For the last couple of months before retirement I was “repurposed” to backing up and training the two contractors who were hired to replace me (I’d been sole support for over a year). Since I had a bit of time on my hands I came up with this, which sat on my desktop and refreshed every five seconds:
It’s a C# WinForms program that took me all of 45 minutes to write in its initial form; tweaking the interface and adding a .config file which controls the target date, weekends/holidays and refresh rate took perhaps another two hours.
One of my co-workers who had the same retirement date as I made something similar and emailed me a copy. He didn’t have Moons but he had actual time and work time (so weekends and holidays excluded.)
There is one more thing that no one has mentioned in this thread. If you have an appropriate partner at home, retirement can improve your sex life, since you are no longer constrained by your employer’s schedule, and weekends are not spent on catching up on chores and house maintenance. Low stress, improves things.
I talked it over with my husband. I think I’m giving notice of my retirement at the end of this month.
I was stressing over trying to do too many things at once: retire, figure out how to consolidate our assets and produce an income, and move to another state. Instead, we’re going to pay off the small amount remaining on our mortgage, thus freeing up a good chunk of money per month, and that together with Mr. brown’s social security and mine, will permit just me to retire. Mr. brown will keep working and I’ll still be on his health insurance.
After the dust settles on all that, then we can figure out what we want to do about his retirement and our moving. His job is great, the best one he has ever held, and it’s hard to walk away from that. It’s also possible we can move and he can work from home in the new state, for a reduced salary. That part is all up in the air.
But as far as my job is concerned, I’m retiring in about a month. Gulp.
One should not jump into big life changes willy-nilly on a whim. Conversely one does not need to map out every plan and contingency to the umpteenth degree.
It sounds like you and he have done enough noodling & you’re right to act now with the plans you have. Which may develop revisions as you go along. Good.
Another topic/point:
My wife retired from her career a few years ago before we got married. Then she ended up taking multiple part time jobs to be occupied and make ends meet. Then we got married. A few months later she “retired” = quit all those part time medium & medium-low wage jobs.
Now that she’s been truly retired-retired = utterly non-working coming up on a year, I/we can really see the constraints that my continued working puts on me, she, and us. My own eagerness to retire has been amplified by her example of how retired life is treating her and by what I clearly see that my job is doing to foul up our joint life. Despite the fact I like my work & love my paychecks.
Punchline: When you Teela retire, do not be too surprised if your example ends up radically altering your husband’s future trajectory towards retirement himself after a few month’s delay for the reality to sink in for both of you. Which can be a very good thing.
But which also contains a caution:
If your retirement spending plans require him to work another few years, and you’re of similar age or he’s older, I bet this plan will not survive first contact with the enemy = first contact with you being retired for a few months. HIs pressure / desire to retire will override your need / desire for more income for more years.
You retiring is lighting the fuze under that risk. Only you can evaluate how this applies to your situation. But I can suggest from experience that if your circumstances are like mine, then it will be a factor.
We’re flexible on his retiring. If he wants to keep working, great. He is well paid, and the income is welcome. If my retiring speeds up his, that’s fine too.
Today’s discussion triggered a funny aside. He has been working from home since a month or two before the pandemic started. Either the isolation has started to get to him, or the prospect of my being at home all day in his face has made him think of returning to the office. It would be good for him to get among some folks other than me.
I am officially retired as of this weekend. And I see I am not alone, quite a few Dopers seem to be doing the same thing. I shouldn’t be surprised, as I started reading and posting here to kill time at work, soon after the Motley Fool message boards went to all to hell. So much thanks to everyone here for keeping me entertained for all this time.
It actually is working well for me. They told me the day I told them about my impending retirement that they had plans to totally change what I did. They yanked me out of my old team 6 months ago, but I continued to do my old work, because they didn’t know what to do with me. The day I told them, they told me they were taking me from my old work, expecting me to retrain in a couple new analytics platform and make me a dashboard jockey, like the rest of the team they plopped me in. So now, I don’t have enough time to get up to speed and be useful in the role they wanting me to assume and they don’t want me hanging out doing what I’ve been doing. It’s maximum annoyance for management. I told my manager I wasn’t going to quit to suit them, but to suit myself, and that as long as I remain, I’ll do whatever is asked of me. They can’t fire me for non-performance or anything. Who knows? Maybe they’ll offer a buyout.
Do you think the awkward timing was retaliatory or was just bad luck?
Any time you’ve been removed from one team but left in limbo there’s inherently a fuze burning on that situation. It’s going to run out of legs sooner rather than later, but in a slow-moving behemoth organization, “soon” can last a year or more. BTDT.
As you say, not that you greatly care one way or another. Slooowly learning something new that you’ll remain relatively slow and unproductive at doing can certainly be a relaxing no-stress way to sunset, provided you can get and hold the right Zen attitude in your mind.
I’ve been working on that in my job. I find that now I care deeply about the things that are fully in my bailiwick, mildly about the specific events of other’s bailiwicks that I touch in the course of a day, and not in the slightest for the general buffoonery of coworkers, management, and our procedures and practices.
The Big Picture is what it is and I accept it just as I accept gravity. Sometimes it throws up obstacles that I must push through or push aside, but I do that at my careful stolid pace with no emotional content. When we are ready we go. When we get there we get there. Control myself to control my situation. Zen is good.
LOL. In my case, at least, it’s because the company I worked for changed how they were doing things, retirement-wise, about 25 years ago. I’m actually still with them, sort of (a merger, then our division was sold).
I was just reading one of today’s newspaper advice columns, which just happens to be about impending retirement and the length of notice to give - how timely! I was planning on giving two weeks’ notice, just like when you quit. The column says that for retirement, three to six months’ notice is the standard!
It’s not like I’ve retired before, so I didn’t know. Is this a thing? I was going to tell them at the end of this month, and have my last day be at some time in mid-May, but now I’m thinking I should tell them this Monday.
If you read the column I’m thinking of, that person had worked at that employer for over thirty years. I think what’s expected depends on a lot of things - at my job, more than two weeks notice was expected from everyone who retired. Some people gave much less notice * and it was generally perceived as a big middle finger to their bosses and co-workers. But it was a job at a state agency where nearly everyone retires there or transfers to a government agency. In 30 years I can’t think of anyone who resigned who wasn’t either facing termination or moving to another state. At my husband’s job - people give less notice but there is no pension and a lot of people leave before retirement. How are they likely to treat you if you give less notice and how will they treat you if you give a couple of months?
* Including effectively none - we were required to submit a pension application at least two weeks prior to the last day of work but by the time the pension people notified your agency and the news worked it’s way down. your actual manager might find out on Friday that Monday is your last day. Some people gave slightly more notice - they sent the paperwork in on the first day of vacation and set their last day of work as the day they returned.
Rule of thumb I had always heard for retirement was give notice equal to your annual vacation time. 3-6 months is generous and often very possible but far from mandatory. 2 weeks might be short if you’ve been there for an extended period of time. Also if the job has treated you well overall.
In action I’ve seen a full years notice down to several I can’t take this crap any more and draw up my retirement papers.
This is vary highly dependent on your role in the organization and your relationship with your co-workers. It’s not like you’re worried about getting fired or a bad reference.
I was at my last company for 14 years. There were 85 people in the site when I started and 650 when I left. I was in a position that I effectively created and grew and there were a fair number of things that only I knew. Around two years before I retired a new CEO took over and long story short made a fantastic place to work a poor place to work. I had no loyalty to that place. But my boss and his boss and the general manager of the facility were fantastic as were most of my co-workers. I wasn’t going to screw them.
I figured out that I couldn’t retire in November of 2019 and gave them six months notice. This gave them plenty of time to choose a replacement and for me to train them. There was a strategic reason too as it let me max out the 401k matching and collect one more bonus and stock grant.
I think that it’s reasonable to tell them as soon as you know unless that puts you in some kind of peril. Don’t stay on longer just to fulfill a perceived requirements deadline.
