It will be just like life before you started the retirement countdown. I started mine at 60, expecting to retire at 65, but beat my goal. If you stay active, you’ll find you’ll have all sorts of other short term goals and countdowns, if you wish. And time does fly. It’s been six years for me, longer than my countdown, but hardly seems that long.
Enjoy the day and congratulations!
Thanks, @Dag_Otto!
Today is Day One. Just got back from an hour at the gym. Not much else going on today. 
mmm
You’re doing it wrong. You should still be in bed! 
Enjoy MMM, and congratulations!
I gave notice today that I intend to retire in August. Financial planner said yesterday that I could retire at any time.
StG
Yaay! Welcome to the impending retirees club!
Good for you! I’m enjoying the heck out of mine (and on the rare bad days, all I have to do is think about how much more they would suck if I also still had to go to work).
I was holding off on pulling the trigger on retiring until my firm’s profit-sharing deposits dropped into my 401(k), which was due to happen sometime this spring.
I saw this morning that they just dropped. I can retire any time now, but I’m freezing up and feeling a bit panicky. There’s so much to do - talk to Schwab about setting up Intelligent Income, nagging Mr. brown to roll over a prior 401(k) to Schwab, having him decide if he wants to retire too or keep working, start shopping for a new house in a different state - it’s overwhelming me.
Build a checklist and prioritize.
Though I would say get the 401k roll-over done first.
The House decision can wait and waits on other decisions I’m sure.
This is great news. Now you have freedom! And this new freedom comes with some choices and that’s understandably overwhelming and scary.
Maybe not. Depending the ages of the people involved and the nature of the 401k, you may not want to roll it over yet.
You can always roll it from a 401K to a pre-tax IRRA. I did mine at 53 or 54. All of my various 401Ks are in a single self-directed IRRA and it is far, far better.
My countdown to retirement:
#!/bin/bash
RET=$(date -d “April 16 2024 17:00” +%s)
while true
do
ll=$((RET - (date +%s)))
days=((ll/3600/24))
rem=(($ll - days*3600*24))
hrs=((rem/3600))
printf “%8s %4s %2s \r” $ll $days $hrs
sleep 1
done
That sounds pretty normal. Create a list, start checking things off as you go. Keep going to work until you are halfway or more through that list. But don’t delay and not enjoy the freedom.
If you are retiring between 55 and 59.5, you can access your most recent/current 401k without penalty. If you roll it over, you can’t do that.
I think we’re somehow talking about different things. I consolidated 4 or 5 different 401Ks into a single IRRA. No tax hit, I never touched the money. Everything was fund to fund.
I’m probably using the wrong term, but I’ve always heard that called a Roll-Over. You can do that going from Job to Job also. Just make sure the money never goes to you but fund to fund.
Maybe. I agree that it’s a good idea to have all of your old 401k accounts moved into one common place.
There’s a difference between rolling over money from one job’s 401K plan into a new job’s 401K plan and rolling them over into an IRRA. If you transfer the funds from Job A’s 401K to Job B’s 401K, then you can access all of those funds when you turn 55 without paying a penalty when you leave Job B… If you leave the funds in two separate 401Ks, or transfer Job A’s 401K to an IRRA, you can’t withdraw those funds between 55 and 59.5 without a penalty unless you transfer Job A’s 401K to an IRRA and then transfer the funds in the IRRA into Job B’s 401K before leaving Job B.
An advantage of rolling over the 401Ks is that you have more investment options. A possible disadvantage is that the fees might be higher - you need to check for that.