Mr. Legend always was the one who made the big bucks, but he went to half-time this summer and we just started dipping into our actual retirement fund for the first time since I retired. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety over seeing the account balance go down instead of up - that’s our savings! We can’t touch that money!
In somewhat related news, I finally got to the top of the therapy waiting list, and I have someone who’ll be paid to help me work that out. I hope your subconscious is more reasonable.
Five months in for me. I am thankful every single day that I no longer have to drag my behind into work.
Every now and then I learn or realize something about retirement that I had not previously considered. This is the latest:
I’ve had a sore throat for a few days now. It’s an annoyance more than anything at this point, and I expect it will just go away. But it occurred to me yesterday that I don’t need to worry about the possibility of having to take time off of work. I don’t have to decide whether I should call in sick, I don’t have to be concerned with leaving the team short, I don’t have to consider how much sick time I have available, and I don’t have to worry about spreading whatever it is to others. I’ll just ride it out.
Congrats, @LSLGuy, keep us posted on how you are adapting!
I’ll just go see my PCP or the local doc-in-the-box. Why not? It’s not disruptive to my daily non-schedule, and if they can speed the recovery, or catch something dangerous before it gets out of hand I’m all ahead. What’s have I got to lose? A few days being uncomfortable, that’s all.
Folks in my industry have always been more aggressive consumers of PCP & specialist care than folks in other jobs where avoiding work disruption is the main priority. For us, it’s all about prevention of what just might become a burgeoning chronic career-damaging problem.
It’s a very definite mindset. You need a reason to go see the doc. I need a reason not to.
Give it a thought and see how it fits you in your retiree mind, not your once-was-and-still-partly-are-a-worker mind.
Not forgetting that everything about being even mildly ill is harder as we age: harder to tolerate, and harder / slower to recover from. Plus, now in the COVID era the deck contains a whole bunch of new jokers that weren’t in there when we learned to play this game.
Congratulations and welcome to the club. The countdown timer that I used to track the days until retirement now shows that I haven’t worked for 157 days.
The 24 day trip I took expanded just a little to 26 days. After cancelling a few vacations in the last few years due to Covid concerns, it was just what I needed.
It’s taken a few months, but I finally adjusted to the new pay schedule, I changed the direct deposits from one bank to another. Seems to be working so far.
I’m four months in, almost to the day. Another twist: if you develop some mild chronic complaint that would be a pain and a worry to continue working through, it’s not going to be as bad if you’re retired. I’m having a tinnitus/ear pressure/vertigo problem, and when it hits, I can just go and lie down for a couple of hours. That would have been impossible at work, not to mention having to drive home at the end of the day while feeling dizzy.
And it’s sure nice to have enough time to get things done, and at a non-hectic pace, too. If a task is a big one, it’s no problem to split it up into chunks you can do a piece at a time over several days. No more trying to cram big jobs into a day or two on the weekend.
Congratulations. One good thing about retirement is that when you do go to the doctor, you don’t have to work appointments around your work schedule. Plus, when you are feeling a bit low, you can take a nap anytime and not have to push through until quitting time.
For years after I retired I liked to turn on the TV in the morning, drink my coffee, and watch the traffic news I was no longer a part of.
I needed to change the water pump on my truck. It took me three hours just to get the old one off. Egads, I used to be able to complete the entire job in a bit over three hours.
Four days. Of course, I only worked on it for a couple of hours in the afternoons. But I had no hurry, and was able to clean up the gasket surfaces, chase the threads, flush the system, etc. much better than I had ever done before.
In a recent thread I pointed out that the same job on an aging vehicle inherently takes longer. More likelihood of frozen or rusted fasteners, greater chance to damage something else that’s gotten brittle or weak, accumulated grunge in the way, aftermarket parts that almost fit, etc.
This is true even if the person doing the work is as young as ever.
Thanks, LSLGuy, for pointing me to this thread! My last day of work will be December 15th; the countdown is at 63 days. That’s actual calendar time; with two holidays and a couple other days off along the way, there’s at most 41 days of actual work left after today.
On a day like today, sunny and cool, I’ll be able to hop on my bike and ride if I want to. If I’m feeling like a nap in the middle of the day, I won’t have to limit it to my lunch break, because there’ll be lunch but no work to ‘break’ from. And I can get all this work crap that’s been swamping my home desk for the past three and a half years (we’re still all working from home after all this time - long story), and dispose of it however they say is appropriate. Not only will my time be my own, but so will my space. That alone will be huge.
Congratulations! Now you can use that space for your own crap.
I retired before the pandemic, so I never got to work from home, but the best thing is not setting the alarm and being able to read the paper and drink coffee in the morning just as long as I want to. I also got to avoid the commute, though you’re past that.
My husband had a procedure back in June to remove a kidney stone that resulted in a hospital-acquired infection and put him back in the hospital for a week. Not having to worry about juggling that situation around work needs made an already really stressful situation less stressful.
I also got some sort of respiratory virus a couple days after returning from an overseas trip and not having to juggle that around work needs was pretty great too - just stay at home and rest. Win-win, there.
Since this is a countdown thread, my countdown clock is down to 50 days. Fifty days from today, I will log off from work for the last time ever.
It seems unreal, and I’m sure it will continue to seem unreal until I don’t go back to work after Christmas, and then keep on not going back to work for long enough for it to sink in.
It’s an exciting (and kind of scary) time! I found myself getting anxious about how my job would get done when I wasn’t there to do it (if I do say so myself, I was very good at my job). It took time for me to develop some emotional detachment, and after I retired, I was a little at loose ends for a couple of months. During my last year in the job, I dealt with the anxiety by writing up directions in case my replacement was completely new to the job or they hadn’t found someone yet and administration had to do some of my tasks.
And I can get all this work crap that’s been swamping my home desk for the past three and a half years (we’re still all working from home after all this time - long story), and dispose of it however they say is appropriate. Not only will my time be my own, but so will my space. That alone will be huge.