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Within the next two weeks is the time frame that I've set to give my employer notice of my retiring. As I'm 'key staff' I am trying to be as fair as possible and want to ensure a smooth transition. An 8 month notice should accomplish that.
But I'm completely freaking out. We've been planning this moment for years and now that it's finally at hand I'm scared stupid. Quitting seems so final. I always thought I'd relish the day and while I really do want to, we ave plans and money in place, jeez, this is hard. To date, deciding to retire is the toughest decision I've ever had to make.
What was your experience when 'the moment of truth' arrived for you?
Wow can I ever relate to this post. I made the decision yesterday to go ahead and retire the end of this year, 12/31/16 instead of waiting another year. I'll be 61 when I retire.
My boss has a history of treating departing employees poorly, so I am going to give the typical two week notice mid-December.
I am sending in my retirement packet next month so this is my "final answer"....
Once you put in for retirement, will you be treated differently at work? I was concerned about this so I held up notification. At the end I gave 4 weeks notice.
My last year at work was interesting. I was downsizing, getting the house ready for sale and then selling the house. I had definitely decided to retire. My attitude changed at work. Rather than push for successful ways of doing things, I gave up. I went along with every idea from my bosses no matter how hairbrained. Most of the hairbained ideas were not implemented or were quickly abandoned anyway. I got a great performance review. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how little my opinions mattered. I decided to stick with my plan for a short notice.
Once I finally gave notice, my boss only briefly tried to find a replacement. Instead he decided to try to economize, split my duties among existing employees, and put my salary to the bottom line. That attempt apparently lasted for a year or more. Eventually they hired a full time replacement and in addition had two employees working half time to cover my area. Giving a longer notification period would not have made any difference.
I am retiring at the end of March, 2017 and plan to give the standard two week notice. Our bonuses are paid around March 15 and while giving an earlier notice probably wouldn't jeopardize that, I'm not taking any chances.
I've also been planning this for some time. I count down the days, maybe obsessively so, and can't wait to get the heck out of here. It's not so much the job, which really is very good, but just working, period. I want to be done with it and it feels like a struggle to get across the finish line.
Wow! I read these posts and realize how luck I was to be Federal Civil Service. I HAD a countdown to retirement clock on my DESK, just under one of my computer screens for the last 2 yrs before I retired.
Not only did I find great COMFORT and EXCITEMENT in getting to watch the days click by, but I was told by co-workers when I was gone (worked 4-10 hour days per week) either on my day off or vacation, people would sit at my desk while interacting with my office mates and see the clock and say "She only has THAT many days before retirement"?????
Never once doubted it, never once regretted it, and 1 1/2 yrs later still think I made a wonderful move. The ONLY silly thing I will continue to do is my required CEU credits and renew my nursing license. No point in NOT (because once your license is allowed to lapse, you would have to take the NCLEX all over again) in case something should come up and I decide to go back to work, but it certainly is not in the plans! Figure this year and then again 2 yrs from now to renew and then I will be 66 and not at all interested as will be Social Security FRA.
I was worried my boss would be upset and that the staff would be unhappy and treat me differently.
My boss said she was so happy for me and couldn't wait until SHE could retire. All the people I work with are also supportive and happy for me. I sure wasted a lot of worry energy for nothing!
Everyone will have a different story on this; here is mine. My moment of truth came when my manager took me aside and said that if I could retire I should do it fairly soon, as new upper management was making it miserable for everyone, but was especially looking to move out those who had been there for several years. We had the finances in place, so I went home an talked it over with my wife and we decided that I would give six weeks notice so that I could get a bit more pay and 401k contributions and burn up some accumulated sick time.
Funny sidebar on that sick time. With about ten days to go, I took two more sick days off which made it three times within a quarter. Company procedure was that if that happened, it was manager discretion as to a warning being issued about chronic absenteeism. My manager was going to ignore it, but orders came down from the director that I was to get an official reprimand. So we had to have a short meeting and a letter went into my file that if I did not straighten up and fly right, I could face possible termination of employment.
Three of us retired on the same day and we were pretty much ignored by upper management for our last weeks, which was OK with us. My personal feelings were that it felt like a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders, even though it did sting a little bit that after 21 years and always being told what a highly thought of employee I was, that I suddenly ceased to exist.
Two and a half years later and no regrets at all about retiring.
It isn't easy to walk away from a good paying job after spending years trying to hang on to it. I was planning on retiring during a major restructuring of the company, during the last two years I worked there was a ton of changes and a ton of personal grief for most of the employees.
My boss was told of plans for the eventual sell off of the division we worked in, after he shared that bit of info my reaction was to simply leave when the turmoil got too deep. I wandered around the place knowing that whatever I did wasn't going to add nor detract from the planned demise of our division, I finally picked a day to retire and gave them a weeks notice. I felt no remorse, but I did feel the pain of leaving a twenty year job that I invested more than the proverbial pound of flesh in.
I think most people had some doubts about their retirement financial picture, I left in 07 right at the beginning of the credit crises, my 401K was slowly sinking, my wife was ill, I was selling a house and buying another, one hundred miles south, but, anything worth doing is seldom, if ever, easy. To the OP, I wish you all the happiness that retirement can bring.
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