Did you leave your job to retire on your schedule or someone elses?

[DurangoJoe]

I was forced to retire on someone else's schedule. I was laid off from my last job 9/30/2011 at age 58.

I am fortunate in that I am financially stable and just managed to get retiree health care back in 2010 from a former employer having vested back in 2009, 30 days before they filed Chapter 11. It's expensive but I have it and considering the fact that I have coronary artery disease and had 2 cardiac events in the past 9 years, I can't be without it.

I continue to look for work, albeit certainly not as hard as I should. Perhaps my wife is right, at my age, I wasn't laid off, I'm retired and just don't know it.

[texdav]

Actually I retired before I had planned it but becuase I could ;I found.My wife also retired 5 years early for same reason. Plans worked out better than estimated years before ;really.

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by SoButCounty

I was forced to retire on someone else's schedule. I was laid off from my last job 9/30/2011 at age 58.

...just managed to get retiree health care ... 30 days before they filed Chapter 11. It's expensive but I have it ...I can't be without it.

I continue to look for work, albeit certainly not as hard as I should. Perhaps my wife is right, at my age, I wasn't laid off, I'm retired and just don't know it.

I went out of work in 2005, and have been looking for jobs and healthcare 'recreationally'.

Certainly plenty of truth that we (post age 50) are 'Has-Beens". Younger managers avoid us like the plague either from fear or out of protection of jobs to their fellow gen X +. I made the really dumb choice of changing careers post-early retirement. THAT is a setback, so I find myself doing Temp jobs that were within my previous expertise as 'gap-fillers'.

I really don't need the income, but it IS a bonus that comes with affordable healthcare. Pre-existing conditions forces me to stay insured. I am still most likely gonna find myself living overseas to have access to affordable healthcare. (I'm Bout a decade away from Medicare, and that could change a bit by then)

[MotleyCrew]

The economic crisis of 08 slammed us into early retirement and we have been swimming very hard just to keep our heads above water. I only hope some work returns to our industry this year.

[Minervah]

Not on my schedule. I had to retire because of illness. I really wanted to be working much longer. But I can't say for sure if I had been able to do that even if I were completely healthy because so many of the older employees had been gradually let go. It could have happened to me before I was ready to leave.

[isabella20]

Originally Posted by StealthRabbit

I was RIF'd @ age 49 w/ 32 yrs service, only 6 wks away from retirement benefit eligibility. I had 12 weeks of accrued vacation and 800 hrs of sick leave... BUT... they would NOT extend my employment the 6 wks I needed to get Healthcare / pension. (One of my close friends w/ over 25 yrs service missed retirement by 6 days). This was with a FORMERLY very generous and benevolent company that literally wrote the book on employee care / benefit / profit sharing / flex hours / Work-life ...(in the 1960's). Great while the founders were alive... then the board hired a wicked medieval history major as ceo. The game of RISK was on, and about 300,000 engineers and about 1.2m retirees (and the Board of Directors + CEO) were sunk in the battle. And another formerly great US company languishes to a slow and painful death.

SO... as with many of my friends and co-workers I have about 15 yrs till age 65 w/o healthcare. A few of us die every yr, so my number may be coming up. I keep some Term Life to help bridge the gap for my dependents.

I was laid off by what I think must be the same company (Medieval History major as CEO) when I was 55. Although, the bean counter was in charge by then. My entire department's function was off-shored to India. I did get the healthcare and pension, but the bean counter came up with a nifty way to save the company lots of money. As of 2011, the company pays zero for any increases in premiums for retirees. The increase the first year was about $200. At that rate retirees won't be able to afford their health insurance.

So, to answer the OP's question, the timing of my retirement was not my choice. My husband's retirement wasn't his choice either, but due to disability. From a financial standpoint that's not good news, but in every other way it has been a very good thing.

[Searcher521]

This is a very interesting thread.

I wonder why someone would consider they were forced to retire because their employer of many years laid them off. That doesn't prevent you from seeking employment somewhere else. I understand it is easier said than done but still ....

There are also the stories of being "made redundant" months, weeks or days before when a person was going to qualify for their retirement. We aren't talking about losing your vested retirement just the fact that you can not immediately start getting retirement benefits, right? You have to hang in there until you are 65 before getting payments. Not nice but not exactly an unmitigated disaster either.

I am still employed and have concerns about the company nudging me out whether those concerns are unfounded or not only time will tell. I actually do not currently have plans for retiring on a date certain. In another year and a half I will meet the minimum threshold to start drawing a retirement but I could easily see working another 10 years. For the most part I enjoy my work and do not have enough going on outside that to tempt me and yes the longer I work the better financial shap I will be in. Trick is to live long enough to enjoy it.

A year and a half ago the company gave notice that people retiring after a specific date would no longer be eligible for company medical insurance. That tipped the scales in decision making for a lot of folks. I guess we will just have to hang in there and prepare for whatever comes down the pike.

[NYgal1542]

Hard to imagine the last post was dated 2012. But here goes my 2015 story.
I worked for a very large corporation in Central NY and saw things begin to spiral downward in late 80s when a bigger corporation took us over. False promises of no layoffs, etc. were told at introduction meetings, but I think most of us saw the writing on the wall. In very early 1993, I asked if I could move to a company plant in TX and was told if a job came up and I bid on it and was hired, yes I could do it. So, a job came along, I interviewed, got hired, got the ball rolling on moving there. During the start of March 1993 blizzard, I started driving there. Once I arrived, I contacted them for my starting date, etc. I was told to get my new state business taken care of and that work would begin the following Monday. On Friday I received a call that the job suddenly was not available. Needless to say, it came has a big shock for me (I realized many years ago how terribly gullible I was at that time). After a month of no work, I was told they would let me "work in their factory." Being an office employee almost all of my life, factory work was quite an experience. I was not good at it. I came to respect the blue collar workers who put in long hours and worked very hard at what they did. After a repetitive activity type injury, I went on "light" work, helping in an office. Then an opportunity for a voluntary layoff came along and I took it to return to central NY. I went back to my original job and was told I had nothing to offer them (after 25 years of service). Shortly after I received a letter from TX saying if I did not return to "my" factory work, they would terminate me. I was terminated in April, 13 months after leaving central NY. I was 52. So a long way from the 65 retirement age. Since my age was less than 55, my numbers did not add up to the required amount to receive my better pension, I took a huge hit in my pension amount and since I was not working and had no income, I had to start drawing it as soon as I was able to. So, in that sense, a lot of what happened to me was my fault. I did contact lawyers in TX and NY but not one of them wanted to help me. After a few years of $7/hour jobs and using credit cards to stay afloat, I learned how to do medical transcription and was very fortunate to get hired right away at a better paying job. After nine years doing this work, another employee and I reached 64 years old and were called into the office (separately) and told that we were being let go. I found a temporary transcription job at a hospital that paid per diem and when that ended I found a part time transcription job that I worked at for three years until I discovered I needed eye surgery.
Now at almost 73 I want to move to NC for various reasons. But kind of scared about making another stupid mistake. I would not be able to recover so well if it failed. But of course my income is not dependent on a job. So in that respect, I'm "safe." But I have high debt which I'm slowly getting paid tho paying those bills forces me to use credit for bigger, necessary expenses.
I feel a bit resentful. Some people out there did very well in their retirement (my ex being one of them), and I work at not thinking about that, keeping my eyes on "my" prize.
Any comments?

[BellaDL]

Originally Posted by jrkliny

Younger people were getting promotions but us older folks were taken for granted

This is very common in the tech industry. Granted that some old timers in spite of their experience don't keep up the current trend and the latest technologies are not necessary the greatest but tech companies value the newly graduated young workers over what management consider the 'has-been, outdated' workers.

So older workers are either laid off, don't get raise/promotion for many years or relegated to unimportant, boring jobs. So the workers in the latter case may not be directly forced early retirement but got so stressed out, demoralized and psychologically, emotionally or even medically forced into early retirement on their own schedule but not on their own will or term!

Companies have gotten to be quite clever in dismissing older workers. Many older workers feel that they are targeted with their performance reviews/ratings drop down sometimes several notches just before a layoff. This tends to happen when a person is forced to change job or have a young new boss replacing the retired boss who had rated the workers highly for many years. To avoid age discrimination suits, companies also plan too layoff some young workers (especially the ones whom the managers know were considering jumping ship) along with the majority of older folks!


PS. For the poster who suggested 'pushed-out' older workers to find another job, there are several threads in this forum discussing how depressing and difficult it is for older workers to find a job. There are also many headlines/news articles on this subject. The chance of a worker say over 50 to immediate find a replacement job in the same field and/or the same salary is extremely slim.

[petch751]

Originally Posted by Ariadne22

^^And then we wonder why some people favor Socialism. Can't count on the capitalists to honor their promises. Doing the moral thing has nothing to do with doing what's legal. I experienced a similar thing w/pension - cut by 75%. No healthcare at all.

Actually, my husband retired at 52 years old for the opposite reason that you seem to think. Both of our incomes stacked puts us into the high tax bracket. My schedule is very flexible, my husbands schedule ws not flexible. We were smart with our money but couldn't seem to find ways to keep our money from the government grab. So what the hell, why the hell pay all those taxes,.. best thing we did. Now we can live life! and without tight schedules and without paying taxes out our asses. By the way, that company downsized so they didn't replace him. I'd rather be given a choice (capitalism) than not (socialism). Stop whining and get smart about your finances.