That’s the way I see it. For many, of course, it doesn’t work that way. I’m perfectly happy staying at home all day. I do live remote and have plenty of space inside and out.
I like my space. When my wife and I retire in 5 or so years, we will want a 4 bedroom house. We will have the Master bedroom, a guest room and each of us will have our own space.
I’d like to be semi-retired, but don’t work in a business for which that’s practical. In all likelihood, I’ll be retiring in a year or two, as soon as I reach “full retirement age”.
I’m tired and I’d like to retire right now. It’s not the work that’s getting hard, it’s the 45 minute commute. Also, as I age, driving home in the dark is getting more and more troubling. The night feels darker and the headlights seem brighter. I’m an exhausted wreck by the time I get home.
My husband works from home since the pandemic, and although he’s not “semi-retired”, it works out that way. He unofficially knocks off work at 3, but keeps close to the computer in case of emergencies. His company is making noises that everybody has to come back in to work in February of next year, though, so we’ll see how that goes.
Back in that West Texas convenience store I worked at out of high school, I worked graveyard a lot and usually on New Year’s Eve into Day. That was a great shift. Customers were always bringing me drinks out of sympathy. I was always drunk by end of shift.
I had been considering retiring in another 5 years, but since we have to come back to the office twice a week, I’m reconsidering. I am not as productive or happy coming in to the office, and I’ve decided I don’t want to do it long term. So I will probably reevaluate after the state elections next year when we get a new crop of senior managers that come in with the new administration. If I don’t like what I see, I will put in my paperwork to retire.
If they offer an early retirement? All over it if they do so.
I’m 59.5, and if I had paid healthcare, or at least reasonable, I’d totally consider a part-time kinda-retired gig. Right now it’d cost me $14k for ACA, I can’t justify that with no or little income.
I’m in California and my insurance is free because while I have a lot of assets, I have very little income since most of those assets are in retirement accounts and home equity. This is California Care which is our version of Obama Care. This is not Medical/CenCal, it’s real insurance that would cost me a bit more than $1k/month without subsidies.
That is incredibly intriguing. Healthcare is probably the biggest single blocker to my retirement plans. I had not given enough thought to what my post-work income from my jnvestments would be with respect to the various plans under California Care.
I took the whole week off for Thanksgiving, and returned from that short break wondering why the hell I’m wasting my time doing so many PPT decks and associated spreadsheets. Riding my bike was much more entertaining.
I’m planning on retiring in early 2023, and while I can get paid for unused vacation time I decided that I would rather use it all. So yesterday I submitted leave requests for next year, and with careful planning I will be able to take thirteen weeks off. So I will have a week off every month, with two weeks off in November. Looking forward to it.
Hmmm semi-retirement sounds great. Yeah, once I hit the “twenty years until” mark I started a count down calendar. (Roughly 15 years and a sleep in).
Thing is, unlike ever other life mile marker, I never imagined myself retired. Every other thing I had a sort of vision since childhood of what that would be like. Combine that with my fear of the physical discomfort of getting rapidly out of shape leaving my work would lead to…I can see myself getting more choosy, or moving to a line of work that is only a little less physical, but retirement still isn’t real to me, even though it’s starting to loom over the horizon. It seems more like a transition to a different attitude about work rather than not working for me.