I just ordered a mini-teardrop from Timberleaf and they offer an off-road suspension. With their largest trailer being less than 2,000 pounds, I would imagine there is a lot less stress on the frame.
Being less adventuresome, I got the standard suspension.
Those Timberleafs look very nice! I’d definitely get their off-road package.
I’ve been looking at the Taxa Cricket Overland trailer. It has an off-road suspension and I can also get skid plates for it.
First, congratulations! I’ve been retired a bit over 6 years.
I gave plenty of notice, including directly to my VP. Since hardly anyone in tech was old enough to retire, they didn’t believe me. When the time came they went “oh, shit, what are we going to do?” I said I’d be happy to work one day a week during the transition. It turned out my company couldn’t do that according to their rules, so for four months I worked one day a week and got paid for five. Got them back for bad raises for being old.
No alarm. No commute. I get to drink coffee and read the Times in my pajamas. My wife works from home, so she joins me.
We never go to any stores on weekends if we can help it. Much easier that way.
We drove from the Bay Area to Connecticut where a daughter was living, left the car there, and went to NY for 3 weeks seeing shows. Then we drove back the southern route. Great fun. We took a cruise through the Panama Canal and went to Hong Kong.
But I’m still excessively busy doing stuff I like, writing a column, working on a conference, web mastering. And my wife and I signed a contract for a book, so that’s going to take up much of 2023.
I know some people as old and older than I who are still working, and I’m sure they don’t need the money. I wonder about that. Are they tied up in their jobs? Are they afraid they won’t have anything to do when retired? I have no regrets about retiring at 64.
It’s the Vigo the Carpathian school of retirement: The door is but a door. Time is but a window. I’ll be back.
I told that to my commanding officer on the day I turned in my badge and went on medical retirement from the Navy. In response, he called the MPs, had me escorted out, and put a guard on the door (but not the windows, oddly enough).
J/K obviously
Because the Navy has Masters at Arms, not MPs, duh.
And also because the whole thing is made up. I was medically retired for being crazy, but not that crazy.
The prime rule, of course, is “slow down”. While the suspension may take the jolting, the interior may not. There’s a road going into Chaco Canyon that is probably the worst road I’ve ever taken an RV on. Teeth-rattling washboards, sand pits, you name it. Some of the people I saw on that road (including a UPS truck) were going like bats outa hell. I crept along at about 5-10 mph and still worried that trim pieces were going to come loose.
I had a serious underestimation of how much money I’d have when I retired. I was not considering how much my lump sum retirement amount would be and was thinking mostly of my 401k. When I was getting especially burned out, I went to a money counsellor at my credit union who specialized in helping retirees and pre-retirees. He looked at what I had and said “You could retire today.” Since I wasn’t ready to do it that day, I went back and started hinting and finally announced about six months later. I was 61. Never looked back.
I had a serious underestimation of how much I would need when I retired. I knew exactly what I had. A good friend of mine retired a year or so before me. I assumed that he was able to do so because his second wife had means equal to him. So at lunch I was whining about work and he asked why I didn’t just retire. I told him that I didn’t have enough and he explained that I certainly did and he knew that because his financial planner ran the numbers for him with and without his wife.
He gave me the number of his financial planner. I drove back to work and called the planner from the parking lot and gave him the broad strokes. He said that he needed to see my actual financials but he was nearly certain I could retire immediately. I put in my six month notice a week later.
Fuck work
Congratulations! I retired from active duty . . . it’ll be seven years ago on Dec 1st–holy mackerel does time fly–but I was fortunate enough to be hired into a related company less than a month later. I didn’t have time to be bored, but now that I’m businer’n sh*t, I look forward to retiring again.
I do still get up at 5:AM to work out, as a routine thing, though.
Tripler
I think I’m in better shape now than I was on active duty.
Underestimation or overestimation? I had assumed I’d need something like my salary to live on, but when we did the numbers before I retired I found that a lot of my income was going to savings (more than I thought) and that earnings from my investments could take care of our needs.
We don’t do budgets because we both naturally don’t spend much on anything.
BTW none of the retirement income planners I looked at were worth spit. They are rigged to scare you to make you invest more. Not a bad thing, but not very honest.
Overestimation, of course. Thanks. I agree about those planner sites.
Sounds like you’re in great financial shape and, if I understand what you said accurately, you’ll die with more money than you retired with.
That’s fantastic. Congratulations!
@Voyager — ooh, I just realized that what I wrote may have come across as a bit macabre. Please be assured that none was intended, and my intent was to congratulate you on a successful finance plan for your retirement.
I’m quite jealous of those of you who’ve managed to retire at all (especially early). Financially, that ain’t happening, since we have a) long-lived parents in poor health and poorer financial condition, and b) young-adult special needs kids.
I can absolutely see that when the time comes that we DO retire, all that newly-freed-up time will manage to fill itself up with a combination of “there’s no rush, so I’ll take all day to do minor household stuff” and doctor visits 
I keep hoping that my employer comes up with another “consider retiring” plan, where in theory I’d work 3 days a week, get paid for 4, with the promise that I’d retire after a few months. The last time they offered that was a few years ago.
How many of you who have or are soon retiring have made downsizing the house a priority? We absolutely want to move to some place that is all one level, given how frequently our stairs have tried to murder me.
In some ways, some kind of part-time or seasonal job would be a great thing to do in retirement. My brother retired from his job (some kind of finance officer at a nonprofit), and worked 4 months a year at a tax preparation office. Of course he also wound up going back to the nonprofit part time for a while, because they were having trouble replacing him. But he’s now finally (for real this time, I think) finished up with them.
Retired mid-2019. I got the math right, but the world wasn’t listening to my financial numbers. A lot of plans were upended due to the pandemic, losing close family members (partially covid, but other reasons too), serious storm damage to our house/vehicles, and my own serious health problems (5 surgeries/procedures in 18 months).
I had planned some exotic-ish travel, but first I couldn’t go due to illness, then due to pandemic, then due to sudden loss of family (had to support others), then due to storm damage and the “year of the contractors”, then due to supply issues and breakdowns. It has been maddening in some ways. I guess it’s good that I didn’t have to deal with all this while trying to work, but it’s small comfort.
On the plus side: We finally escaped earlier this year and spent 10 weeks traveling the US. We’re finally getting out and about, and have (in 2022) have spent 97 nights in our RV. Hopefully we’re getting back to our planned fun, although some things are permanently cancelled due to health issues.
How did life change (besides the above)? One noticeable thing is the realization that a lot of our “bucket lists” were really just escapist fantasies to survive corporate life and cubicle misery. Once retired, our normal life (of puttering around, walks with dogs, grilling, hot-tubbing and Netflix) is good enough we don’t daydream of escaping it. Vacations are fun, but no longer a matter of emotional survival.
Hope some of this is relevant – congratulations on retiring!
Now that is some wise insight, and potentially very valuable to all of us. Thank you!
I’m on the cusp of mandatory retirement, and as late as late 2021 things looked pretty darn rosy. The last 11 months of S&P 500 behavior have not been pretty, and there looks to be plenty more bad news where that came from.
To be sure, a year or two of bad returns ought not gut a multi-decade retirement, but any self-funding retiree is at an especial risk of craptacular returns that happen just as/after they retire which then crimps all their out-years. So far I’m on track to experience a big bite from just that.
We shall see.
I would have 3 concerns with this: bears, temperature control, meaning too hot or too cold for personal comfort, and storage. How many of you are traveling?
Didn’t come across that way at all. Thanks. It all came from being frugal.
I’ve also been lucky, in never having been laid off, which eats up your savings.
This is very true. My dad died at 59. I was 27, so there was no impact on me financially. Both my parents had already retired to Sun City AZ with their house paid for. My mom had enough to live on and was in relatively good health. When she started having some issues, we moved her back to Calfornia. Sadly, she had a fall in the night (Christmas morning!) about a year after the move. She had a brain bleed, survived corrective surgery, but never recovered consciousness.
I have no kids.
It’s things like this that helped me be able to retire as young as I did.
That’s a great outcome, always glad when you’ve got a boss who’ll do that.
Back to the OP, I retired at the end of 2019. I actually told them in January and gave six months’ notice, but they talked me into a year…like other folks above, the last few months of that involved very little work, just being available.
The pandemic did change how things might have gone, but in general I go through cycles of industriousness (working around the house and yard) followed by some days of just lying around reading or watching things on Britbox with my wife. Most days we play a board game and/or run errands.
It did take a while to not feel guilty about every day being productive, but hell yes, I did get over that finally. 
I did however add some structure. I’ve been on various town committees, and we play bridge every Friday at a senior center…having some anchor points in the week does help keep the days of the week distinct, which is helpful.
There are quite a few teardrops (and square drops) designed for off road use. I’ll give a shout out to TC as they are within driving distance from me.
Rather than hijack further I created this thread:
Brian