When my wife died in 2004 I was 51. As a Federal employee I was eligible for retirement at 55, but they had been offering early retirement for several years. While dealing with my wife’s death I also started to realize that I was fed up with the way things had been going at work, so I started looking at the financial aspects of taking early retirement. Without going into all the details, I figured out that by selling my house in Chicago and moving to North Carolina I could afford to live on the pension that I’d be receiving when I turned 54. So I took the plunge, and haven’t regretted it for a moment.
I’m 67 and haven’t retired yet. I guess I’m like a lot of people in my age category that haven’t retired we think we’ll run out of money before we die. My wife is retired and on pension now so I may change my mind.
(and my supervisor has told me point blank that they’re in no rush to see me retire which is admittedly quite flattering)
No reason, unless you’d rather be doing something else. Me, I’d rather be doing just about anything else that is non-job related 
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Not that I want a different job - I have a good one and don’t hate it. But I just flat-out don’t like working for a living. I’d rather be sitting around the apartment and doing whatever I want whenever I want.
I’m fundamentally a lazy soul who really doesn’t enjoy “being busy” or “having something to do.” For people of a different temperament I totally get the appeal. A former supervisor of mine used to pull 60-70 hour weeks, including many unpaid weekends, because that was just the way he was built. He loved working. On retirement after 37 years at his job he promptly went in to consulting for another decade.
But that’s just not for me. I just want to lie around in a sunny spot all day like my cat ;).
I’ve been retired four years, and I haven’t even had one day when I wished I had to go to work. I made a list of all the things I wanted to do after I retired, and I’m still working on it.
I’m volunteering for a local club and for a conference, both of which are fun. I’m writing. I’m catching up on my thousands of unread books, and updating my book database. I’m writing a column every two months. I can also read the classics I didn’t have time for. I just finished the Decameron, and I made it all the way through Ulysses.
Plus I can waste time - like I’m doing now - without feeling guilty. I’d watch more TV but don’t have the time.
Plus I can get up late and stay up late whenever I want.
My job as a university involved three things. Teaching, research, and committee work. I really enjoyed teaching, but marking papers was infinitely boring. Research was a real joy and what I lived for. Committee work, feh. As I approached my 63rd birthday, my employer made an offer I could not refuse: A pension as though I was 65, 3/4 of my salary between then and 65 with no duties, and most important, giving me the pension at the old actuarial rate that had not been updated to reflect current life expectancies especially for professors. So I took my money and ran. I have actually done a bit of teaching gratis, but my main activity has been in research. I actually have 30 publications since the year I retired (out of 106 lifetime). I have also acted as technical editor for an online journal I helped found. And I read a lot. Mainly science fiction and science fact.
I’m 62 and work in academia. I love my job. I spent decades honing my skills to perform it. I’d be bored as shit if I retired. Every summer, I can’t wait for the new Fall semester to begin. I’ll probably die in the middle of a lecture with a piece of chalk in my hand, scrawling a jagged diagonal toward the floor as my body expires.
(not really; we don’t use chalk anymore. But a dry erase marker doesn’t have the same charm.)
Instead of retiring, I started making money off my hobby, and became a full-time artist. Now I don’t ever have to retire, as long as I can still do my art.
I retired at 57 with 37 years of federal service. Within a year, I was bored out of my tree and began a series of temp and part-time jobs, and when I was almost 61, I took a full-time position. When that job turned out to be more idleness than actual work, I found another full-time gig where I was kept busy and I stayed there till the month before I turned 66. I’ve now been re-retired for 8 months, and I’m pretty sure it’ll stick this time. Between caring for my granddaughter and doing stuff around the house, I’m occupied and happy overall. And I expect it’ll get better when the plague passes and we can travel again. We shall see.
I am greatly anticipating retirement, which should happen in about two years. I love the patient care aspect of my job (I’m a primary care physician), but the associated bureaucracy involved in doing that job has become more and more burdensome over time. I’m more of a data entry specialist than a physician these days and I’m sick of it.
I may come back after officially retiring as a high priced consultant, or not. We’ll see. I’ve got lots of other things I like to do, including hobbies I’ve let lie fallow because work has kept me too busy.
“A fundamentally lazy soul“
That’s me. I can just be in the moment without feeling the need to be busy.
I’m not a crafter and to be female and not do some kind of craft well they want to try and revoke your woman card. Sorry not sorry. I’m sure there are no 
In my post retirement future.
Just retired. Unfortunately, I retired so I could travel (to visit far-flung friends), and hang out in pubs (to watch sports).
Oops.
So Plan B is, sit on my porch with a tiki drink and a stack of comics. Instead of visiting friends I’m waving at the neighbors. Thoroughly enjoying it.
No. Absolutely not.
The thought of retirement, 20 years ago, was like a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel. It was the only thing that kept me going at times. I had been told that I’d miss work but that hasn’t happened yet.
I liked my work. The responsibilities were varied and I had tons of flexibility. But I had a lot of responsibilities and they were relentless. I didn’t have any meaningful time off for 30 years straight. I took vacations, the longest being 10 days - but I was on call all the time, dealing with crises and putting out fires and it made it hard to really relax. I retired at the first possible opportunity.
Pre-pandemic, I always imagined I’d be someone who have a hard time retiring. Because I’ve been working for almost 30 years. What would I do with myself?
But now that I’ve been working from home for the past five months, I have come to the realization that I’m much more adaptable than I think. Pre-pandemic I never worked from home. I figured I’d hate it and that I wouldn’t get anything done. But I love working from home. So I think I will love being retired too.
My latest possible retirement date is set by law at about 3 years from now. I’m old enough and money comfy enough I could retire tomorrow, albeit at more long-term financial risk than waiting (and earning during) the full 3 years. I don’t have much pension, so it’s all about managing my investments while slowly eating through them. Starting 3 years later with a bigger pot makes a surprising difference.
I enjoy the work itself. It’s familiar, yet always different, and I have a sense of mastery at it. So the intrinsic rewards are there. Extrinsically it pays pretty well.
I love the fact it amounts to a part time job. The fact it’s part-time means it influences my life; it doesn’t dominate it. In a prior life as a 60h/week IT guy work didn’t dominate my life; it was my life. That didst sucketh greatly and if I was still in that boat I’d be counting the minutes until retirement.
A couple days work per week suits me very well. And, but for that law, I could easily see doing that same gig at that same part-time rate for a few years after that mandatory date. Alas such is not to be.
I’ve been home since April for COVID. In that time I’ve hardly left the house except for weekly groc runs & walks around the neighborhood. As a rehearsal for a fun retirement of carefree travel and adventure this has been a disaster: a both depressive and depressing experience. And, except for SDMB, far too solitary and boring.
I would hate to think my post-work life would be like that.
Bottom line: Pre-COVID I was practicing semi retirement and liked it a lot. Post-COVID I'm practicing temporary full retirement and it has sucked. Next month I go back to part time work and we'll see how the job & at-work satisfaction has changed. I/we had built all our daily life and retirement expectations around extensive travel and extensive time out in public. COVID may completely upend that; too soon to know.
I retired early, I was sitting at my desk one day and realised I didn’t want to be working any more, I was financially secure enough that I didn’t need to be working any more so I went to my boss and gave notice and that was that
I haven’t regretted it for a second
I loved my job and I was good at it. But management changes (the boss gave way to his dumb-ass kids) made it a chore. My thing was what will I do when the big check doesn’t show up in my account every 2 weeks. But when I started having nightmares and constant anxiety about those people I was trying to work for, I got out. Took a few small jobs, PT, but they didn’t work out for one reason or another, so now I just don’t work anymore.
But my brother (just turned 60) is staying on for one more annual retention check, as he said last year and the year before. He doesn’t need to be working and as health and safety manager for an international company in times of COVID, he’s eating himself alive.
My sister, same boat. Sold a property she’d paid 150 for 25 years ago for 900. Moved to another state with a cheaper COL., but she’s working and being tempted by their 5 year offer of fully paid Med sup. She’s 64. Arggh. Pull the plug!!!
I work at a job that I love and I can take all the time off I want. Retire? Not on your life! I’m 63 and I’ll keep going as long as they will let me!
I’m 59 and do not plan on retiring for a long time. I’ve been doing my job for 30 years. It’s an easy job and a job that I don’t take home with me.
I need a place to go every day. Sitting at home is nice for a week or so, but I couldn’t take a steady diet of it. It’s not like we’ll be going on exotic trips every day during retirement. Most of the time will be spent at home.
I know a few people that retired and within a year went out and found another job.
know a few people that retired and within a year went out and found another job.
That’s what happened to the “old” guys at my employer. They officially retired as FT workers at 62- 65 but our employer offered all of them PT positions with no loss of PTO. They all work maybe 2-4 days a week now and can take their PTO whenever. Part of it I think was to make sure they had people for those positions since there is relatively little new younger blood coming in. The insurance pays for their Medicare Part B. The work is physical but not overly demanding for them. Plus these are gusys who are used to being active much of the time. If they retired fully, they’d be the type to drive their wives nuts.
I often think of retiring early myself because of a few physical issues which have interfered with my job in the past. But I know that, from past experience, having the actual time off either because of an injury or PTO can be a time bomb. Part of it, as someone upthread mentioned, is that you spend SO much time at work that you have very little time to develop and/or maintain hobbies and such. At some point you tend to give up on all that just to get some sleep, LOL. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve attempted to revive an interest/project “because I have all this time off” without success because whatever energy I had was spent OTJ. Whatever free time I’ve had is spent either sleeping, zoning out, eating, or taking care of the dogs,
I’ve known people, ans still know people whose entire lives have revolved around their jobs because they have nothing else. They’re the ones who have the most trouble in retirement because without that structure they’re utterly lost.