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Thanks for the article. My spouse and I are in our 50's, neither one of us wants to work full time anymore. I went back 6 years ago to the medical field, able to work 4 hour shifts. It's a very good situation. Luckily, I returned to a former employer, from years ago. Lesson learned here, don't burn your bridges. I don't consider this a career job, but it's a great semi-retirement job. And my spouse wants to throw in the towel from the corporate world, at least by his early 60's. Plan in place is for him to continue his seasonal, part-time job in the sports field. He has been doing this part time gig for 10 years. Now, he realizes it will be a great small 2nd income when he retires. It does feel good to have a solid plan. We didn't really plan any of these options, it just all kind of fell into place. And we feel pretty lucky about it.
"Phased retirement" is also starting to take hold, where people reduce to part-time for a few years before retiring completely. The federal government is one of the first employers to have formal policies in place. https://www.opm.gov/retirement-servi...ed-retirement/
The term in the OP's article is "bridge retirement", although "phased retirement" will do just fine as meaning essentially the same thing. It's what I did, but not by plan; it just happened. I didn't need the money, but I had the opportunity and I enjoyed it. When the various things I was doing eventually became chores instead of fun, I gave them up one by one. Only one small project is left - teaching chess for five weeks every summer in an enrichment summer school. While I get paid for it, I would do it for free. In fact I have adopted the practice of doing it for free by donating back my wages to the non-profit which runs the summer school.
I will be 72 this summer as I teach those classes for the 12th summer in a row, marking 11 years since I retired from full-time work. I enjoy it so much I can't imagine it ever becoming a "chore" but if it does I will give it up just as I gave the other things up. I hope to continue with teaching chess until I am no longer able to do so. (At this point I seem still to have all my marbles - as many as I started with at any rate).
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