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I don't care if my health has depreciated by that point - and at this time of my life I've already suffered some painful back issues and am currently being treated for severe anemia. Lard knows how decrepit I'll be by retirement. Just NOT being a corporate drone; getting off that damned hamster wheel; will be the most joyous day in my life since the day I married.
Having more time with my spouse, other than vacations; having a full stretch of sleep unencumbered by whatever work problems keep my brain spinning; just being able to call all the hours of the day MINE and not Evil Empire, LLC. Funny thing is: I do like my job. But it owns me, rather than me owning my life. I'll be glad to get away from that.
Maybe that's the thing: people work jobs for the money and not because they like the job. If I am an psychologist and am paid to talk to people, and to help people...what could be better?
Just because you're retired doesn't mean you have to stop working. Retirement does not mean dozing on your front porch and getting fat. It simply means you've stopped working to make a living. Many retirees I know spend their retirement travelling or volunteering. They're still kept very busy with a very tight schedule.
There is a difference between being busy and working. Having to get up and be somewhere is what I want, not a make-work project or running-around an attraction with a camera and a Hawaiian shirt on for years on end.
I don't think, at age 27, you are qualified to have an opinion on retirement. It is a subject so foreign to you, you can't comprehend the meaning, or the need.
Your life and mind set will change drastically in the next bunch of years. Wait until your 50 and bring the subject up again.
There are some jobs that one never needs to retire from. I have a friend who is a stock broker. His work day consists of making a few phone calls, then going to his real office on the golf course. that is where is work and sales are done. Occasionally his firm sends him on a business trip, where he has to attend parties and play more golf. I can see him not needing to retire.
I worked with a man who has over 40 years in his government job. If he retired today, he would bring home over $1500.00 a month more than he makes working every day. He is so afraid of life, he refuses to retire. I feel sorry for someone who has no life and has to cling to his job as his only life. He will die there, and all of the retirement money he earned will have been wasted.
So I guess the bottom line is, "Different strokes for different folks......!
Last year, something amazing happened...I had a week off...an entire week off...AND I HATED IT! First three days were okay, but after that I was pulling my hair out without a schedule or a task I had to do. I realized than what I knew in the back of my head all along: I can't retire, ever.
Sorry, but I need to work. I have had a job since I was fifteeen (I'm 27) and that week off was the biggest stretch without working I ever had that I was not unemployed. If a week of that "what the hell do I do with myself?" feeling is enough to nearly drive me insane, imagine YEARS like that? HELL ON EARTH!
And no, the prospect of having time to travel, volunteer or other "make work" things does not appeal to me. I have to have a schedule dictate to me what to do. I have to have be somewhere to make a living. I NEED the stress of a job, or I can't do it.
Good thing is I probably will not have a real (I'm a waiter) until I'm about 40 anyway...I want to be a pyschologist, and have not started college yet, and it takes four years for a bachelor's and five or more for a PHD...that's cool, so I wouldn't get tired of it as soon as others, but most likely, not ever, and I can say "I've only been doing this for twenty years!" when someone asks me, at age 60, if I'm thinking about retiring.
Also, I'll just be sitting on a chair talking to people, so it wouldn't be wear and tear on my body, so I'll have no reason to stop as long as my mind is healthy, which should be until I die (knock on wood)
In other words...how does a workacholic retire? I am addicted to work, and I cannot fathom a time when I will want to stop, and that's the way I want to it
Anyone else also prefer to go-down in a blaze of laboring glory instead in wasting away in "the Golden Years"?
At the age of 27 I can see how you'd feel this way. Perhaps when you've worked for 35 years, raised a family, developed some significant health issues, accomplished your work-related goals, and tended to loved ones in their waning years, you'll see things differently. Many things change as we age and one of those things is our outlook on life. What's very important to you at one stage in your life isn't significant at others. I wish you well on life's journey, but remember until you walk in another person's shoes you really don't know . . . Take care!
A whole is defined by it's margins. A day off is nice because it's a DAY OFF...if the whole rest of your life is a day off...than what is a day off?
You're dodging my point. If you can't have a few days off without feeling a sense of loss about not working, then I would offer that you have a very limited worldview. There are books to read, new things to learn, and an entire world to be explored. And if you are on your third day of your vacation and itching to get back to your job, you seem to be missing the entire point of life.
Don't get me wrong. I love what I do for a living. I'm not slapping fenders onto cars or some other robotic profession. I do something that engages my mind and is financially rewarding at the same time. I also work with a significant number of highly successful people, executives, successful entrepreneurs, and the ilk. What I've found is that the people who are most happy with their lot in lives are the people who manage to compartmentalize their lives so that they have rewarding lives off the job, not just on it.
And you should too. For a person whose entire life is defined by work is a one-dimensional person and, ultimately, a person without substance. And will be remembered as nothing much more than a drone by his friends and family.
Mind you, I'll find some useful work until the day I die. But it's not emotionally healthy to allow your work to be the alpha and omega of your life.
You're kidding, right? I'm 35 yrs old and already dreaming of my early retirement. And no, I don't mean 'wasting away in the golden years' as you put it so nicely, but more like 'free to pursue whatever passions I've always wanted to do but never got around to do it due to full time job' type of retirement.
Most happy retirees I've encountered are so busy everyday because their days are full with activities. My colleague calls her mom a 'professional volunteer' because she's so busy with her volunteer work at the hospital, I don't think her mom understands the meaning of 'wasting away in her golden years'
Why can't you pursue those passions now? Not one of us is promised a tomorrow, and too many of us die far too young.
You ARE free to pursue what you've always wanted to do. If you're not; I'd love to hear *why* not!
some just have nothing to pursue or want to do . i know quite a few like that. they have no interests outside of what they do when they are off from work . or they don't want to give up their pay check
if we didn't have the money to spend doing many of the things we like i may have continued working longer ..
to retire and not be able to afford to do much isn't much fun either. those walks in the woods or hikes around the lake grow stale pretty fast , at least they did for us .
Retirement doesn't have to mean not working. What it does mean is the end of working only to put food on the table, instead of working at what you really enjoy.
Last year, something amazing happened...I had a week off...an entire week off...AND I HATED IT! First three days were okay, but after that I was pulling my hair out without a schedule or a task I had to do. I realized than what I knew in the back of my head all along: I can't retire, ever.
Sorry, but I need to work. I have had a job since I was fifteeen (I'm 27) and that week off was the biggest stretch without working I ever had that I was not unemployed. If a week of that "what the hell do I do with myself?" feeling is enough to nearly drive me insane, imagine YEARS like that? HELL ON EARTH!
And no, the prospect of having time to travel, volunteer or other "make work" things does not appeal to me. I have to have a schedule dictate to me what to do. I have to have be somewhere to make a living. I NEED the stress of a job, or I can't do it.
Good thing is I probably will not have a real (I'm a waiter) until I'm about 40 anyway...I want to be a pyschologist, and have not started college yet, and it takes four years for a bachelor's and five or more for a PHD...that's cool, so I wouldn't get tired of it as soon as others, but most likely, not ever, and I can say "I've only been doing this for twenty years!" when someone asks me, at age 60, if I'm thinking about retiring.
Also, I'll just be sitting on a chair talking to people, so it wouldn't be wear and tear on my body, so I'll have no reason to stop as long as my mind is healthy, which should be until I die (knock on wood)
In other words...how does a workacholic retire? I am addicted to work, and I cannot fathom a time when I will want to stop, and that's the way I want to it
Anyone else also prefer to go-down in a blaze of laboring glory instead in wasting away in "the Golden Years"?
I used to be the same way. You'll get over that feeling if you ever get a Corporate job of some sort. I am 56 now and about 3 years away from retirement, and I CAN'T WAIT!
BRING IT ON!!!
I ONLY wish somebody had slapped me in the head 20 years ago and said: "WAKEUP!!!, you aren't putting enough money away for retirement as of yet, and you WILL want to retire"!!!
You KNOW it's coming, but it's not easy to realize just how fast time can go flying by, and then you're there, and you don't want regrets then.
P.S. You want an easy way to become a Psychologist? Get an I.T. field job dealing with end-users in their offices with a Fortune 500 company... A few years of that, and you'll become a pretty good psychologist, or go insane... lol
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HELL ON EARTH!
