Since my wife is a writer, and doesn’t have her own health coverage, my retirement date was set as when my COBRA package which covered her would last until she hit Medicare age. Turns out they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse and I stayed 5 months longer than planned.
We figured out how much we were spending and figured out we had enough to last forever, and a Monte Carlo analysis my financial planner did confirmed that. So I could have retired earlier, and health insurance was the deciding factor.
A little over a year and a half ago.
The timing was good financially (bonus, great pension, thirty years of sick leave converted to health account). But also, without realizing it, I got out just in time. We’d been telling TPTB for decades that we could NOT teach illustration and design remotely. Well, weeks after I retired, the administration of the school said “As of Monday, you will all teach the rest of this semester online (with no training or help).” And of course, they’re still doing it. Four other teachers (a third of our department) retired or took a leave of absence.
I wanted to go out at the top of my game. Maybe that’s not a consideration for some occupations, but I believe it is for teaching, which, if you’re doing it right, requires a lot of energy. I didn’t want to be that teacher who can’t remember where her classroom is (true story) or who couldn’t grasp that her students didn’t remember 9/11 because they weren’t born yet. (I taught history.)
My plan was to move closer to my adult kids and continue working, this time in a field that had 40-hour workweeks instead of the 60+ I was putting in. Then my vision issues came crashing down, and that was it for working, which I miss.
I did have lengthy consultations with my financial advisor before making the big decision, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking, OP. Make sure your retirement plan includes goals and hobbies. I used to dream of waking up and thinking, “Hmm, what shall I do today?” But that gets old fast. The happiest retired people I know have passions to pursue.
Absolutely true. If you conservatively (assuming some bad market years) can live to 105 on a budget that absolutely allows you to do everything you may want to do, then there is no reason to work more.
But…
If you want your spouse to retire in 1 year instead of 3 to 5, then you have to work for another year or two. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that, but that appears to be what the advisor in question was saying.
Or if you want to make a significant donation to a cause you care about, you can work for another year and give most of your income to that cause.
Or if you decide that the year after you retire, you want to take your extended family on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, you can work for another year to make it happen.
Again, the advisor in question seemed to be implying otherwise, and I say she was not accurate.
Amen! It scared me the day I couldn’t come up with a word, and since I was brutally honest with my students, I played it up: “If you look at the… damn, I’m old. I canNOT come up with that word for that… that…big black thing… not you, Malik, the… the BLACKBOARD! Damn, first the knees go, then the nouns.”
Right then, I knew my days were numbered…
And I know what you mean about it taking energy… I was the fun teacher, always “ON”. It was like six hours of doing standup, or being a talk show host.
ps, I did make the offer to my wife that if I worked longer, she could retire earlier, but she said she wanted to keep working, and I’d be missing out on X number of pension payments. And nothing’s better than being retired AND you’ve got the house to yourself during the day. Ahhhh…
Yep! I used to say, “Three shows daily!” (We were on a block schedule.) I was always “on,” too. How can you expect kids to get excited about subject matter if you, the teacher, are not?
I bet you were a great teacher.
After surviving multiple rounds of layoffs over the past decade, I was given early retirement a couple of years ago at 55 when the company closed our local development office and laid off over 100 engineers and software developers. The writing had been on the wall for years as the company’s attempt to centralize management led to increasingly bizarre and counterproductive decisions. So I was happy to get out, and the deal was more than generous.
I’m not going to get the kind of retirement money I had hoped for, but our house is paid off, we have no other debt and some fair savings, and my wife works a good job with a full pension.
I always made side incomes from things like writing, poker, and now I’m having fun getting my skills back up to speed in C++, microcontrollers, machine learning and other fun stuff. I may wind up doing gig work or starting a business if I come up with an interesting project. I’m having a hoot, and don’t mind being retired at all, even if I will ultimately make less money.
Going back into an engineering career is a non-starter. It’s almost impossible to get hired as a nearing-60 software engineer who isn’t interested in management. I could maybe get some contract work, and will try if we need the money.
And since my wife is still working, I do what I can to make her life easier. Houework, doing the shopping, etc. It’s the least I can do.
My pension kicks in in 4 more years, our house will be just about paid for, and a subway stop will be opening a couple of blocks away. We can sell the house, move somewhere cheaper, and most likely have some money left over after paying cash for another house. Insurance will be just a little more than I’m paying now, and we can live with that until we’re Medicare eligible. We also have a decent amount of savings.
I’ve had trouble dredging up names and nouns as long as I can remember. (The first time I explicitly remember not being able to come up with the name of my best friend was when I was 6.) It was really bad when I was pregnant. It’s been something of a relief to me as I age that it is beginning to happen to my friends, too. They used to look at me funny when it was obvious I couldn’t remember a word.
In 1987 I was working for a defense contractor that was a subcontractor for Lockheed Missiles and Space Company. We had one of their QA guys who would chow up about once a week to see how we were doing. The project was due to end in two or three years and hewas planning on retiring then.
Then Black Monday hit on October 19th. Then he showed up in early December with a new guy in tow. “I’m retiring in two weeks and this is my replacement.” It turned out most of his retirement portfolio in LMSC stock and if he retired before the end of the quarter he got the previous quarter’s valuation. The difference was about $50,000 a year and he’d decided not to sweat out whether it would recover by his original planned date.
Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit
I worked in computing for 16 years and teaching (at a private school) for another 19.
Both jobs had excellent pensions. (I am jolly proud of my 20 year old self. At my job interview they asked “Do you have any questions?” Mine was “What is the pension like?” 
)
So when I reached aged 55 I spoke with a pension adviser at my Bank.
My teaching pension was due at 60, but we calculated that I could take that immediately (obviously with a balancing loss on the actual amount paid monthly.)
Then at 60 I would get my computing pension (and soon after my state pension.)
I had already paid off my mortgage and also had thousands of pounds of savings invested in a) (https://www.nsandi.com/products/premium-bonds)‘] b) (https://www.gov.uk/individual-savings-accounts))’].
I would keep up my chess and bridge coaching (mainly for interest as it was just ‘pocket money’.)
Since I live in the UK, the NHS would cover all my medical needs.
The benefits of universal health care have been discussed here many times - suffice to say that I have had wonderful service from the NHS (prepaid by taxes.)
Yeah, there isn’t a big reason to pay off a $300 a month mortgage at these rates - I have that money sitting in the market and it does better there. But the tax changes under Trump made me a standard deduction filer, so I’m not getting the mortgage interest break any more.
Oh, I’m 54 now.
(Off topic, but I often think that if we really had UHC we could get rid of a few points worth of unemployment - there are a lot of people in their 50s and early 60s who are working for insurance - they are often in pretty good jobs and would leave places open for younger people to get promoted to. People would also be more free to take the risk I took unintentionally of starting a business or joining something uncertain - and some of those risk would be job creation events)
I think @Bullitt, that you retired from Active Duty, no? I retired early, due to an Temporary Early Retirement Authority offer from the Air Force, and decided to get out at the top of my game (preserving my AFSC for bragging purposes). I later joined another organization in the aerospace/defense industry* a pretty stable gig, and have been taking full advantage of the 401k savings.
My wife and I had a good discussion about a year ago, aiming to retire around 60-62 (me) and her that same calendar year, so we can travel around the world while still relatively young. We may not be Mr. & Mrs. Moneybags by then, but with our retirement plans (401Ks, and my TSP savings, and her public service pension), we ought to be able to afford a bratwurst dinner in Berlin once or twice.
So, our planning is based on what we want to do. We expect to live into our 90s, so we’ll budget travel accordingly, but our retirement dates are pegged to the goal of reasonably enjoying some well-earned worldwide travel–within our budget.
Tripler
I save a lot.
During my first career as a Deputy Sheriff the county had a 25 and out plan. They changed it to the Rule of 75 plan, but because of my hire date I qualified to choose either. The pension was your highest average salary X 2.5% X years of service. So I retired at 47 with a pension that was higher than my base wage had I kept working. I would have been insane not too. I then accepted a full time position with a department I had been working part-time for. I am eligible for a pension with them in November of 2022. It depends on how a business I own is doing whether I will retire completely as a LEO.
My wife’s job involves talking to public sector employees about their retirement plans. Let’s just say that the smartest retirement decision any of us could make would be to go into a Time Machine, go back to the beginning of our careers, and work in the public sector.
My job required two separate licenses from the state. They needed to be renewed periodically One expired on 12.31.2020, the other expires 05.16.2021. I will be 68 in May. I had planned on renewing the first license and then retire in May.
Winter 2019/2020 was a hard one. One day I was driving my company minivan in about a foot of snow. It took me hours to get home. I decided that day that I would retire before winter 2020/2021.
Every October I go on a fishing trip with some friends. I decided on the third week in September, and my last day was 09.18.2020
No, I only did 13 years. The Marines helped me get my degree. I stayed in a couple more years but the time away from family was becoming a hardship. I was in field artillery, so we were away and out in the field a lot. The kids were 7, 5, and 3 then and so I decided to ‘go civilian’ and I never looked back. There are times I wished I did my 20, but for the most part I made the right decision for my family and me.
Funny, but my first real ‘career’ job was also, like yours @Tripler, in aerospace and defense. Four years later I went to a medical device company and that’s where I’ve been for 25+ years — the industry, not the company.
Good for you @Tripler, you got that early USAF retirement!
WOW, man, you hit the jackpot!! Nice! That’s a sweeeet deal.
I know this is obvious, but sometimes seeing the obvious is helpful. There are two ways of looking at retirement financing. Both are “valid”. Some people simply want to retire with savings > 0. Once they have sufficient savings to do that, they can retire any time. Some people want to pass away with the maximum savings to pass on to their children or charity or whatever. They should work as long as practical. A financial advisor will be able to advise both types, but the advice will be different. In my experience, telling your advisor you aren’t interested in leaving money on the table when you pass simplifies the advise (and probably reduces their stress and fees) significantly. Which keeps the number of meetings down. 