So my employer made me self quarantine for 10 days (I’m not sick).
Been sit’n at the house going absolutely stir crazy. I’m actually jonesing to get back to work now. It’s left me thinking at 50 years old: I don’t want to retire.
Of course, 15 years from now when I actually do retire, It’s entirely likely I’ll look back on this thread and laugh.
I got bored. I actually showed up at work on my own at the beginning of May. LOL
I was that way up to about a year before I retired. I got over it.
I’m still in that phase. Financially, I could have retired 5 years ago. I had a thought of retiring this year, but with the current situation, having work as a way to pass the days isn’t so bad. My boss would keep me on forever, if he could.
Sitting at home quarantined is a lot different from being retired. Being retired means you can do what you what, when you want. I do not understand people who complain they would be bored if they retired.
Going to work five days a week is a pretty big portion of your life. When you suddenly remove that from your schedule, you find you have a lot more time on your hands than you have any activities planned for.
I think its an old people thing. I saw it with my parents they had no idea how to fill their day’s when they retired. I think when you’re younger you have hobbies and as you age they go away so you’re left with nothing in your life but family and work so losing work is scary.
I’m in my late 30s and if I could afford to retire tomorrow I would. I may pick up a retirement job distilling for fun and profit but just working on stuff around the house, fishing, reading could easily keep me occupied 60-80 hours per week. Heck I could get my workshop straight and build up my woodworking and smithing skills. and that could be 80 hours a week just there. Of course, the other trick is being able to afford hobbies since I could blow $1000/month on hobbies if I had time, retiring without the money to do that scares me.
I took an early retirement offer a couple of years ago from a major Automotive Audio supplier. Was given a chunk of money but had to agree that I would not work for a competitor for a year. The first 6 months was great, went places and did things. Then I got bored and was itching to get back to work but everywhere I interviewed said I would leave once I was able to go work for my companies competitors. I ended up doing Uber and Lyft just to get out of the house a meet new people every day.
A year to the day I got a job offer but not from a competitor, I got one from my former customer. Plan on staying here until I keel over at my keyboard.
Do you like your job? That makes a big difference. I’m reasonably good at mine, even veering into minor guru status at this point after decades there and I take a certain modest amount of pride in doing it well when I’m there. But I don’t enjoy it. It’s just an unfortunate necessity if I’m going to be a functioning adult.
Nah, I’m looking forward to retiring and have been for a few years. The impulse might fade slightly once I actually hit the age where I can retire. At that point some of pressure is off as I no longer will be as concerned with upper management bullshit knowing I can walk whenever. But if I stick around any longer than I am absolutely mandated to it will purely be for financial reasons, not any desire to continue to work.
I’m 62. I can’t wait to retire.
This. I retired in 2016 and have had no trouble at all filling in those extra 50 hours a week (including commute time) I sudden;y freed yup.
I had the alarm set for 3am since my shift started at 5am (someone has to take care of the east coasters). For about two months after I retired I kept the alarm on just so it would go off, I would say, “I don’t have to go to work today!” [whap] and fall back asleep. It felt great.
Not particularly, no. Lol
I’ve only worked for this company for so long because I really dig the compressed work schedule which give me 3 or 4 days off a week. (Yes, I see the irony in this post)
Also dig the benefits. But the job itself is meh…
My plan was always to retire right after I turned 65. So, I took a month’s worth of vacation right after my birthday and then gave my 2 week notice.
In a little over a year since, I’ve never been anywhere near as bored as I was at the job, never for one second considered going back to work.
I am in the processes of retiring - for me that simply means quitting my job and starting to pull money from my 401k/IRAs.
I have no problem wanting to retire. My work does not provide structure, stability, or a social environment. I am (was) a traveling consultant, so it’s all temporary project work at locations away from home. The work itself is mildly satisfying, if the stars align just right. But that is not consistent.
I am quite certain I would feel different if I had a job where I went into the office every day, and went to lunch with my office buddies - and maybe golfed with them on weekends - but that is not to be.
I have always had plans to get involved in a number of pursuits when I retire (I still do - DAMN YOU COVID LOCKDOWN!) However, I do find that my general energy/motivation/focus level is declining, which is like a new hurdle I have to overcome (FFS!) in order to get active in my interests.
Work just took up too goddam much of my time and I was looking forward to retirement for at least 15 years prior to actually doing it (which I did in March). Retirement is indeed great and I wish I could have done it when I was 35.
Both my parents thought they would want to work until 67 or so for a long time, but once they hit 64, they shifted pretty quickly to wanting to retire at 65. I think they felt their age more than they expected, despite being in good health, and working just lost its appeal. Neither ever looked back.
I rant about this all the time, but as a teacher I get really annoyed at this repeating situation: someone respected, like a department chair or the Grand Old Man of a school, declares they are going to retire in 3 years. They dump all of their responsibilities onto others, to ease the transitions. That’s fine. They refuse to learn new technology or procedures, because they are leaving. Fine. Then, when they time comes, they don’t retire. They are amazed at their health, at how much they like their job. But the reason they like their job is they have off-loaded everything they hated. Some other teacher is now doing their job, while they keep their title and privileges. They serve on important committees, but just show up. Eventually, the person they “trained” to take their job leaves, because you can’t spend years waiting for it.
I swear, I have seen this at least 3 times. In all three cases, the person that wouldn’t retire was someone I liked and respected, but I found the behavior problematic.
I wonder how much of that comes from devoting so much effort to raising children that everything else gets left out.
I’m in my late 30s and five years ago I daydreamed about retiring early and exploring all my hobbies. Now, with two small children, I have time for so few of those hobbies. In a good week I might get 4-6 hours of time that isn’t already earmarked for work, child-rearing, sleep, or household management. I still have some hobbies, but others are likely going to have to wait another 5-10 years for me to take up again.
Maybe I’ll just lose interest in them after that long? I hope not.
I’m in the exact same boat. I worry a bit too that it may happen to me.
Did I go through a “I don’t want to retire” phase? Hell, no. Not before nor since. Looking back I should have retired earlier than I did (58). And if you can’t find ways to pleasingly fill your days (even on a rainy day on January) - well, you’re not trying hard enough.
j
BTW: I quite liked my job. But I prefer not doing it.
Like any job, my job has frustrating aspects and satisfying aspects. Years ago, when I was a young engineer, I was a key part of a big proposal (I had up to date domain knowledge because I was right out of school). I was called into a meeting with the proposal manager and some of the team, and one guy I didn’t know. The proposal manager briefed him on our proposal, then he asked a handful of questions about the elements of the proposal, for which none of our team had any answers. He then remarked that it looked like we had a bit of work left to do, and left. I turned to the proposal manager and said “I want his job!”. I am now, effectively, that guy for my organization. So why retire?