I’m going through working wind-down steps right now. I’m deleting stuff off my work computer, dumping old stuff from my work area that doesn’t matter, and selling off stocks and funds and putting the proceeds in money market funds so that it’ll retain value until it’s turned over into whatever reinvestment strategy Schwab will do for our retirement income.
On that last point, I’m also trying to bug Mr. brown to rollover some funds from a previous job into his Schwab account so that that task is done and out of the way. We’re going to be doing a lot of things at once - retiring, starting to draw investment income, selling our house, buying a new house, moving out of state, deciding between Medigap and Medicare Advantage, etc., etc. If he waits to do rollover until the last minute, it’s just one more thing to stress over in a narrow time frame. But he hates fussing over finances and legal stuff and so he’s putting it off. I’d do it for him, but I think it’s something he has to do himself.
Tell him if he fusses with it now, he won’t have to fuss with it later. Just get the hard stuff done ASAP and it will be over with. It has taken me a long time to learn this, and I do still procrastinate when my depression is controlling me, but even then, I know I will pay a price for procrastinating.
Coincidently, I watched a TED talk last weekend about the ‘4 phases of retirement’. I thought it was pretty good. I’m looking at retirement in maybe six years and am already thinking ahead to how I want to structure my time and energy.
Same-ish for me. The only thing I have at work is a hanging folder in a wall of filing cabinets with my name & employee number on it. Which the admin folks will throw away when I’m gone.
Other than that it’s one suitcase & one laptop bag full of the tools of the trade. Most of which are useless the day after I’m done. It’s been years since we routinely got paperwork distributed that way; it’s all email & website now. It’s probably been 8 months since I looked in there to see whether anything was slowly getting moldy in there.
With my recent move and downsize, 100% of the physical artifacts of my life prior to 2022 are gone. Less the tablet I’m typing on and my clothing. And substantially all of the clothes are less that 2 years old.
I don’t expect to have much in the way of retirement artifacts. Pictures I took, memories I have, and if I get a going-away gift I’ll take pictures of it then throw it away too. I’m no cynic, but Diogenes was onto something. Although these days a tablet is more useful than a bowl.
Don’t get too worried about this. Even my so-called vacation phase was structured, and build around doing things on a list of to-dos I wrote before I retired. I must have jumped from this to Phase 4. I guess people whose life is totally tied up in their work might have a harder time.
I think you’re right about folks whose identity is based on their work. Being passionate about what one does can be a great thing, of course, but I get the impression that for those who define themselves in terms of their vocation, retirement can be a bad thing. Why stop working if it’s the primary focus of one’s being?
My professional career in association management came to an end in December 2021. In that line of work one collects an ungodly number of imprinted or personalized googaws, none of which I saved. (Getting rid of all of that was FUN!) The only memento I have is the door plaque my then-brand-new husband gave me back in 1995. I’d had one on my door already that said A. Sanders, Executive Director and he gave me one that said A. Sanders Newname, Executive Director. That one I kept.
I don’t really consider myself retired as I remain open to new opportunities. I work part-time which I find VERY helpful to keep feeling engaged. Hobbies and volunteering help take up some time but if an enticing full-time opportunity came along I might be interested. My husband is full retired (he’s 5 years older than I) and honestly, I’m surprised he’s not bored. He is a few steps farther along than I on the retirement acceptance journey, for sure.
I still consider myself and engineer even though I haven’t done any engineering in over a year and other that a few sporadic consulting things, actually retired almost three years ago. It’s a big part of who I am. It was insanely difficult and a lot of hard work to get those degrees and advance my career. So maybe I partially defined myself by my work. I am very, very proud of all of that.
As I said before though, accepting retirement happened sometime between handing off my badge and before I got home ten minutes later. It was a little weird for maybe a week at the most but the most prevalent emotion was joy. And I am still joyful.
28 days to go for me. I didn’t have a ton of stuff in my cubicle/desk to begin with, but I’ve been taking home or trashing at least one thing every day.
Today I trashed a small desk fan that worked only when it felt like it.
On Day Zero I will walk out with my spare jacket, my lunch bag, and my coffee mug.
I’m eligible to retire in just under 4 years, though I may stay another two years due to pension issues. It all depends on what the economy and housing market are like in 4 years.
Back before I started working, I had a period of a few years where I was largely unemployed, but living with my parents, and with unemployment insurance for part of the time. I always joked that this meant I knew exactly what retirement would be like, before I even started my career. This was just around the time my Dad retired, and he kind of agreed.
Now, I’m definitely ready for it. I took time off both over Christmas, and at the end of January, and I still felt like I didn’t want to go back to work. Sigh, four more years…four more years…
I met with a financial planner today. Not MY financial planner, not yet, but an introductory meeting. According to him, redistributing my retirement savings (which are right now in a “stable fund” cash equivalent, to a stock, mutual fund, bond mix means I could retire today. I’d planned to retire in about a year and a half. I’m seriously thinking of waiting 6 months, until my 62nd birthday, rather than waiting until I’m 63. I’d hoped I’d get laid off at work - I should get almost a year’s worth of severance. But the team seems to be growing, not shrinking.
I don’t like to do anything spur of the moment, so I’m going to carefully consider things and figure out what’s best for me. The CFP said, “I’ve never had someone say, 'I wish I’d worked longer”".
I retired two weeks ago. I’m thoroughly enjoying honing my napping skills.
I didn’t keep anything from my 30+ years at my job. I’d had some souvenirs but dumped almost all the last time I moved. The only things left were two product boxes, the original 1.0 Mac and Win versions of the software I worked on when I joined the company - I was the lead engineer on one of them. Nobody at the company had those trophies except me as near anyone can tell. On my final day at work, I drove to the office, met some of my coworkers for lunch, and handed over my trophy boxes to the very excited guy who maintained the product trophy case. And that was that: chapter over.
*that product is still shipping, a bazillion versions and three decades later. And somehow I had the last known 1.0 boxes. Fly free, cardboard boxes full of paper and disks!
36 days until I retire, though I only actually have to work for six more days if I want to, using vacation time for the rest. But I will get paid for that vacation time, so I will probably work the last month.
I don’t think that I will have much trouble adjusting. I already have three trips planned, including a fishing trip in two weeks. The liberating thing is that I don’t have to consider if I have time for these trips, when they came up for consideration all I have to do is decide if it’s something I want to do or not. That’s a good feeling.
I recently had to fire someone, and he left his office as a pig sty. My boss wants me to clean it out, but no, that is something that I am not going to do. And I should also be working on hiring a replacement for him, but the process is so slow that I pretty much have that on a back burner as well. I won’t be around to review resumes and hold interviews, so I don’t feel a need to move forward with that effort, though I will get the process started so my replacement will have something to work with. But I just don’t care at this point.
I found my last month to be wonderful. I’d go to meetings, look at deadline A and think “don’t have to worry about that one.” Deadline B “don’t have to worry about that one either.” Very relaxing.
