I retired at 62, not a lot of savings but retirement that equals my working income. I paid off all my bills and redid the roof, windows and plumbing on the house. Have a seperate account for a late model car when the time comes. I am presently still able to save money but plan to use most of that for bucket list items. By the age of 75 I figure I will be mostly a home body who does mainly local things and doubtful I will take on any big projects. In a worst case scenario I still have equity in my home but I have pretty much turned that over to my son and have no plans to do anything with it. I stay in my quest house which is just perfect for me.
I guess I prefer to go the route of perpetual semi-retirement. I never plan to completely stop producing income. I understand my body and/or mind may give out at some point, and leave me with no choice. That is scary. So, I try to produce income that isn’t dependent on future labor. I already have residual income streams, though they are subject to decrease (and have). I have never had a “career.” My last job ended when I was 25, and even though I made slightly over minimum wage, I managed to save a lot of money and decided to never have a job again. In the ensuing years, I have been self-employed or worked for very small companies I founded. I own some “assets” that produce income or can be sold off (usually through unsolicited offers) when in a crunch. Whenever I start to get discouraged and think about applying for a low-level job (pretty sure I am unemployable when it comes to any “real” jobs) to supplement my income, some business comes along with a temporary offer I can’t refuse. I keep enough in reserve that I am flexible when an opportunity comes along. I am auctioning off something tomorrow that will likely pay for my living expenses for 2015, and I have enough other income coming in through residual commissions and contract client work. I live frugally, and don’t concern myself with accumulating “stuff.” Instead, I work on building relationships and spending time with my kids and that kind of stuff.
I retired one month shy of my 63rd birthday. There were a couple reasons. My pension fund (in a defined contribution plan) had done very well through the 90s and I could retire at about 5/6 of my current salary. But the annuity rate was going to drop substantially on 1/1/2000 and by retiring on 12/31/1999 I would do much better even than waiting till 67 (which, for various reasons, had been my original plan). Secondly, I got a settlement of 75% of my salary for the 25 months until I hit 65. When this was made clear to me, it became a no-brainer. I am comfortable, get Quebec pension (similar to social security), a small amount of social security (only about $250 a month, but it beats nothing) and payments from my retirement savings plan.
Thanks for the continued input and stories, but I think their is a missing clarifying point here. ‘Retiring early’ seems to be subjective. To me, early is younger than about 55. To others, an early retirement age seems to be higher.
My job pays extremely well and I live simply. Also, our stock has done very well over the years. I have enough now that could retire on the income from my investments, although it would expose me to too much stock market risk–a long downturn would wipe out enough that I’d have to work again. By the time I’m 45, though, I should be able to double my nest egg and retire for real.
Most likely, though, I won’t. At the least, I’ll continue to do contract work on the side, and I may simply continue working as I do now. However, the fact that I could retire means I can take a more relaxed approach.
I have no plans to retire. My job is more interesting and fun and easy than staying at home! I may scale back on my hours, but I don’t plan to come to a screeching halt because some magic number has been reached.
Besides - look what happened to Andy Rooney when he retired!
I kind of plan to retire - that is, no longer work a full time job, when I’m about 55. I turn 52 next month. I can do this because, and only because, of the trust fund my husband’s parents left him. I will probably work part time, hopefully doing something fun. However, if the ACA is repealed, I’ll be stuck working until I’m Medicare eligible. 
This is huge. Lots of folks talking about early retirement haven’t really thought about the medical insurance aspect.
You are who I want to be in 20 years.
I plan to. I am 41 and a multi-millionaire on paper but most of it is tied up in mineral rights at the moment. I have enough in cash in my name that I should be able to retire early except I have direct control of 0% of it right now. My family is still new to this whole money business and I am the oldest one of my generation so they keep everything locked down quite well legally and financially. They won’t ever say when or how my money will be released to me so it might as well not exist at the moment.
I have a good job on my own and save as much as possible especially because my company gives unusually generous 401K matches ($1.50 match for every dollar you put in). However, I do not have and will not have any sort of pension. All of it has to be self-funded.
One thing I can do is live very cheaply. A house if a house to me as long as it is reasonably safe, has electricity and running water plus privacy and internet access. All of those are really low standards. In fact, I prefer more rustic accommodations. I also have no desire to live in NYC or any other expensive city so that helps as well. Give me a log cabin in rural Arkansas over a posh Manhattan apartment any day.
My current plan is to move to a cheap cost of living country when I turn 50 and my daughters have just finished high school. I have been scouting locations and the best candidate so far (by far) is the underdeveloped Pacific Coast in Costa Rica. I don’t know if I want to live there permanently but I am willing to give it a shot for at least a year and might stay there forever if it works out. I could teach basic computer skills to the kids there for a small amount of money but the cost of living should be low enough that I wouldn’t really need any supplemental income. The major downside is that the infrastructure there, especially the roads, is primitive at best. You are still looking at river crossings in a 4wd vehicle during certain parts of the year. If you get hurt, Costa Rica has good medical care but not in those parts. You are looking at a 1 hour car ride on perilous roads just to get to even the most basic clinic let alone a real hospital. All of those issues can be worked around but it shows that you can’t have everything perfect unless you have a tremendous amount of money.
My dad always said he would consider himself “retired” when the kids left and the dogs died. 
From a purely financial point of view I could have retired several years ago. I’ve been a world class miser since I was old enough to count, so every bit money I got for birthdays or other occasions was put in the bank. When I got to university I opened an investment account and watched it grow. At work, there is a 401K that has a pretty favorable matching rate and I have put 15% of my salary in there since I started. Working overseas provides hardship allowances that are tax free to the employee so the houses were paid off long ago. I have enough “points” that ensures our medical benefits are covered.
This alone would be more than sufficient to retire on but a few years ago, I found out I had an annuity that the company had been paying into since I started working. I asked the local HR lady about this and when she stopped laughing, she pointed me to a company HR link that lets me compute my lump sum payout. If I continue working and retire at 55 the amount would be more than double what I though I had.
My personal metric for retirement is when work stops being fun. I work in interesting countries with great people and challenging reservoirs. Should those change I will walk away a happy man.
We are looking at it right now - the planning part of it that is. I’m 50 and the wife is 49 - our combined income is somewhere around £190,000 but the wife contribution to that (around 1/3) is increasingly on a shaky peg as no permanent jobs around doing what she does so she is contracting on a day rate and even finding that tough.
Fortunately we both have decent final salary pensions from a FTSE employer and contributory and/or personal pensions in addition. I have been stuffing the maximum annual contribution limit into mine the past few years to avoid a penal tax on earnings over £100,000 but that limit is being cut and I will be on target to reach my life time allowance of contributions if I keep on. I could keep going just for the salary but once I have maximized my pension I wonder if it will seem worth it if I can walk away fit and healthy in my mid-fifties.
We have yet to do the sums but hopefully we can go somewhere around 55 or a little later. Can’t draw pension before 55 and we do not have that much spare cash floating around that we can live well without either salary or pension income. We have no kids which helps I live reasonably modestly, no personal loans, no credit card balances running and some investments that have been quietly accumulating for twenty years. Our main luxury is living in a million pound house - nice flats in Clifton (Bristol) and Highgate (London) were sold to move up to Scotland. You certainly get more for your money up here!
We’re lucky. However neither of us has a profession we can continue as independent and frankly we are both pretty tired of what we do. Do not expect us to have a problem spending the time and the savings once we do stop but the sums need to add up.
I intend to retire at 59. I have done/will do it by working hard to get an education and pass professional exams in quantitative fields that pay decent money, and by spending less than I earn.
I could technically retire today at 50 with over 30 years service but I’ve still got one kid to put through college. After that though I’m not sure how much longer I’ll keep working.
The law enforcement agency I retired from had a 25 and out retirement, full pension w/paid insurance, which is how I retired at 47. They also had an additional investment plan which I have a substantial chunk in, but I can’t touch it for almost another 6 years. The tax penalty is pretty severe.
I did take a part-time gig that pays 600 a week pre-tax, so that’s a pretty nice supplement.
The only thing that sucks is they took away dental for retirees.
We have, and the ACA was a huge factor in cutting out our corporate jobs and staring down the path we are on.
(I have a full time job offer coming probably tomorrow - I know its on its way because the hiring manager wants to talk to me this afternoon to get a good salary in there. I’m rather divided…)
Yeah, but you still have to pay for it. And it may not be as good as what one gets from a job. Where I retired from they changed it so that anyone hired after 1994 only got the insurance until they were eligible for medicare and then they were dropped. And anyone who was hired after 2011 (it might have been 2009, I’m not sure) could have the insurance when they retired, but they had the pay the full amount for it.
If I had to pay for this insurance for my wife and I, right now it’s something like $2100 a month. :eek:
We still have to pay for it but there are a few factors.
Its cheaper than it was - we can get the same HDHP we had in our corporate jobs for about $600 a month - we were paying $400 though our employer. Prior to the ACA when we explored options, we were looking at $1500 a month for a plan that would cover what we needed. Now, we do a pretty extreme HDHP - we have significant savings and enjoy relatively good health but $600 is less than $1500.
It lowers our risk - if we have a year of low revenue, we qualify for subsidies. We won’t be looking at healthcare or groceries like a lot of people did just a few years ago when their businesses struggled. This is a fairly low risk thing for us, but being someone who hates financial risk, it got factored in. And, as our kids head off to college and we start dialing up the RETIRED in semi retired, we may reach the point at which we choose to make a small enough amount of money that subsidies kick in.
As an S-Corp, we write off the premiums. We actually come out ahead over our corporate plan after we take the deduction.
In 2018 I will be 51 years old, and have 30 years of total federal service, including my 10 years active duty. I’m punching then. we’ll be moving to the Northwest corner of Washington state and taking over my family farm. It’s small, 30 acres, but we have plans to build cabins all over and turn it into a working farm bed and breakfast. I’d also like to get into Hops production and harvesting, but that will take a bit more time.
ETA: My wife will still be working, I’ll be bringing in around 35 K a year in retirement and whatever else I pick up doing VOs, freelancing as a cameraman or producer. And our son will be in school by then, so daycare is no longer an expense.
Fingers crossed!
When I am 62 the house will be paid off, I can get social security benefits, draw from my 401K and collect from my pension. Sell the house and move to Monterey Mexico with my girlfriend is the plan. She has family there and McAllen Texas is nearby for the more serious medical needs. And I’m sure that I can draw some income by telecommuting; as long as the auto industry requires forms to filled out by suppliers I’ll have a job. I have much family throughout Texas (Lubbock, Houston, Galveston) so I can vacation back in the states.