I retired at 55. I understand that age 55 is not normal for most. But this study and I used to have the PDF of the actual research persuaded me to retire early.
https://arbiterz.com/work-till...cts-life-expectancy/

Dogged means "having or showing tenacity and grim persistence."

I think you were Dogeed.

I tried semi-retiring at 40... Didn't work out well for me...

quote:

Originally posted by Lineman101:
I retired at 55. I understand that age 55 is not normal for most. But this study and I used to have the PDF of the actual research persuaded me to retire early.
https://arbiterz.com/work-till...cts-life-expectancy/

Same here and I loved my job which turned into liked the last 5 years. As much as I loved my job at no point in my career would I have preferred to work as compared to being retired if money wasn’t the issue.

Reading through this thread makes me very happy I established several hobbies that I prefer to working.

I watched my father in law who loved his job but never did anything besides work. Always talked about what he was going to do with his wife when he retired. Woke up one morning and didn’t feel like going to work so his wife took him to the hospital and he never made it out. I vowed to my wife that won’t be us.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 1s1k,

Boy, so many stories in this thread.

I too was a software engineer, for about 30 years, and for the most part really enjoyed it. By early 2020 I was figuring to work another few years just to beef up my retirement savings a little more. Then some things started changing at work that made me really not want to stay there any more. DEI shit, for one. Add to that the increasingly progressive / woke state that Oregon was becoming (had become, truth be told, but it was fixing to get a lot worse), and in early 2022 I decided I had to get the hell out. So in October of that year I retired, and a month later I moved to Idaho.

I've been much, much happier since then, even living on a quarter of the income I had before (house and vehicle are all paid off, so that helps). If you can swing it financially, do it.

quote:

Originally posted by Lucnik:
Being retired is hard. No looking forward for Friday, no weekends off, no paid holidays; no paid vacation or sick leave. It’s seven damn days a week. All the projects around the house you have put off are now due. Just look around your house, garage, yard, automobiles, etc. You’ll find plenty to do.

^^^
This is 100% correct!

I was a sole proprietor of a IT Consultancy until April of 2020 when all of my clients but one almost simultaneously closed their offices, along with many of the long-term senior staff retiring. Not wanting to pay my rate for home visits to cloud workers, my billings suddenly went to near zero. At least one of my major clients is considering re-opening their offices and requiring staff to report (the principal owns the building, and can't pay himself rent without a staff presence, not to mention having to pay the mortgage on two empty buildings in a market with little hope of a fair sale). In the meantime, they have pretty much moved almost all their infrastructure into the cloud or colos and let their in-house server suite HVAC and UPS stuff rot. Also in the meantime, their chief IT guy has formally retired, and the junior guy who took the position visibly resents any participation from me so their isn't much hope there. I respect the principal of the firm highly enough that if he were to ask, I'd probably go back to work for him under reasonable conditions, but he's had over half a year to consider this without any outreach.

So, I guess I am retired, de facto if not de jure. Mrs. A. is significantly younger and still working at a job she loves, not at all ready to retire. I have no desire to travel without her, an annual beach vacation is about all we do.

Financially, I am OK through the years that the actuarial tables tell me I have left, and she will be OK when she retires too. I have my little projects, small improvements around the house, etc., managing investments, and SigForum to keep me busy. I am slowly getting to like it, but I do miss figuring out how to fix problems in my area of expertise for clients, and certainly the associated income stream.