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I retired on my schedule - at age 55 - but I chose to wait a few months until my wife reached 55 as well, so that we could retire on the same day.
I did this partly to make my wife happy (and that's *always* a good thing to do), and partly, well, the thought of my staying in bed while my wife got up and trudged off to work ... I just didn't think that would work out well for either of us ... especially me!
I retired on someone else's schedule. The TV station I worked for had fallen on hard times. Jobs were eliminated, downsized or automated. A number of employees chose to leave or retire early. At first I had mixed feelings about leaving before I was ready, but automation made me obsolete. So I handed in my resignation at 58. Despite some unexpected bumps in the road it has worked out well. What made it work is that my husband had I had been planning ahead for retirement for quite some time. We had saved, invested conservatively, lived below our means and paid down our mortgage so we would own our house by retirement. At first we weren't sure we would had enough. It's really scary to give up that regular paycheck. But we sat down did the math, and back came the answer we wanted: Go for it!
The only joker in the deck has been health insurance. Neither of us gets any retiree health benefits. My husband retired at 65 so he qualified for Medicare right away, but I'm eight years younger. I was lucky to even get coverage on my own, and I have to pay an astronomically high premium, well over $1000 a month, until I reach Medicare age.
The expensive premium is ironic because I'm actually much healthier than my husband, who has had two major surgeries and takes handfuls of pills every day. But insurers assume that a person who retires before the normal age must have had to stop working because of a health issue. That's crazy! Nearly my entire pension and Social Security, which are already reduced because of my age, goes for health premiums. I am lucky that my husband's income and our investments are enough to support us. Some of my over 50 friends haven't been so lucky. They're doing without health insurance because their employers don't offer it or they can't afford the premiums.
Based on my own experience I would say that whether retiring early is a good thing or not depends on whether you have affordable health care and enough assets to support a comfortable lifestyle. Of course it's also important to have family and/or a social network and activities that interest you outside of work. I love being retired and never run out of things to do. Sometimes I wonder when did I ever have time to go to work?
Based on my own experience I would say that whether retiring early is a good thing or not depends on whether you have affordable health care and enough assets to support a comfortable lifestyle. Of course it's also important to have family and/or a social network and activities that interest you outside of work. I love being retired and never run out of things to do. Sometimes I wonder when did I ever have time to go to work?
A most unfortunate truth. The issue of health care has, unfortunately, become a prime factor in all too many people's abilities to retire comfortably, if at all. So, too, is availability of good health care services. While thankfully not afflicted with concern for the first issue, the second was decidedly a factor in our selection of a retirement venue.
Then there's the wondrous reality you mentioned last. How did we ever find time to work? 'Tis a puzzlement but a lovely one indeed.
My employer has a 'High-Year-Tenure' policy [HYT]. Each pay-level has a limited number of years that people can stay working, until they are considered to be too old for that pay-level, and they are forced out.
If a person can advance higher, then they can stay working longer.
At each level, it is deemed as a old age policy. You can become too old to continue working at any specific level. Only by making regular advancements up the pay-levels can a person stay working with this employer.
I reached the first of the levels that includes a pension. I worked with many men to were forced out due to their HYT, at lower pay-levels and of course they got no pension. They were simply booted out.
I vaguely knew that my HYT was going to be on that date for a long time. Of course as I approached it, I kept hoping each year that I would advance a level. So my HYT date would be later [so I could stay working longer].
But as it got closer, it became more 'real' to me that I was not going to advance any further. My employer began a 'draw-down' policy of shrinking it's work-force. The over-all numbers of employees at each pay-level were expected to shrink each year. The pay-level immediately above mine was over-manned so there were no slots to be advanced up into.
I worked with a number of men who held out. Refusing to think about their retirement, putting their full faith in the idea that they would be advanced at the last moment. I tried to have compassion for friends that I watched as they were booted out, completely without any plans or notion of what they were going to do with their retirements.
10 years before my HYT date, my DW and I had began drawing a house we would build one day. Once each year I pulled out those plans onto our kitchen table, and we would make changes. But at that time, we had no idea of when we would build that future house.
3 years prior to my HYT date, I was rather shook-up by the emotional turmoil one friend in particular went through when he was booted out. So my Dw and I really started a conversation about it more and more.
We had moved so many times, and did not feel any attachment to any state. We discussed different nations we could settle in, we finally decided on coming back stateside to a state where we had never even visited. Just from what information we had gathered from reading about it.
When my HYT date arrived I was prepared for it.
My pension is actually a retainer-check, I am subject to recall by my employer at any time my employer desires to recall me.
My retirement was forced upon me by my employer's policy. However it was not unexpected when it happened to me.
In the last month that I was in-country, one of my supervisors approached me and 'counseled' me, that I really should not be focusing on my HYT retirement. He assured me that I was going to be advanced during the last week on-site, and I would be staying there.
He was wrong.
Next month will be the eleventh anniversary of my retirement.
forest beekeeper, I assume you were in the military or some other government job. It's ironic that the feds are allowed to discriminate based on age when private employers (theoretically, anyway) are not. You did all the right things to prepare for the inevitable when it happened, including having a realistic attitude and planning what to do next. I hope you built that dream house!
forest beekeeper, I assume you were in the military or some other government job.
US Navy.
Quote:
... It's ironic that the feds are allowed to discriminate based on age when private employers (theoretically, anyway) are not. You did all the right things to prepare for the inevitable when it happened, including having a realistic attitude and planning what to do next. I hope you built that dream house!
I did.
We live in it now.
Within a year we hope to be off-grid [generating our own electrical power and able to turn off municipal utility].
I could have retired at age 55 but I never considered it. So, about 3 months before age 60 I decided to get a retirement estimate. That blew me away. Why was I continuing to work? So, I retired at age 60 and never looked back.
It took a bit of a sea change for me. I remember when I was in college and I began each summer back at home knowing that I had 3 months of complete freedom. I could sleep and watch TV all summer long. It was the greatest sense of serenity for me. That is what happened when I retired. I was that college kid again who didn't have to set an alarm and could do pretty much what I wanted to do. I still expected to wake up someday and realize the summer was over and I had the go back to the grind again. That was over 4 years ago and I finally realized that there was no more grind for me and I was feeling good about it.
After teaching 32 years, I went out 1 year earlier than I had planned to, but was in a situation where I was miserable and the program was being eliminated. By making and voicing my intentions early on, the "higher ups" left me alone to do my job and provide transitioning to those who were assuming the fragments of the position, until the very end. After 32 years I took away many great memories, friendships, and more good days and years than bad. The killer/kicker is the COBRA, which I'm entitled to for life, at a premium of $1200 per month for DH and myself. Grateful I can afford it, grateful to have it~and if I want to or need to, I'll work part time to pay for it. I'd rather give up some of the other things to have the peace of mind, free time, my own schedule, and calm serenity that has become my way of life.
My wife and I had talked about retirement which to us meant moving south from MA. She liked her job (upper level management with the Comm. of MA), I owned a small business which I loved so we had never really picked a date.
Well the state came along wth an early (optional) retirement offer for their upper management people.The offer also uncluded health care to age 65 (I was her dependent) then it became our supplemental. Plus thye hired her back for one year contract (two six month contracts) doing the same job.
We talked.....but it was a very short conversation.
She jumped on that offer with both feet ASAP. During the next year she was working doing her old job...3 days a week at the same salary level on a 1099 plus collecting her retirement. I sold my business later that year, we both stared collecting Social Security and we were gone from MA in a flash with the biggest smiles on our faces that you ever saw.
I retired on my schedule. As I approached 60, I started to look seriously at financial planning and retirement calculators. I quickly realized that in order to retire in my expensive Long Island area I needed to work until about age 70. Playing with the calculators I realized that I was not really going to accrue a huge amount of money but I needed to keep working so I would get closer to the end of my life expectancy. Well I was not really enjoying work and the long commute. Then there was another nasty factor that really got my goat (someday I will need to research the meaning of that phrase). Raises were not that great at my job. Younger people were getting promotions but us older folks were taken for granted. The assumption was that we were going to stay and we did not need raises to keep us on board. So I was not happy working, the economics did not make sense and the company was not interested in paying for my expertise. So after some considerable turmoil we downsized and sold the house. We are travelling and spending a fraction of what it used to cost us to live on Long Island. We can go for years and years spending only half of the house sale money and years from now we will be able to buy a decent house in a more reasonable cost of living area. Meantime I don't need to touch my retirement funds and can postpone taking social security. Financially I am much better off than when I was working. So for all of you employers who take us old hands for granted... just stuff it or pay a decent wage with decent increases to make it worthwhile.
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