I am probably doing it wrong, but the idea of having lots of projects or scheduled activities is horrifying. Except for travel which needs scheduling, my idea of the ideal day is to wake up with zero idea of what I’ll do today.
Yes I’ll eat, and probably twice, but other than that it’s entirely a day of serendipity and sloth.
Right now GF and I are taking the train to Orlando tomorrow. So we have train tickets, and a hotel for a few days and a rental car too. We don’t know what we’re doing there, we don’t know when we’re coming home, we only know where we’re sleeping starting on Thu.
She’s familiar enough with what’s there that there’s some vague outline of things we might do. Depending on our mood, how late we stay up or get up, whether it’s a rainy or sunny day, etc.
After a couple weeks of unrelenting, grinding bullshit at work (a job that otherwise has been pretty good) I finally filled out all the retirement planning and modeling forms for my financial guy that I had been putting off because I didnt want the associated lecture on the dumb shit I spend money on. But I did it, and I expect what comes out the back end will be a DATE.
That date might be this year (my amateur math indicates that’s a real possibility) and it might be as far out as 2.5 years, but that’s the window.
The two thorniest problems are 1. health insurance until Medicare and 2. our willingness to cut back on certain expenditures (a large remodel project we’ve been kicking around, frequent vacation travel, etc)
I’ve watched the thread for a year or two but now I’ve retired about two weeks ago, having been advised that I’ve got enough money to do it. Two years short of the state pension age, but I can bridge the gap.
I still wake up too early, but that will change as the year wains.
After decades of sleeping in because I did shift work, I am now regularly rising earlier than I have since at least college (maybe even High School) . It is significantly the shift to more leisure time - bird photography is one of my hobbies and that is best started very early in the day, especially if I have to fight traffic to go somewhere specific. Since I am now doing more of that than I used to, my sleep schedule has naturally adjusted.
But that’s the nice thing about being retired. If I have a sudden bout of insomnia I can sleep in from say 5 a.m. to noon and barring an important appointment (and I have relatively few of those) it simply doesn’t matter.
I’ve typed out a couple of responses to this, but I’ll try to summarize them with: yes. We were part of a really wide social group (a dozen or so families that intersected across a bunch of different functions), but I never talked about my job, and only a few in the group knew that retiring that early was even a possibility…it did lead to a bunch of awkward commentary & some “must be nice”-ing. Also some concern! (like, did I have medical issues)
I’m not the only 56-er in this group, by the way! I think there are at least two others.
Yeah, me too. I’m usually up at 4am. But it really doesn’t matter.
My wife and I do keep in ‘sync’. She is usually up by 5am, and that’s when we feed the dogs.
We where gonna retire at 67, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. My wife felt the same way. Every other year is a re-appraisle year for her. It gets cuckoo-nutty (70-80 hour work weeks). So she retired as well.
I retired at 58 and there was no awkwardness nor did it affect relationships in any way - but being able to retire younger than 65 is also very common in my social group and family and that might be part of the reason. By coincidence, a lot of them work(ed) for employers with pensions that allow early retirement ranging from after 20 years service at any age (so they can retire in their 40s) to 62
I hung on till just shy of when I was going to have to start pulling money out of my retirement funds. No impact on relationships, but then I’m a petty much hermit (and I can’t stand the hermit in the next cave over).
I was laid off in November 2024. I looked for employment for a while, but have given up recently.
I got generous severance (which I delayed until 2025)
I met with finance folks and finally transferred my 401(k) into my IRA (which I started from the 401(k) from my previous job) It looks like it will be financially viable to retire. but for some reason I have trouble claiming I am 100% retired. I’m not looking for a job either.
I was most worried about health care (I’m almost 60), but since my official income is lowish, the marketplace isn’t too bad (officially starts June 1). (I took COBRA in 2025 as my income was technically high from severance and selling company stock and I continued it due to inertia)
Just before I retired, the best thing was looking at deadlines and meeting notices and saying to myself “doesn’t apply to me. I’ll be gone before then.” Even better than high school, because not everyone is retiring at the same time and no summer job and college to worry about.
As for your question, no issues at all. Everyone was either heading to retirement or was working after retirement because they wanted to. One friend was teaching second grade one or two days a week, and I was able to come in and teach science once a month to her class. So much freedom!
