This. I think the secret to a happy retirement is to find a reason to get up every morning, something to do that you love. In 2009 I went to Burning Man for the first time and fell in love with it. By 2011 I had drunk the Kool-Aide, as we put it, and become a volunteer. By the time I retired I had become a trainer for my department which requires a lot of work off-playa and as much travel as you can manage from March through the end of August, when the event takes place. That easily takes care of six months and the other six months is when we do things outdoors any way.
I’ve been out on medical leave from my work since the summer. I haven’t done a blessed thing around my house except for basic cleaning and laundry. Sometimes I stumble with both. I can only do what I can do. And sometimes I couldn’t care less.
It’s funny, though – retirement is less than 10 years away and this prolonged recovery, coupled with my husband’s unemployment, has been a kind of preview. Excluding the financial, I’ve found that I miss being around others more than the work itself. We occasionally get on each other’s nerves but either of us can sequester ourselves in different rooms or take the dogs on a walk. We live very modestly as we’re both pretty frugal. Our biggest expense are our dogs.
I’m ‘only’ 56 and not retired. I’m learning to play guitar, and banjo. A small part of the reason is to have a hobby for when I retire.
I’m in a similar situation (though perhaps my pre-retirement expectations were higher!)
I started planning retirement early (aged 21, at a successful employment interview they asked if I had any questions. Mine was “What is the pension fund like?” :eek: )
I had two main careers (in programming and teaching) and both offered a final salary scheme.
I also qualify for a UK State Pension (when I reach 65 next year.)
My mortgage was paid off by the time I was 55 and I retired the year after.
I’ve kept up most of my hobbies (roleplaying, computer games, reading) but taken up bridge teaching (11 pupils and counting 
) and also gone on my first cruise.
I’ve had a couple segments of extended non-work with sufficient but not excess money. And I presently have a “full time” job but don’t actually work all that much. So I’ve practiced “retirement lite” for probably 5 years all told in smaller snippets. I also live in a retirement condo with lots of retired people. Some of whom have been doing it for decades and some of whom are just starting. So I get to see what they all do and what they all say and what seems to work and what seems not to.
My take, and assuming health & money worries are not front and center:
If you are not a self-starter, retirement can become staring at the TV or into a beer bottle every day. Not good. If you’re a follower who’ll only do what others ask/tell you to do, you’re going to need to locate something like a volunteer position where they will be your “boss” and give you stuff to do. So you only need to self-start once to sign up and they’ll be your backbone after that.
Far more successful are the people who can self-start early and often. The folks who think “I always wanted to do this hobby or visit that place or read these books or take this class or …” Then they go do it, not just muse about it and turn on the TV (or the 'Dope). You’re not going to do all those tings, and certainly not all at once. But it avoids the “blank page syndrome” that hits people who’ve put off even thinking about retirement until the Saturday after their final going away party.
As you approach retirement it makes sense to get serious about creating a realistic bucket list. Stuff that’s compatible with your budget, attitudes, aptitudes, etc. Start rehearsing. Do something this weekend other than your usual retail erranding or gardening or whatever.
One of the most freeing things about getting to be over about 50 for me was really recognizing the difference between “stuff I want” and “stuff I want to want”. The latter is what most of us go through life chasing. It’s all the external "I ought to"s placed on us by society, spouses, employers, etc. We spend a lifetime learning to want the stuff they tell us to. Or the stuff that, like icky vegetables, we know is good for us in the long run. We struggle to convince ourself to like this stuff so we can tolerate doing it all the time.
Now, at a more mature age, I can see the difference between the things “I want” and the things “I want to want”. And it’s easy and ego-freeing to say “I abandon that second category. The fact I still don’t like or do <whatever> means I can drop that with no regrets. Let’s go do something I actually want to do instead of something that I think will improve me for later. 'Cuz later is now, baby!”
By coincidence I recently had a co-worker about my age ask me “what will you do on your first day of retirement?” I was taken aback by the question. After I recovered I said “The same thing I do now on a non-work day. Just more of it in more sustained chunks. I’m already retired. I just have to go to work sometimes.”
Damn. Hit [Post] too soon. One more paragraph …
He on the other hand has conceived of his life as totally <this> way while working and totally <that> way after retirement. Despite doing the same job I do. I suspect he’ll have more problems transitioning than I will. Despite him being much wealthier in retirement. Don’t be him.
I never expect to be in a position to spend LESS money than I currently spend. Consequently, barring my winning a Powerball jackpot, my intention is to take advantage of my job’s no-layoff clause and the lack of a mandatory retirement age, and remain in harness until about May of 2058, when I’ll have a round fifty years in (that’s the year I will be turning 102).
In the meantime, I’ll be happy to hear about the retirement experiences of my fellow Dopers.
My husband and I planned to have a nice sailboat all paid off, fixed up, and ready for much sailing in our golden years. Then he had multiple spinal surgeries, greatly limiting his ability to crawl into the small spaces where boat maintenance was required. Plus we did the math - just to keep the boat in a slip, pay its insurance, and maintain it minimally (not allowing for replacing sails or major engine repairs) was costing us $500 per month (the boat was paid off.) And that doesn’t include the costs of cruising. Also, due to the aforementioned surgeries, we hardly ever went sailing any more, so right before I retired (at 57) we sold the boat.
I lasted a bit over a year before taking a temp job because I was bored - he was still working and I’m not a happy homemaker type. Then I was laid off due to a govt shutdown (I was working for a contractor) and my husband got fed up and retired a few months later. Then I took another temp job to help pay for a long cruise I was going to take with my mother. Somewhere in that time, my husband came out of retirement to pay for something he wanted (can’t recall - motorcycle? New car?)
When I returned from the cruise, I lasted less than a year before taking another job, and after 6 months of that, I applied for and got my current job, which I’m loving!! Meanwhile, my husband is going to re-retire next month and go to work for himself. I’ll probably re-retire this summer to become a stay-at-home grandmother.
I’ll miss the challenges of a real job, but because of my real job 32 years ago, I didn’t get to be a stay at home mom, so this is going to be a do-over of sorts. We’ll see if a 64-y/o can manage a baby… :eek:
Maybe after the kid starts school, I’ll think about the life-of-leisure of retirement. We shall see.
When I announced that I was going to retire, the number one question I got was “what are you going to do.” I went around the house and recorded on my phone all the stuff I had meant to do in each room but never had a chance. I entered them into a spreadsheet of 75 rows. The items ranged from the trivial (clean out a closet) to the immense (read the 600 unread books in my office.)
When I told people about the 75 items, they stopped wondering.
However a mild case of OCD helps, One of my projects has to make at least one recipe from each of our many cookbooks. Mostly done. I have this feel for Yugoslavian cooking now. (The book was from when there was a Yugoslavia.)
Everybody has different financial goals and expectations, but it’s certainly the case that my wife and I spend quite a bit less now. The house is paid off, we have no children in school, we don’t have to commute, our cars are older (but adequate) and paid for, etc., so we spend at least $35,000 less a year than we would have just 15 years ago. I’m no longer SCUBA diving or open-water kayaking, so our recreational expenses are also a bit less. We still travel internationally, but it’s all more modest.
Financially, I was very lucky to have worked for 34 years for a company that still has pensions, and that my salary while I was working was high enough that I could accumulate a fairly decent 401(k); then I was lucky financially when my father was able to leave each of his children another decent hunk of money. So, although we’re not rolling in it, we are comfortable.
What changed is mostly about getting older. Without the stimulus of getting up and going to work 5 days a week, I find myself getting lazy. I was doing projects for the first couple of years, then my interest in that petered out. I do some volunteer work but it’s not a ton of hours in the week. When I was working I did a lot of walking as part of my commute; now the only walking I do is on a treadmill, mostly because there aren’t any interesting walks around my house and I’m just not interested enough to drive to someplace to hike around in nature. Not complaining, but this is not what I expected.
I still love being able to sleep until I wake up instead of being jarred awake during the best part of my sleep and then trying to catch up on weekends. I enjoy very much having the free time to do my volunteer work and still have enough hours left over to relax in the ways I like to relax. There’s no problem being around my husband 24/7 because we tend to spend a lot of our time in different parts of the house. We don’t travel as much as I thought we would, I’m not as interested as I thought I would be, and he’d already been everywhere before we met. Anyway, my relaxed attitude is really helped by being financially solvent and reasonably healthy, at least for now.
The same thing has happened to me. I have lots of projects on the back burner, but mostly I sit around looking out the window, feeling lazy, at least so far after 1 year of retirement.
I dunno, maybe after 45 years of work, it’s ok to be lazy for a while…
Don’t forget a big savings - you no longer have to save for retirement.
We more or less figured out a good total to shoot for for living expenses, and I wondered how we’d meet it, since our incomes after taxes were taken out was a lot higher than this. But I ran an analysis of our spending for the previous year, and found that we already hit the target, with the difference stashed away in our savings.
Not getting gas except maybe once a month helps also.
I’d chosen early 18 as well. But I’ve decided to keep working for a while so the fantasy didn’t happen at all.
Reason 1: I have a small pension from a big airplane company, but most retirement income will be from my own investments. I’m really concerned about the insane public debt and unfunded pension levels in the country right now (and stock market, politics, etc. etc.). It seem this could cause a serious recession and I don’t want to start retirement right into a 2008 event. I’m not sanguine about commonly advised withdrawal rates in the future either, so I want a bit more of a buffer before taking the plunge.
Reason 2: Work has gotten much more fun, and pay and raises are at the highest level in my life. I’m in one of the hottest fields now, and they have critical shortages of qualified people. Frankly it’s never been this good and I actually look forward to work. Might as well make hay while the sun shines.
Reason 3: I had a raft of home projects I was planning to do when I had the free time (fence, deck, flooring, you know the drill). Now it’s economically smarter to pay guys in work shirts to finish these while I play in the labs at work. They’ll probably do a better and quicker job anyway.
So I think I’ll keep working for a couple more years. Maybe late 2019 for me.
I was going to mention this. And also, for some that have to dress up for work. Not having those bills could help a bit. And depending on your lifestyle you might eat at home more.
I retired last year. An indecisive inconsistent new boss (son in law of owner who I’d worked for for 20+ years) came aboard, and I tried, I really did, but I was stressing to the point of lost sleep, bad dreams and it was affecting my relationship with my man who patiently listened but was frustrated. So I jumped.
After 25+ years of pushing paper in marketing communications and making bank, I now have a much more meaningful jobs for pin money. 3 days a week I help hearing impaired people, it’s easy and I like it.
I have 5 rental properties, and luckily, mostly long term tenants, but when someone leaves, there’s a ton of work. And I’ve had to remove 2 tenants this years.
I painted my kitchen, actually I need to complete that with finishes. I do the taxes for his business. I spend 1 day a week with Mother who is 92 with ALZ.
I wonder, and I wonder how many other retirees say this-how the hell did I ever have time to work 45-60 hours a week?
Not needing to save more for retirement after starting retirement can be a huge swing in your budget.
IMO it’s a logical mistake to lump house being paid off and kids grown and gone with retirement. Some of those things may occur in the same timeframe, but your retirement didn’t cause the college expenses to finally quit. It certainly *is *valid to plan your budget accordingly. As you say.
As to work-related expenses it’s IMO a very mixed bag.
I’ve been tracking this stuff for my case of the last few years. Like kaylasdad99 upthread, I never expect to be able to (or want to) spend less than I do now. I might be forced to, but IMO it’s a mistake to plan that way.
My direct outlays for work are $10K/year. That *will *go to zero when I retire. Which is nice, but hardly funds a life of newfound luxury.
My driving to work totals about 90 miles a week above and beyond the expenses above. If I can’t find 90 miles worth of driving to fun activities each week after I retire I’ll have turned into a useless couch potato and may as well shoot myself. Don’t forget I’ll have more free time to do that fun stuff in. So I expect no savings there.
Folks with long commutes to conventional jobs may save a bunch more dollars on commute costs than I will. But they’ll also have 40 or 60 more hours a week of free time to spend money in. I’m gonna bet it’ll net closer to zero for many of them than they predict it will.
I never had kids, so those expenses aren’t changing: was zero, is zero, will be zero.
I bought my current residence at the age of 56 so the last mortgage payment is at age 86. Unless I choose to take the balance out of the stock market to pay off the debt some day. There’s arguments pro and con, and it depends of course on how the market is doing. Like pullin just above I’m making hay now while I can, and am saving it like a mofo. Because like pullin I’m pessimistic about the timeframe 5-15 years out. IOW, my first few years after my legally-forced retirement. Besides, every expensive habit I don’t adopt now is one less I have to unadopt when the paychecks stop.
My cars will be fully paid for by my retirement date. But there’s no way they’re gonna last another 20+ years after that until I/we can’t drive. So the expense for replacement car(s) are still out there somewhere.
Something I suspect a lot of middle-class-and-up folks haven’t thought about enough is that all the money coming out of (traditional) IRAs and 401(k)s is taxable. So if you’re getting a middle class cashflow from those sources, you’ll also be paying middle class income taxes on it. Which may make that mortgage I’ll still have a little more tolerable assuming I can still usefully deduct the interest.
It’s wrong to assume that your current lifestyle can be replaced by total withdrawals from your various accounts that match your current take-home pay less your current savings deposits. It needs to match that current net *after *you pay taxes on any (traditional) IRA and 401(k) withdrawals and any interest, dividends, or realized capital gains on your non-qualified savings. That’s a ~25% delta for most folks.
As we age, our mix of expenses changes. A greater percentage goes to medical and support stuff, and less goes to fun. Given the relative inflation rates of “medical” and “fun”, it’s hard to see how the total doesn’t get bigger over time.
Shortly before he retired at 60 a friend told me his theory of retirement. He said “There’s your go-go 60s, your go-slow 70s, and your no-go 80s. So kick ass on having fun, going places, doing things, etc., right from the start. Time really *is *running out.” He’s 72-ish now and so far his experience is matching his prediction. He and his wife have been health lucky. A bad surprise can really hit fast-forward on his aphorism. And already has for many people up-thread.
Eventually sitting around home all day will be about all one wants to do or can do. But *planning *to start that earlier than medically necessary just to live within your means is goofing up. All you can do is all you can do and we’re each stuck with the consequences of our life decisions and our life luck. I’ve certainly had a mixed bag of both and a great many Americans really are trapped between a rock and a hard place.
But for damn sure I’ll downsize, move someplace cheaper, get a job, sell my soul, before I’ll choose to make my books balance by just sitting at home frugally watching OTA TV. That’s the last ditch move, not the first one. IMO anyone who’s got enough financial slack to plan like me or kaylasdad99 or pullin ought to be doing so.
TLDR: IMO the assumption that your expenses (needs + wants) are much lower in retirement than when working is highly suspect in 2017 and is becoming more so going forward. Having to crush your wants in retirement to meet your needs is a problem worth avoiding if you can figure out any possible way to swing it.
This is excellent advice. The reason that the retirement planner sites (you put in how much money you make and your age and it tells you how much you are supposed to save) is that they assume that expenses are constant over time. They aren’t. When my father-in-law hit 100 he didn’t go anywhere except down to dinner and the store.
You might run into assisted living costs, but not for several decades if you are lucky.
I medically retired about 8 years ago but to this day still struggle to say the word “retired”. In fact I don’t think that way because it is always possible that a part-time job will turn up. Everything happened 10 years too early.
I had a bad motorcycle accident with a head injury. My memory and concentration became utterly confused. My wife and children were the best medicine I could hope for.
The consequence of the head injury was that my two professional business partners wouldn’t let me return to work. I represented a risk to the practice because if I made mistakes, everyone was responsible. The insurance company wanted a doctors certificate which wasn’t going to happen.
So retirement for me was a type of death. Men usually base their self image upon their work, and I’d decided upon a professional career about age 12. To have that career dramatically cut from my life at 55 was shattering. Took more than two years to accept it.
Eventually I was taken on as a proof reader at a local community college a few hours a week and enjoyed it. Then one early morning I had a fall on our footpath. Fortunately a passerby saw me. Spent a month in hospital and was very fragile for the next 6 months.
Then I moved to our holiday/retirement home which I’d always intended as the final spot. My wife lives in another city for work and visits fortnightly. Things are good. I use my chainsaw, spray weeds, and generally work around the property. I also volunteer at the local library which is a really healthy thing to do.
In summary retirement can be a shock but also a release from day to day pressures. Keeping active and doing volunteer work means meeting other people which I enjoy.
ETA: @Voyager
I agree “constant expenses over time” is bogus. But it gets complex quickly.
First off are we talking constant-constant or inflation-constant? If we assume 3% inflation we need to receive 3% more next year to have the same effective purchasing power. All the historical records about market returns are using dollars that have been inflating. So if you use “7% historical market return” but don’t use “3% historical inflation”, you’re comparing apples to pizza and are gonna get burned.
The bigger one IMO is OOP costs for medical & home or institutional care.
For folks near the bottom, after retirement they’ll have a modest budget for fun above their idea of necessities. As their interest in money-spending naturally and appropriately wanes with age, that modest amount is all they can reduce painlessly. Any relatively small increase in medical costs can eat all of that and more. Which puts them over a barrel. “Pills or food this week?” is a common problem in the US.
For folks way up the food chain, they’ve got a large budget for fun above their larger idea of necessities and as their interest in that fun naturally wanes with age the odds are much higher that the incremental medical costs won’t grow that much faster than the rate they free up cash flow from now abandoned fun. In fact it may be more slowly. So net net the rest of their lifestyle can remain unaffected or nearly so. If things do get too expensive they have a lot of room to downsize & regroup to restore balance.
The overall implication is that if I was to plot inflation-corrected costs over the span of a retirement I’d have the curve sloping upwards ever more steeply for working class retirees and sloping level to downwards for doctor/lawyer class retirees. With maybe a hockey stick upwards at the end for both. Followed shortly by a funeral.
Then there’s the real shocker:
I ran some long duration projections based on recent medical cost inflation. It’s simply impossible for anyone in their working years to earn, save, and invest well enough to keep up with 12%/15%/20% medical cost inflation for another 50 years. It simply can’t be done. Even if they sell the boat and the McMansion and move into a 1995 Camry tomorrow.
Therefore we know something will give before then. Whether cost inflation slows, everybody does without, or something else instead is a very open question. But it’s an example of a trend that economic physics demands will come to an end.
But when trying to plan my out-year budgets, how much should I expect Medicare top-up premiums to be in 2050?
Financial planners can be forgiven for throwing up their hands and saying “nobody knows; nobody *can *know.”
What they can’t be forgiven for is sweeping this under the rug and saying or strongly implying that no-cost-to-you Medicare plus $200/mo/person gap cover will be sufficient through and including the year 2050. So don’t worry about it.
Don’t worry about it? Hell, everything else: food, housing, utilities, taxes, is just a rounding error on the cost of out-year medical. How can you responsibly not worry about it? Or at least how can you responsibly fail to plan for it? IMO you can’t.
You need to have the best plan you can because it’s by far the largest threat out there.
ETA: @ Ken001. Wow. That really brings home that “life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.” There *are *bigger threats out there than I wrote of just above. All or a big part of our lives can be snatched at any moment.
Best of luck to you as you rebuild from the rubble with the bricks you have left. I have to say you sound like a man with the best possible attitude and hence the best possible chances. Good luck.