In ref to my own comment two above, that’s all true provided you’re not scrimping for money. Working part-time or even full time at lesser job(s) to make ends meet isn’t retirement. That’s just being an increasingly elderly worker. A fate best avoided if you can. Don’t need rich, just need enough to be quietly content.
I think that is the best expression of the idea I’ve ever read. Thank you.
Italics mine.
If you’re the driver, why the “couple years” rather than “couple hours”? Serious question; I’m not trying to be snarky. It’s hard for each of us to learn to recognize when the hard-working “loyalty to others over loyalty to self” habits of a lifetime have taken over our decision-making. To our detriment.
As a preacher friend often closes his sermons: “It’s something to think about.”
I retired in March 2023. I volunteered exactly once since then. It was fine, the organization does good stuff, but I just haven’t had a strong urge to do it again yet. I probably will, but if not, I am not going to feel bad about it.
I retired July 1, 2022, so coming up on almost 2 years now. And I have absolutely no desire to return to work in any form at this time. My old organization is collapsing in chaos and the consequences of bad politics and bureaucratic lockup, and all I can feel is sorrow for the patients who have suffered and will suffer further, and relief that I saw the writing on the wall, tried to initiate change, then left when I did.
I’m not busy and I love that. Getting up when I want, walking the dog, enjoying my coffee, and reading/netsurfing/taking walks/cooking is a satisfactory life for me.
Since I retired, I’ve been doing volunteer work on town and church committees. Partially that’s because they are chronically desperate, and partially because I’ve been meeting a lot of nice local people doing it. Also, I do like giving back to both, and keeping some part of the executive function of my brain occupied.
I’ve enjoyed most of it, though chairing the town finance committee ended up being more work than I really wanted. (ETA I should also mention that I really, really did not enjoy the part of New England town government where your email address is available to citizens, and they use it in anger) But I also enjoyed the puzzle of digging in to fully understand how the finances of my town work, and being able to basically ask any question I wanted.
Still, I expect to taper off on everything but the church activity in the next couple of years.
I agree about work - that’s not retirement. But not about volunteering. I’ve been volunteering on the Steering Committee of a big conference in my field which I also did while I worked. They pay my expenses to go to the conference and touch base with all my old friends in my field. I volunteer as Web and Zoom Master for a local writer’s group, which is fun since it helps the little old ladies have a social life, especially during the lockdown.
I wouldn’t let it run my life, but it is satisfying. Anyhow I love being busy.
I think whether volunteering is like work depends a lot on the volunteering. There are some types that are very much like work and involve showing up on schedule, for example, walking dogs at an animal shelter. Others are not so rigid - if maintain a flower bed at the local park , it’s much more flexible in terms of when I weed and for how long. I won’t do the first type - part of the reason I retired was because I didn’t want that kind of schedule.
Exactly. I volunteer as a tax preparer during tax season. We (a group of five this year) work our tails off for about a 10 week stretch from February through April. It’s a rigid schedule (3 days a week, and perhaps more depending on the workload), and it’s a lot of pressure. But we know it will be over come April 15. Plus, it’s a really valuable service and we are greatly appreciated by our clients.
Because at this point the benefits are still greater than the annoyances (connections with this group have benefited the other group I volunteer for, for example). It’s just that I have discovered I don’t really enjoy the type of work they need me to do anymore. That’s not their fault. And they’re fine with me doing it at my own pace, too, which for this type of work is pretty unusual. They did offer to pay me, but that’s a hell no, because that would certainly eliminate the ‘at my own pace’ part of it.
I thought about starting a new thread about this, but on second thought maybe I had better put it in this retirement thread, as it has to do with Medicare and Medigap.
I take an expensive prescription, and Medicare/Medigap didn’t cover it. Since I retired, I’ve had to use GoodRX to take the cost down from $575 to $130. But today when I went in to pick it up and offered the GoodRX phone coupon, the pharmacist informed me that my insurance is now covering it. My co-pay is $140, close enough to the GoodRX discount.
There’s another prescription which I used to take but which my old insurance and then Medicare/Medigap wouldn’t cover: Xiidra. I stopped taking it because I couldn’t afford the $750 a month it would cost me. After today’s experience, I looked it up and it looks like M/M will now cover it, with my share being $100 a month.
I should have asked the pharmacist, but didn’t. Is this the result of Biden making it possible for Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices?
No idea, but your pharmacist is always a great, usually the best source for information is detailed and complex.
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After today’s experience, I looked it up and it looks like M/M will now cover it, with my share being $100 a month.
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Off the seat of my pants, it might be that you’ve moved into a different column with your MC part D drug plan, deductible vs post deductible, vs donut hole. You can look up your specific drug plan and prices with this GoodRx tool.
I don’t know - for some reason, I thought the negotiation-possible meds were a comparatively short list, but I may be quite wrong.
It’s also possible that the insurer’s formulary may have changed.
How have those medications worked with the whole donut hole scenario? Do they count at all? or are they ignored since they are not covered? (well, past tense, but you get my drift).
Medigap doesn’t cover drugs, but your Part D plan does. Look up the formulary for the drug on your provider’s web site. There are also complex changes in the amount covered depending on how much you’ve paid so far this year. I’ve been lucky in using inexpensive drugs so I’ve never really studied the details. I do use GoodRX (and Costco) for something my Plan D does not cover.
I mentioned this in the Medicare thread but: if you are on a high-deductibe plan and contributing to an HSA, you cannot sign up for Medicare, even part A. If you DO contribute to the HSA, you have to withdraw the contributions (and thus take them as income), or you face a fairly nasty tax penalty.
For me, the potential cost savings of having Part A as secondary (basically, it might cover some of the deductible, if I’m hospitalized before the deductible is met) is not worth the 4K or so we could put aside in the HSA. I think if I were hospitalized AFTER my deductible was met, Part A might cover my copay, which would not be a lot.
Of course, having said this, I’m sure I’ll need an appendectomy or something on January 2 of next year.
But in any case, anyone in an analogous situation will need to do some planning before signing up for Medicare. Apparently, if you are older than 65, your coverage gets backdated up to 6 months - so it’s not just a matter of signing up in September and turning off your HSA that month, you need to turn it off in March (or, withdraw 6 months of contributions and take them as taxable income).
Hah - rereading, and I already posted about this a couple months back. It’s definitely a conundrum. We may rethink the HDHP next year. My husband is talking about going to the end of the year in which he turns 67, which would be late 2026. I’m mentally targeting age 66, but may go longer if the project is still ongoing and I feel like it. So we might want to go back to a non-HDHP plan, after next year at least.
Haha. I’ve tried interpreting a formulary before, but not having a Ph.D. in insurance-ese I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
In the current situation, I resigned myself to calling my Part D company (Aetna Silverscript) and eventually got someone who eventually tracked down my question of how much this drug would cost me nowadays.
Sorry that happened. At least you can change your part D plan during open enrollment every fall.
Your state SHIP will have trained, free advisors to help you plug all your drugs into a search engine that will find the drug plan for the upcoming year that will be best for you. It figures out the formulary and its $$ implications so you don’t have to. Lots of people change plans yearly to juggle getting the best coverage for what they need.
I got a text last week from my old boss, saying she’s done, leaving the company and retiring. She’s a director, but can’t take the corporate BS anymore. We met for lunch and while we were eating, she got a text offering her a new job with people she’s worked for and liked, making more money. guess retirement will wait.
While we were talking about it, I started to say, “If you need a good data person who can work from home, you know where I am.”, But then I stopped myself and said no, I really didn’t want to go back to work. I don’t need the money, and I shouldn’t feel like I have to work. I’m done with that.
I understand completely. I miss data. I don’t miss the omnipresent corporate BS that seems to be in every company. The last SAP conversion nearly killed me, and I realized that I can’t keep up with all the new platforms, the inclusion of AI, etc.