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With warm weather on the horizon, I am retirement daydreaming. I will be 62 this spring and have considered taking early retirement, quitting but not taking SS yet, continuing to work until I’m 65, or seeing if I can keep my current position but drop down to part time with benefits.
I think with my husband’s income it wouldn’t make sense for me to take Social Security at 62 even if I stop working.
Health insurance for my job is a lot better and less expensive than is available through his job. He is 5 years younger than me and he is definitely going to retire at 62 because his job is physically demanding and it’s getting to be too much for him already. I don’t know what he’ll do for insurance from 62 to 65.
It’s going to be really hard to keep working as the days get warmer and I am wanting to enjoy the nice weather. I’d quit today if I could.
I’ve had a countdown clock on my phone for over a year. My friends often ask, how many days. My absolute last day is 4/30/2020. So 420 days total of which I will only actually work for 225 days. ( vacation, weekends, holidays, etc). I will go sooner (and can at anytime) if it is warranted. Currently, every month I work increases my gross retirement income, both fixed from pension and estimated based on increases savings, company match, and earnings, about $75/mo. So about $1000/mo more for life for the last year. At this point, with how easy work is and my practically flexible work hours, it still seems worth it to me to work an average of 3.75 days a week or 16 days a month for that kind of return. I really thought that once I nailed down a date and exceeded my financial goals, work would be easier to accomodate, but it turns out that is not true. There is no stress now, true, but I am just ready to go. The longer one works in my circle, the less you are actually getting paid as a differential to what you will be getting for just waking up every morning. Once that difference is small enough, then even if you just want to make more money, it makes sense to quit and work someplace else, which actaully happens a lot to certain kinds of in demand engineers. I don’t plan on being one of them.
Luckily we leave for Italy for 2 weeks soon, and I hope to come back in a better frame of mind. Due to the house sale and move to the new build last year, I haven’t been on a real vacation since Oct 2017. DW has been retired for 10 years and is ready for me to retire asap.
Last edited by Perryinva; 03-06-2019 at 02:18 PM..
Health insurance for my job is a lot better and less expensive than is available through his job. He is 5 years younger than me and he is definitely going to retire at 62 because his job is physically demanding and it’s getting to be too much for him already. I don’t know what he’ll do for insurance from 62 to 65.
Do you have a post-retirement Health Insurance option through your employer? If so, it might cover both of you. That is our plan (use my wife's post-retirement insurance package for both of us) but it has its own wrinkles too since it is tied to her pension survivor choice.
I've been considering the date pretty hard. And im only 48 But some health issues that kind of worry me that I will work til I die.
I could for example.....sell my house, buy a tesla model X and live hand to mouth living in a 100K car like some weird homeless person. Maybe do Uber to put more money into my financial accounts that im living off of for future rainy days or to increase my buffer. But.....Id actually be ok. I could do that today. Drive wherever the weather was nice by packing everything into the tesla and relocating my storage Yup...homeless and living in my car with a gym membership for showers, and a small storage area for clothes,etc. Rent a small apt if I like the area.
But really that doesn't sound all that comfortable. So I will probably work until I can retire a bit more comfortably. How do folks decide when the right point is?
Do you have a post-retirement Health Insurance option through your employer? If so, it might cover both of you. That is our plan (use my wife's post-retirement insurance package for both of us) but it has its own wrinkles too since it is tied to her pension survivor choice.
Hmmm...I don't know; I'll have to ask about that. I was thinking COBRA if it isn't too expensive, but it probably is.
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But some health issues that kind of worry me that I will work til I die.
