrawal rate from your investments.
If you want to use a message board just to gather insight, boggleheads.com is really good. You will need to share a lot of info to get an accurate guesstimate.

Bogleheads.org - Index page


I also like this for an online retirement calculator

FIRECalc: A different kind of retirement calculator

You are so right on the health insurance piece. It is the big wild card for me. I'm probably in a 5 year window now at the age of 56.

It's one of my first thoughts each day I wake up. When can I retire? I'm so tired of work. Just don't enjoy in anymore. I just want to play golf, smoke cigars, firepit and drink scotch.

One kid out of the nest, one a freshman at college. Need the market to continue its growth and my property values to hold steady or grow which shouldn't be a problem here in Northern VA. Can't wait to get out of the current cost of living situation.
 
I decided to retire near age 60 because after hard core saving for years and very careful financial planning with a Monte Carlo Simulation success of 99%, it gave me the opportunity. I went without a lot of things over the years to attain my goal. I was driving a 10 year old basic model Toyota Camry when I retired when I could have been driving a fully paid for new BMW 7 series, but without having that extra money invested for retirement. I even factored in health insurance premiums which are nearly $24K a year for my wife and me. That is the biggest expense right now and will drop to nearly a tenth of that when I can use Medicare.

What drove me to retire? Work was getting ridiculously busy to the point that I felt quality of care/service was being jeopardized as well as my own health and sanity. My concerns about this were ignored by the voting block of Gen X’ers and Millennials in my corporation whose main goal was to eliminate positions (basically the older, more knowledgeable and experienced people) and not refill them, so they could make as much money as possible due to running lean and mean. Of course this was with great disregard to quality and safety. Since this tact was totally unacceptable to me, I pulled the plug and haven’t looked back.

The decision to retire is personal and many factors have to be weighed, including the amount saved and the likelihood it will last until death.
 
You are so right on the health insurance piece. It is the big wild card for me. I'm probably in a 5 year window now at the age of 56.

It's one of my first thoughts each day I wake up. When can I retire? I'm so tired of work. Just don't enjoy in anymore. I just want to play golf, smoke cigars, firepit and drink scotch.

One kid out of the nest, one a freshman at college. Need the market to continue its growth and my property values to hold steady or grow which shouldn't be a problem here in Northern VA. Can't wait to get out of the current cost of living situation.
Meet me in Dewey brohan :cool:
 
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Great thread and thanks to everyone who posted. I've got a 16 year old and am a bit away from 66.5 so have been holding off. However, in the tech industry, agism is a thing and am growing tired of the time commitment. I've got the cash but am concerned about the costs of healthcare and college coming up.

I enjoy what I do but the pandemic hasn't made things very easy. Today, I work for a small company with some really cool tech but it is so hard to get your message out. People are zoomed, webinared, emailed and cold-called to death. It is hard to build brand.

I'd be interested to learn more about your company's technology. I too am in a new role in a software company trying to build Federal business. Cold calling during Covid has been a nightmare. People don't pick up the phone even if it is forwarded from their office to their cell as it appears as a spam call.

Not looking to make a move or anything, just share the experience a little bit.
 
I was with the USG for 33 years; I was maxed on grade and step and couldn't significantly improve what I could get in retirement. Between my wife's military pension and mine; I could afford to retire. Just as importantly, there were other things I wanted to do with my days. My career had been better than I could have asked and I still enjoyed what I did, but I was ready to move on. Throw in a cancer scare in 2013 that made me realize no amount of days are guaranteed, and here I am.
 
I'd be interested to learn more about your company's technology. I too am in a new role in a software company trying to build Federal business. Cold calling during Covid has been a nightmare. People don't pick up the phone even if it is forwarded from their office to their cell as it appears as a spam call.

Not looking to make a move or anything, just share the experience a little bit.
the tech we have drives data through digital channels like online and mobile. it coordinates the message no matter the channel. So you take the data, decide what you want your message to be, then display that message (or groups of messages) onto the display. The system then counts these displays and gives mgt information on what is working, where, and why. Kind of like Amazon's here is what you looked at and didn't buy, here are associated items, and here are offers.

What we did is buy a database of companies and what their technology stack is. Our system has greater value for companies using X, Y, and Z but not A, B, and C. We then put together emails with personalized messages. "We know you use X and Y. As a result, you are experiencing m&n problems. Our product will take X and Y and do these really cool things to alleviate the problem". We then change that email to speak the language of the audience. So the CIO gets one version, the CEO another, CFO, CRO, CISO, etc. get their own customized message trying to solve his or her problems.

That's the best we can do without hiring a bank of cold callers. We've found that virtual conferences are worthless. We are increasing our LinkedIn presence starting in the next few weeks.
 
I decided to retire near age 60 because after hard core saving for years and very careful financial planning with a Monte Carlo Simulation success of 99%, it gave me the opportunity. I went without a lot of things over the years to attain my goal. I was driving a 10 year old basic model Toyota Camry when I retired when I could have been driving a fully paid for new BMW 7 series, but without having that extra money invested for retirement. I even factored in health insurance premiums which are nearly $24K a year for my wife and me. That is the biggest expense right now and will drop to nearly a tenth of that when I can use Medicare.

What drove me to retire? Work was getting ridiculously busy to the point that I felt quality of care/service was being jeopardized as well as my own health and sanity. My concerns about this were ignored by the voting block of Gen X’ers and Millennials in my corporation whose main goal was to eliminate positions (basically the older, more knowledgeable and experienced people) and not refill them, so they could make as much money as possible due to running lean and mean. Of course this was with great disregard to quality and safety. Since this tact was totally unacceptable to me, I pulled the plug and haven’t looked back.

The decision to retire is personal and many factors have to be weighed, including the amount saved and the likelihood it will last until death.
24K per year! Yikes! I have the best plan that Geisinger offfers at 166.00 per month.
 
24K per year! Yikes! I have the best plan that Geisinger offfers at 166.00 per month.
really? I had been looking for health insurance in the US last year. I was running shop for a small company out of Toronto that had five employees in the USA. None of them could get insurance, independently, for less than $2,000 per month. All were young men with a spouse and at least one child. Pitt, CLE, Salt Lake, LA and ATL.
 
really? I had been looking for health insurance in the US last year. I was running shop for a small company out of Toronto that had five employees in the USA. None of them could get insurance, independently, for less than $2,000 per month. All were young men with a spouse and at least one child. Pitt, CLE, Salt Lake, LA and ATL.
I think it must be a Med sup, I was right.
 
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really? I had been looking for health insurance in the US last year. I was running shop for a small company out of Toronto that had five employees in the USA. None of them could get insurance, independently, for less than $2,000 per month. All were young men with a spouse and at least one child. Pitt, CLE, Salt Lake, LA and ATL.
I'm 79 with medicare. Geisinger also offers a $38 per month plan and a $0 per month plan.
 
Before considering retirement, first you must have something else to do and you can't be alone. Of course you must be able to afford retirement, so difficult to live in a financial panic. Friends and things to do are musts. For me, I can operate my business fully remote. Biggest thing is I have people contact and as a "sort of" retiree can set my own hours. As a retiree important to live stress free.
 
I liked my job but was tired of continuous corporate restructurings, didn't like working from home during COVID and 36 years seemed like enough. And I wanted to retire while my body was still in decent shape to do a lot of rugged outdoor adventures. I have plenty of hobbies so getting bored was not going to be a problem for me.

One caution - be careful with the on-line retirement calculators. You can get drastically different results depending on which one you use. You really need to look carefully at your specific situation, lifestyle, etc. In my case, I have an MBA and was comfortable constructing my own detailed cash flow spreadsheet which allowed me to model lots of different scenarios/what-ifs. That gave me a high degree of confidence that I was not pulling the trigger too soon.
 
24K per year! Yikes! I have the best plan that Geisinger offfers at 166.00 per month.
This is what Obamacare did to the individual insurance market. At retirement I am paying for coverage for contraceptive drugs, abortions, maternity care, drug rehab, mental health care, etc. This has skyrocketed premiums.

My $1950/month premium is for a high deductible HSA HMO plan. That is what you get on the individual market. There is nothing better out there.
 
I retired in June of 2014 right after I had turned 65. My wife retired also in July of 14 . Our son is currently attending CU Boulder for Engineering but we had his education taken care of from investments. I had traveled a lot in the 70's before I met my wife but she wanted to do more, so we retired to travel to Europe, beach trips to Mexico and multiple cruises to the Caribbean. We are supposed to do the Viking Homelands Cruise for 3 weeks in September however that may change with the Rona. it was already bumped from September of 2020 so we will see. May get the cash back and purchase an RV, we have done 2 RV trips to Glacier and Banff and 1 for 3 weeks in Alaska. Enjoyed them all and since we have 2 Huskies we can take them along vs boarding them. We do not work, I still trade actively and it supports our retirement pretty well. I take the dogs out daily and between that and working out or doing regular household maintenance and yard work I stay busy enough. It probably took me 6 months just to destress after 23 years as a trading manager and become totally chilled out. I really think it takes about 6 months to both consciously and subconsciously for both your mind and body to realize you are stress free and no longer have to work. I hope to get vaccinated soon so I can start to go back to the health club and enjoy swimmng laps and sitting in the sauna once this virus is done with. I really miss swimming laps.
 
LOVE this job. Got details for me (pm)?
Not near like it used to be. When i was there (i quit in 2013) no matter where the car was dropped, in had to be brought back to the branch where it was rented. $1.00 per mile drop fee both ways. They no longer bring them back. Today most new cars are delivered to the branches by car carrier.
 
I’ve thought about retirement, but I’m making way more than I ever thought I would and that’s tough to walk away from especially since, for the most part, I like my job and my employees. I don’t buy a lot of stuff, but it’s nice to know I can if I want to. I’m also paying off both kids’ student loans and I’ve got about another year left before they’re all paid off. So I think I’ll stick with it for a while longer. When I do retire, I plan to keep working, just doing something that’s enjoyable where I don’t have to worry about how much it pays.
 
I was with the USG for 33 years; I was maxed on grade and step and couldn't significantly improve what I could get in retirement. Between my wife's military pension and mine; I could afford to retire. Just as importantly, there were other things I wanted to do with my days. My career had been better than I could have asked and I still enjoyed what I did, but I was ready to move on. Throw in a cancer scare in 2013 that made me realize no amount of days are guaranteed, and here I am.
I was 64 and my investments increased by over 50% in one year. I was planning for an increase in my retirement plan of about 20%, so I decided I had lot more money than I had ever hoped for, about 5 times my goal. I also was diagnosed with cancer at age 55, and I had achieved everything at work that I had wanted to, so I retired instead of waiting until I was 65. That was 8 years ago. My cancer was in remission at that time but the medicines I needed to take had some side effects. I did some work as a Board member for another company to stay intellectually challenged and eventually became their Chair of the Board and I do other volunteer work just to help people. My cancer has worsened recently but I’m still OK for now. I knew I’d never get those years back if I didn’t retire when I did. No one at work ever knew about my cancer. I bought a new home, mercedes, and a few other toys and I already owned a home at the beach. I traveled , golfed, and enjoyed life without spending extravagantly. I can live until 100 at a high level but I know I won’t but my family will be well off and my children will never have to work (but they will). Moral is retire when you can - nothing is guaranteed. I start a new immunotherapy regimen next week and hopefully that gets me a few more years. Enjoy your life every day. Getting older is a bitch.
 
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It is definitely a challenge mentally to retire if you are used to saving money instead of spending it each month. You have to get used to seeing your bank account shrink - some people don't handle that as well including me. I have to tell myself that I can't take it with me and Ill be dead in 15 years so go ahead and spend it now.
I fully expect to have a similar experience when the time comes. I've been a saver my whole life, it is going to be very odd to watch balances grow smaller. But I have to tell myself that's what all of the saving for all of those years was for in the first place.

Lots of posters with pensions here. I wish I had that luxury. My likely early retirement will be self funded aside from the company match in my 401k.
 
I was 64 and my investments increased by over 50% in one year. I was planning for an increase in my retirement plan of about 20%, so I decided I had lot more money than I had ever hoped for, about 5 times my goal. I also was diagnosed with cancer at age 55, and I had achieved everything at work that I had wanted to, so I retired instead of waiting until I was 65. That was 8 years ago. My cancer was in remission at that time but the medicines I needed to take had some side effects. I did some work as a Board member for another company to stay intellectually challenged and eventually became their Chair of the Board and I do other volunteer work just to help people. My cancer has worsened recently but I’m still OK for now. I knew I’d never get those years back if I didn’t retire when I did. No one at work ever knew about my cancer. I bought a new home, mercedes, and a few other toys and I already owned a home at the beach. I traveled , golfed, and enjoyed life without spending extravagantly. I can live until 100 at a high level but I know I won’t but my family will be well off and my children will never have to work (but they will). Moral is retire when you can - nothing is guaranteed. I start a new immunotherapy regimen next week and hopefully that gets me a few more years. Enjoy your life every day. Getting older is a bitch.
Wish you well, more good livin ahead for you.
 
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I took me some time to adjust to retirement. However, a few months ago a friend asked me, "Are you staying busy?" My instant reply, without thinking was, "Busy enough". I knew I had finally figured this retirement thing out. 🙃
I sometimes see people with apprehension about retiring early in the forums I read. They often worry about how to answer the inevitable social questions about "what will you do all day when you're retired?" That is one piece of worrying about retirement I simply do not have. I can't wait to respond with "whatever the hell I feel like." Isn't that the whole point?
 
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I'm 79 with medicare. Geisinger also offers a $38 per month plan and a $0 per month plan.
Oh I see. It’s a Medicare supplement. I am talking full health insurance before you qualify for Medicare
 
I was with the USG for 33 years; I was maxed on grade and step and couldn't significantly improve what I could get in retirement. Between my wife's military pension and mine; I could afford to retire. Just as importantly, there were other things I wanted to do with my days. My career had been better than I could have asked and I still enjoyed what I did, but I was ready to move on. Throw in a cancer scare in 2013 that made me realize no amount of days are guaranteed, and here I am.
Your last sentence says it all and is the one thing that concerns me and probably overrides everything else. The one thing you cannot get back is time. I am 54, my youngest is a senior in high school, when she is done in 4 or 5 years, I will seriously consider retirement.

To reinforce the illness concern, my employer has about 3500 employees, every year there is someone who is close to retirement or just retired who dies. One of my co-workers who was my father's age, he was my lunchtime walking buddy. I always asked him why are you working when he could retire. Eventually he realized that he had enough money to retire. He always thanked me for the advice. He had 5 good years of retirement, developed cancer, fought it for 2 years and died. Had he waited, his retirement would have been 1 or 2 good years. Result, he got to travel and spend a lot of time with his grand children.

Of course the other concern is what do you do with the time? As someone previously posted, you have to have lined up how you are going to spend time with people, that is be around them. The one thing about working from home because of Covid is just how much you miss the social interactions during the day, even those 5 or 10 minute conversations. I need to figure out how to accomplish this. Is time part-time job, volunteer work?
 
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I just turned 59 a month ago and over the holiday break, did a fair amount of research and modeling in order to zero in on a date. While the financial market performance over the next 12-24 months will factor into the equation, I’m pretty optimistic about opportunity to retire within the next 3 years. If I’d simply be willing to change my current lifestyle a bit, could retire comfortably now, but not yet willing to change that lifestyle!
 
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Retirement is what ever you want it to be. If you are someone who defines your self worth by what you produce or think you're important because of work responsibilities then think twice about retirement. Once retired you aren't important to those people and the responsibilities that made you feel needed. On the other hand if you have hobbies, want to donate time to non profits or have some bucket list items that need some youth then stop working and get to it.

I had the chance to retire at a very young age - 41. It was quite a change in importance and by that I mean I went from being sought after by customers, vendors and employees to nothing. The bright side of selling my company is I didn't have any employees who were usually the most challenging part of my business ( all great people). For some reason employees always think they are worth more to the business than they are to you. As a side note... employee retention is a key to a successful organization so I made a point of overpaying by at least 10 percent and offering flexibilty for family and children needs.

Do what you want. Its your life so live it by your wants and not what you have learned you should want. I'm nearly 65 now and live a low key lifestyle by choice - which is similar to how I grew up. A decade in Sun Valley and Aspen with traveling etc is out of my system. I enjoy simple pleasures now like flyfishing a stream or watching a Penn State game!!!

One can adjust ones lives to their means. But you can't change your expiration date. Goodluck to all!
 
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I was 64 and my investments increased by over 50% in one year. I was planning for an increase in my retirement plan of about 20%, so I decided I had lot more money than I had ever hoped for, about 5 times my goal. I also was diagnosed with cancer at age 55, and I had achieved everything at work that I had wanted to, so I retired instead of waiting until I was 65. That was 8 years ago. My cancer was in remission at that time but the medicines I needed to take had some side effects. I did some work as a Board member for another company to stay intellectually challenged and eventually became their Chair of the Board and I do other volunteer work just to help people. My cancer has worsened recently but I’m still OK for now. I knew I’d never get those years back if I didn’t retire when I did. No one at work ever knew about my cancer. I bought a new home, mercedes, and a few other toys and I already owned a home at the beach. I traveled , golfed, and enjoyed life without spending extravagantly. I can live until 100 at a high level but I know I won’t but my family will be well off and my children will never have to work (but they will). Moral is retire when you can - nothing is guaranteed. I start a new immunotherapy regimen next week and hopefully that gets me a few more years. Enjoy your life every day. Getting older is a bitch.

You are absolutely right about getting old. I had a much easier road than you. My cancer cost me a kidney, but I otherwise came through okay physically. I think the biggest impact was working through the idea that there was something inside me trying to kill me, and I may not live to experience a lot of things I was looking forward to. I had just turned 50, and my son was 7. (Long story - two hard charging professionals married with no intention having kids...things change...) It made me think of how I wanted to spend whatever time I had left, be it days or decades, and I never shook it.

These days, I do volunteer work, am a baseball and band dad, study things that interest me, golf, exercise and am rediscovering a love for the outdoors. That's on top of spending time with my wife and son and taking care of the house. The only thing I would change is my waistline - too much snacking and not enough exercise. I'm working on that.
 
I retired at 64. In doing my financial analysis the big unknown was health care. I could not predict what it would cost in retirement based on Obama Care coming in. Anyway I have been retired for several years and my spending is below the money I have coming in. I have not touched my savings. I took Social Sec at age 70 because that is the last age before no benefit. So the money thing worked out.

In retirement I picked up two hobbies and continued with two others. They keep me busy. I have taught my self a couple of new skills in conjunction with my hobbies. I feel great and wonder how much longer I can keep this up.

As others here have noted retire when you want to retire. Life is short. i watched my folks in retirement and they slowed down markedly once they turned 80. Both lived to be 90 but the last decade was going to the doctor. They stopped traveling and only went out for family events.

Bottom line I should have retired earlier. My worries about health care expenses kept me working.
 
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