Retired Early, Get Strange Looks When I Tell Others I'm Retired (vacation, sucking)
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Some believe if one retires before the person can get on Medicare or start collecting SS benefits, that's "too early."
Someone in their 50's retiring?
That brings out the feels. I've seen it on C-D before.
Retire in your 40s?
Hehehehe. The very topic of early retirement makes some people's heads spin.
Anyone under age 58 who can afford to live comfortably on their nest egg for the rest of their lives, if they want to, gets a ^5 from me. And if they're rocking retirement under age 50, I say you're living the dream!
But make no mistake--using the 'R' word is triggering when the retiree is under age 60 for many folk out there.
My family members that retired before 60 received pensions from their jobs and also continued medical insurance. One even complained because she had to shell out 11 dollars a month for it - it was "free" before.
I just laughed at her and said - I pay 22 a month for TriCare.
She is receiving Medicare now, but the company pays her supplemental fees now. Once they hit 65, Medicare had to be their primary. Or something like that.
I "retired" in my early 40s - no one said anything to me
But I never really said I was retired. Small town, so no one asked.
I've seen people retire in their early 40's but they usually still have a working spouse and haven't actually started drawing on their pensions, yet. They are able to stay at home with the kids and make due on a single income. Which is more or less what I did when I stopped working after our first child was born in my mid 30's. I wouldn't call myself retired until I start drawing on my retirement accounts/pension.
Now that the kids are older I work PT at a fun job. I'll retire or call myself semi retired when my husband retires. I'm 55.
This might be one of very few threads on C-D retirement where discussion of retiring early/earlier didn't start a spiral of disapproval. Maybe some progress is being made after all. We'll see, since it's still young in the thread's life.
An age difference of several years is a good reason to retire early. My parents were five years apart and retired at 65 and had a horrible retirement. My mom was in a nursing home for seven years and my dad had a stroke and never walked again. My wife was several years older than me and we retired early and had a good retirement experience for seven years but I was a surviving spouse at 58. We would not have had any retirement time if we waited.
Age differences don’t matter much until you are aging at different rates after being together 30-40 years or trying to get to 65 to retire.
An age difference of several years is a good reason to retire early. My parents were five years apart and retired at 65 and had a horrible retirement. My mom was in a nursing home for seven years and my dad had a stroke and never walked again. My wife was several years older than me and we retired early and had a good retirement experience for seven years but I was a surviving spouse at 58. We would not have had any retirement time if we waited.
Age differences don’t matter much until you are aging at different rates after being together 30-40 years or trying to get to 65 to retire.
I agree with you 100%. I've seen too many instances where people push themselves to work until they are eligible for Medicare only to have their health collapse shortly before they retire or soon afterwards.
I would rather do with a little less coming in each month than never having a retirement at all.
I retired at 59 and 11 months. I don't recall ever getting the question. ... What did amuse me, however, was when I announced my retirement at the office, I got the "looks" from co-workers, especially older ones, who couldn't.
Similar here. When the boss assembled the staff in his office to announce my full retirement, one of the guys said, "Why?" The boss's response, "Because he can."
I retired nearly 15 years ago from the federal government, at 55 years old. I had planned to work until I was 62, getting 41 years of federal service credit for retirement, but saw that staying was actually hurting my eventual pension.
This coming year, the folks like me who retired from the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) are getting a 5.9% increase, the same as Social Security. Those retirees who were in the newer FERS retirement system are getting a 4.9% increase. Ironically, those working for the federal government are only going to get a 2.7% increase next year. This follows the pattern of the past 50+ years, federal workers getting annual increases that are below the SS and pension increases.
The US Navy put me on mandatory pension when I was 42yo. That was in 2001, twenty years ago. I came back stateside and bought forest land in Maine, where I built a house. I have been gardening, beekeeping, and raising livestock ever since. A few times we have been vendors in roadside Farmer's Markets.
In 2016 we bought a commercial building in a nearby downtown, in a town whose mill had recently shutdown [it had been their biggest employer]. My building had been vacant/derelict for decades. Today I am the landlord of two storefronts and a bunch of apartments.
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