I know! I retired before Summerfest (Milwaukee festival with many stages), planning to go every day and see ALL the bands. Oops, rescheduled for fall, oops, cancelled til next summer, oops, now it’s September.
And I’d told people that I was retiring to spend quality time at my local tavern (with no cable, it’s where I watch sports). It closed down, and just reopened but ohhhh, it’s a petri dish of maskless (and clueless) old guys yelling at the TVs.
Also had two trips planned (a tiny island in the Caribbean, and one off the Calais coast)…
I find that difficult to believe. If you are in your late sixties with a history of high salaries but currently a low-paying job and lousy insurance, maybe Social Security will be equal to your current take home salary, and Medicaid covers the insurance.
Short of that, every $1000 you save by working another year is $2500 you will have in 20 years (assume 5% growth). That $1000 comes not only from investing it, but also from not withdrawing it because you are retired.
That is different from “won’t make a bit of difference in the long run”
And more specifically, she could have said “Sure, if you work for one more year, your wife only needs to work one more year instead of 3 to 5 more”. But she didn’t say that either.
Then the pandemic hit. Oh my God, I’m glad i didn’t retire. My social life collapsed in ashes. All my travel plans were cancelled. I continued to enjoy my job (easily done from home) and the social interaction it brought me.
Then my employer offered a really generous early retirement offer… But i’d already sweated over what i wanted to do, and decided to continue working. I find that if i don’t have deadlines and constraints, i don’t get much done. So I’m getting more of my hobbies, etc. done now than i would have had i tried fully.
I do find that my energy level is decreasing, and I’ll probably want to retire in a few more years. But right now i remain delighted to have a (part time) job.
I read it the same way. Then thought about it and realized that it likely was somewhat misleading. In almost every situation, you get significant additional income in the long run if you keep working. The advisor should quantify it, and let you make the call of additional vs. time. This advisor implied =0, which is not accurate.
I’ll do my best, but I really recommend looking up one of the free volunteer services that explains it all for you.
You must sign up for Park A when you are 65 (any time during the year, I believe) or you’ll be subject to added costs or something. You can sign up for Part B any time, might as well do it at the same time, it doesn’t cost you anything. A and B cover hospital stays and doctor’s office visits, subject to limitations, and a 20% co-pay by you.
The rest can be pretty complicated. Part D is for prescriptions, and will (probably?) be part of your supplemental insurance. I have Part F, which I think covers Part D and some other stuff, but I don’t remember exactly. What exactly you get for any of these other Parts (not A or B) depends on your supplemental insurance company. You don’t need to worry about any of the stuff in this paragraph until you are no longer covered by your company’s health plan.
Medicare Advantage is like a very strict HMO, everything that they are going to cover must come from their providers: doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, physical therapy, everything. You might be able to get more this way, depending on the company providing it, such as dental and vision coverage, but I have no idea how good this coverage is or might be, or how good their providers are, or how long you might have to wait to see a specialist (for just some examples).
The bottom line is that, for everything not provided by Medicare that is provided by a 3rd party supplemental insurance, you really need to do your research to find out what works best for you. And then every year, decide whether you are going to tune out the clamoring advertisements from other companies trying to get your business.
I think that’s trivially true, but an important question is whether you NEED the additional income. In my case, I started considering retiring after I took an extended absence to take care of an elderly relative. I ran some numbers and found that, given some fairly conservative estimates about living expenses, medical care, etc, if I lived to be 105, I would die with a fairly large amount of money in the bank. So why should I keep working, just to end up with an even larger amount of money in the bank when I die?
I was working at SSA, and could have retired at 55 (in 2007) and taken an immediate pension with full lifetime health coverage; they had been offering me early retirement for several years, but there was no way I could have lived on the reduced pension amount in Chicago. After my wife died in 2004 I met someone in North Carolina online and started visiting her on a regular basis. I realized that if I sold my house in Chicago and moved to NC my living costs would be lower. So in 2006 I took the early retirement offer and relocated.
Since then, I have bought a house here and completely paid it off. Health issues notwithstanding I’m enjoying my retirement, and don’t regret the decision.
We’re planning conservatively, so we’re planning to fund retirement to age 100. I doubt I’ll ever see that, but it’s better than planning to 90, living to 97, and back to work flipping burgers at McDonald’s for 7 years. While trying not to drool on them.
I’m not knocking McDonald’s. I worked there five years in high school and college, and learned many valuable skills I still use today.
So yeah if 100 and I retire at 65 then I have to fund 35 years.
After 25 years as a direct report to the owner/founder of the company, when he stepped aside & gave control to his kids who I simply didn’t respect & who apparently had no regard for me, I left. Nightmares & damage to my health from stress was bad. They moved my office an hour from my home for no good reason, cutting 2 hours a day out of my life. Noy even a pay differential. I told them move me back close to home & I will train my replacement in a job I’d invented. It worked out.
I too am thinking of what to do during retirement. Travel, of course, but what else? I was thinking of starting voice lessons because I enjoy singing. A friend of mine advised to not have a list of new things to start and do, because I might be set in my ways and never do them.
So I actually started my voice lessons yesterday.
If I have grandkids, I’d love to be their nanny / Grampy! Save the kids some child care costs and enjoy the new young’uns. Spoil them and make my kids jealous because I could never spoil them when I was young and broke!
But my three kids, they’re not cooperating yet. What’s wrong with dem bums??
I’m sorry to learn of your event and am glad to hear you were pretty well prepared, fiscally and logistically, for it. As much as possible anyway, so it appears.
As for a mortgage my wife and I are beginning to think we may never pay off the house. Or maybe we’ll pay it off in our retirement. When we can refi at low rates, 2-3%, then why pay that off when we can put the money in an index fund tracking the market at higher rates, 5-6+%?
Health coverage, though, that’s the big question for us.
I was hoping for the same thing, and even volunteered, but the layoffs didn’t come until a year after I left. And they probably would have kept me on just to be spiteful.
