Yes to this - AKA MediGap. Allows you and your physician to decide treatment.
IMHO, best to avoid Medicare Advantage. Lets an insurance company decide treatment.
Straight Medicare requires you to pay 20% - with no maximum.
Also, even though you’re far from shuffling off this mortal coil, it’s never too early to find a non-spousal executor in case you both fall into a volcano or something. And by ‘executor’, I mean a person with a legal document who can make legal decisions about your estate.
We retired at the end of 2005, due to health problems. Unfortunately, we spend far too much time with appointments and doctor waiting rooms!
Being retired means we have the time to take full advantage of the nearby School of Dentistry. The work is done by students, but completely overseen by the instructors, so it is quality. Combined with our dental insurance, expensive treatments become affordable.
One of the benefits of being retired is the fact that “Oh Gawd-Thirty” has been removed from our lives. We don’t even own an alarm clock any more!
The nicest discovery is that after 44 years of marriage, we found our little piece of heaven out in the middle of nowhere. It suits us both, and hey, we actually LIKE spending time together!
~VOW
I’ve been retired for 2 1/2 years now, and it is going great. My last four months of work I did one day a week (on full pay!) so I was ready to quit by the time it was over. Where I live, if I feel lonely for work I just turn on the traffic report and I’m happy to be home.
You should definitely do a budget. We went to our financial planner and he did a Monte Carlo analysis of the probability of having various amounts of money up to 92 or so. That was reassuring. So far we’re ahead of the optimistic assessments.
If you were born before 1956, you or your wife might be able to go on spousal benefits for the one of you who will get less social security, and then switch at age 70. This won’t work if you have more or less the same. My wife’s benefit would be less than half mine, so now I’m on hers and I’ll take mine at 70. There are some sites which let you input various scenarios. The one I used is now dead. Check it out, Social Security hacking can make you lots of money.
I made a detailed list of the stuff I wanted to do, with emphasis on the things which had piled up while I was working. It’s nice for the backlog to shrink.
Think of some big time things you didn’t have vacation time to do before, and do them early before you get too old. We drove around the country and stayed in New York for 3 weeks. It took six weeks in total, and was a dream of mine.
I’m also watching the movies and reading the books I never had time for before. I even made it through Ulysses.
Try to schedule exercise, since it is easy to just sit all day. I walk and go to San Francisco for walks on a set of cards I have. I can still climb hills pretty well.
Check out discounts. I found that there is a Clipper card for San Francisco transit - BART and MUNI - which gives you about 2/3 off which makes going into the city very cheap.
Enjoy doing your shopping during the week when very few others are around, not on the weekends.
At this point I have a hard time remembering what work is like. I’m still involved in my field, working on a conference and writing a column, so I’m not dead in the brain quite yet.
First, congratulations!
Second, you may or may not find the adjustment to doing much less a challenge. Personally, I’m fine with doing nothing at all, though I do some contract work a few times a month for butter and egg money.
Third, it sounds like you are doing some financial planning. I did, too, but what I just totally missed/ignored/underestimated was the SSA cap on earnings that continues until you’re full retirement age. (For me, that’s 66…and I’m not there yet.) I thought, “I’ll just do a little work on the side or pull some money out of my 401K when I need something.” Ooops…there goes 50 cents on the dollar in SSA benefits. I have no excuse for paying little heed to this issue, but I make sure to remind people who are thinking that they will retire early and live on some income source that it’s a consideration.
I retired 19 years ago. I still do mathematics, publish, etc. Great, I never have to mark tests.
A friend of ours was a VP of CN Rail. He observed that many of their workers were retiring and dying within 2 years. So he arranged that every potential retiree in his last year would get off one day a week (with full pay) with the proviso that they pursue an avocation. Find a new one or pursue an old one. And it worked! They started living longer too. And that is my recommendation; find something to do.
The county Sheriffs office I worked for had changed their retirement plans a couple of times. Those that were there during changes had the option of picking one even if it wasn’t used any more because we were grandfathered. I could have chosen a plan that was phased out 20 years prior because my seniority qualified me.
I bailed in 2007 at age 47 under the “25 and out” plan. I could have stayed for a couple more years under the “Rule of 75” plan (age + years of service = 75). But the addition to my pension would be somewhat minuscule. No way was I staying for the age of 57 plan. My pension would have been much higher, but I was at the point where I seriously wished to choke the living shit out of my Lieutenant (click on my signature for details).
When I retired I took an even greater role in running a sporting goods and gun dealership I and my family own, and continued working at a part=time patrol gig I had since 1992 for another department. I was happy.
At the time the law allowed part-timers to get on the state retirement plan and there was no law against double dipping. So eventually I’d get another small pension. In 2012 the department asked if I’d come on full time. I decided to take it and dump everything I could into differed compensation plans.
I musta been crazy. :smack: I didn’t need the money that badly or the headaches. This is why I retired the first time.:o
In 2022 I’ll be 62. I’m taking my retirement (again :rolleyes: ) collecting my second pension and social security, selling my investment properties and my business or turning it over completely to my sons, and moving south.
Advice to OP: If you can swing it, don’t work! Not at all! Enjoy your family and life. Nobody lies on their death bed wishing they spent more time at the office!!!
For heaven’s sake, don’t follow your spouse around the house, commenting on whatever they’re doing! Murders have occurred because of this. 
You’re going to need a social outlet, someone to talk to who isn’t your spouse. Join a club related to your interests.
You should be giving some thought to your best nap time. Generally I try to nap around 1 p.m, because by that time I will have already been up for about 4 hours, so by the time I wake up from my nap and have a cup of tea, then it’s only about 3 hours til cocktail hour.
There are a ton of great responses here, thank you. Responding to a few…
When I told them I was retiring I said first week of October, and they talked me into working a day a week (with full pay) October- December, so hopefully that’s exactly what happens. That does feel like a good goodbye process until I do indeed get on with it. 
Medicare is a while off, but I’ll keep that in mind.
There are a couple of people who have been talking to me for years about volunteering, and I was always ‘too busy’. One of them has already reached out to me, and I’m on board.
I am thinking about the 401K thing as I have two, one each in Fidelity and Vanguard. Also, thanks for the prompt, will indeed try to remember to keep moving!
I’ve been tracking all of our expenses in detail for almost two years, and feel like I have a handle on that piece. What I’m still thinking about is the semi-random stuff - roof, hot water heater, selling one of the cars. I also went through all the coverages last month with an agent and trimmed some stuff back.
I have a weird feeling that the financial stuff is going to take up more of my time than I’ve been thinking.
On it! Have an appointment in July (with a lawyer, not in Samarra).
This is all great stuff, thank you. It put me in the mood to get going on retirement NOW.
I’ve been assuming no SS as that’s a bit far off (I’ll be 56.5 at the end of the year), and that anything else is essentially lagniappe.
Thanks again everyone! 
The folks over at the Early Retirement board are pretty nice and have a lot of good information and threads to peruse. The retirement calculator, FireCalc is very good and helpful.
Ah, I wondered what your age was. My SS hack won’t work for you. What are you going to do for health insurance? Is your spouse still working? I planned retirement so that Cobra would cover my wife until she was 65
I have indefinite access to the company’s plan, but at the full freight, which is pretty damned expensive compared to the MA exchanges. But I may hang onto that for a bit because health care seems a little politically complicated at the moment.
I hope you like Saturday. Because every day from now on is Saturday.
I made a snap decision to retire this summer, and I’ve been second-guessing myself. But comments like this go a long way toward convincing me I made the right decision.
If you’re getting a pension, now’s the time to double-dip. I retired after 40 years last October, got a job with a consultant working part time from home. My commute is going down the stairs. If you can get a gig like that, snap it up. Seriously, once you get past 70 you’re never going to get a chance to pad your income so if there’s a gravy train, hop aboard.
My target date is June 2020, when I’ll be a few months short of 67. I figure 50 years of continually having some kind of job is enough.
I’m thinking about volunteering for a non-partisan government reform organization when the happy day arrives. And maybe growing a little medicinal cannabis. Free time seems to pass pretty quickly for me but I’ve never been in a situation where it’s the normal state of affairs. So I have some apprehension.
Hearty congratulations and best wishes to Maserschmidt.
I will be meeting with my financial advisor in a few weeks to decide. Assuming Brexit doesn’t have any devastating effects on the stock market, I will announce my intentions to the company in April. My goal is to be retired by summertime.
I’ve done the OMY thing long enough, and just seen another DAHD event (3 in recent years). I don’t want my last vision on earth to be my cubicle. Enough already. I’ll announce here when/if it’s official.
OMY = One More Year
DAHD = Died At His Desk
Just wanted to say thanks again for all the comments and advice. My successor has been announced, and my transitional role also made public, so it’s full steam ahead until early October, and then a day a week until the end of the year.
It’s a very strange feeling now that it’s on me, somewhat bittersweet, but to someone’s point above I have already started a “punch list” of things to get done, and it’s over 50 topics so far…so I’ll be busy. 
Congrats!!
Popping back to some things that were mentioned before:
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Moving. Whether you stay in your same area, or move to a different part of the country, look at aging in place. When my husband and I both had surgery within 2 weeks last year, we found that our 2-story brick Colonial is NOT conducive to aging in place. There are things we’d want to do to the house (stair lift, bathroom remodel with grab bars, etc.). Or we might move to a 1-level condo.
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Transportation: If you have 2 cars now (maybe more, since you said you have teenagers), you may find you and your wife can get by with one between the two of you. We’re 5+ years from being able to retire, but with mass transit availability where we are, we’re doing OK with just one at the moment. HUGE cost savings.
I’m quite jealous. We’re a couple years older than you are, but NOT in a position to consider early retirement due to some family obligations… but my mind is more and more focussed on the topic.