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I am 56 years old and unfortunately when I was in my twenties, there was no internet financial know it alls to guide me and I made poor decisions and couldn't retire at 40 years old.
You can gather just so much information from men's bathroom walls.
I NEVER thought about retirement when I was younger. As I got older the target was always 65 for SS and Medicare. I was forced into retirement at 62, took SS and then Medicare at 65. Things just work out for most.
I thought I'd be 39 forever but here I am almost 79.
Oddly enough, I didn't give this much thought at all until I was in my late 40's or early 50's. I knew I would have a pension, so I suppose I just put off thinking about it. Then at that point (late 40's or early 50's) I started looking into the details...
Similar to Escort Rider, when I was younger, I never thought about my own retirement. I knew money was going into the 403(b), but rarely even took a look at the account. Was just working away, getting up every morning, trudging into work, and going home afterward. I lived for weekends.
It wasn't until I was in my late 50's that I started seriously planning the next phase of my life. Eventually decided to retire when I turned 65 and would be eligible for Medicare. Seemed to be the optimal time. Eventually retired at 65 and a half.
Only regret is that I didn't start to downsize much, much earlier. It's taking me 'forever' to pack up to move to my new retirement home. Couple more weeks left . . . I hope.
I never heard of retirement, being dysfunctional working-class background. "How do you save enough money to never work?" I also didn't think I'd live that long- no bad medical info, just severe depression until age 30, then general existential angst about nuclear war/epidemics/asteroids/etc.
Started to consider retirement when I got my first pension statement from a job I'd left three times (age 48) and signed 30 - year mortgage papers for my dream house and did some simple math.
Now I'm on track to kick to the curb in January, 2018. Will be 64 and eight months old.
...... But, (for me) living alone was never very much fun and my "lifestyle" and "prospects" very-likely would be extremely limited.
...
That is so true. I don't know if I could live alone in retirement. I have no idea what I would do in the event of the loss of DW. I certainly would be lost for a good long time.
I didn't think much about retirement early on but did begin that planning with the beginnings of my 401k funds. I just never thought I would make it to retirement. Here I am almost 60 and retired a year now.
I'd like to think I'd be done between 60-65, but given the fact that I'm only 31 and the rate of change occurring in society, this is virtually impossible to predict.
I began thinking about retirement in college as I was an economics major. That was about ten years ago. Read the Robert Kiyosaki books, Millionaire Next Door, read WSJ almost cover to cover daily and Economist cover to cover weekly, listened to Dave Ramsey. What really woke me up was the financial collapse of 2008 - before then, I spent more time chasing women than I did doing anything useful. Ultimately, none of that stuff stuck or was useful when I was in what was my reality at the time of working in a call center for no benefits at under $15/hr.
I graduated at 24, not 22, and it took four years beyond that to find my first "professional track" job. If you had asked me, "where do you see yourself in five years?" when I was 20-21, the ideal would be about where I am today, without considering the (rather costly) year-long detour in Iowa and the (useful, but totally unexpected) three years in Indianapolis. Given how bad things were for me four years ago (reading posts from back then - I don't even seem like the same guy, but I was severely depressed and suicidal for a time), I never thought I'd be doing this well, especially around here.
Things were extremely difficult for the cohort that I graduated with and those several years around me. Expectations that were completely reasonable in 2004 (finance was a good choice of major then) were just shot to pieces by 2008 (worst financial crisis in our lifetimes). When I moved to Indianapolis, I worked with an office full of people around my age, many with similar degrees and job backgrounds, and all had done much better than I had up to that point, largely by being close to/in a major job center.
When economists look back at the Great Recession cohorts over the next few decades, my guess is that many of these people are going to have significantly stunted careers and bleak retirement prospects compared to those before 2007 and those after 2013 or so.
"Knowing what I know now..."
1) I should have left Tennessee (at minimum, this part of Tennessee) after high school and never looked back. Outside of metro Nashville, there isn't a lot of opportunity in Tennessee. Leaving small town Tennessee for at least a mid-sized metro (Indy, Nashville, Charlotte, whatever) would have given me significantly better odds at having found a better first job out of college, and would have set me up for a brighter future years down the road.
2) I should have taken education more seriously. I applied to and was accepted by some well-known national universities out of high school. I didn't go and stayed local. Going to these schools, especially in a healthier area, would have definitely improved my job/retirement prospects early on. One of my biggest regrets is not having gone to graduate school - I'd have been the first on either side of my immediate family to do so, but I had to work after college. Given the price of grad school these days, that's not going to happen now.
3) I'd have done something portable to many different geographic areas and ideally have gotten into government employment. Working in IT in the private sector, I've been subject (or would have been had I stayed at that employer) to the following over the course of seven years: government contract cancellations, client contract cancellations, an eagerness to fire (was fired from a temp job with no warning once), tons of temp work, financially unstable companies (temped for a company coming out of Chapter 11), outsourcing, offshoring/"farm"shoring, and mergers. None of that is conducive to retirement planning or long-term career growth.
I have plenty of teacher friends, most of whom make very near what I do in this area, with a system paid MEd or MS, who have been with the same school system they did their student teaching for back in 2006/2007. Those folks are set up for a much brighter retirement future than I am.
Going forward, I believe automation is going to eliminate many jobs before people can retire. I think a lot of us will be on some form of UBI before retirement.
When I started my career on June 1, 1976 at the age of 21, I told myself I'd retire on June 1, 2016 on my 30th anniversary, the first day I'd be eligible, at the age of 51.
When I started my career on June 1, 1976 at the age of 21, I told myself I'd retire on June 1, 2016 on my 30th anniversary, the first day I'd be eligible, at the age of 51.
My retirement date? 06/01/2016.
Wow. What amazing foresight! How did you learn to think and plan this way? Did you know retired people when you were younger?
Wow. What amazing foresight! How did you learn to think and plan this way? Did you know retired people when you were younger?
Not at all - I just knew I wanted to stay till I could retire and retire on the first day I could!
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and my "lifestyle" and "prospects" very-likely would be extremely limited. 
