Once you are debt free, look at where you are and see if you can retire sooner. As noted by the OP, the planner at Fidelity.com is helpful.

The one unknown piece of data for ALL of us is our expiration date 😁. That was a deciding factor for me to retire at 60 . I started working at the age of 15 and stayed employed until 60 . For me 45 years was good enough, time to enjoy life .

I retired in 2015 at age 55. I have a company pension and benefits. I'm not a really big spender but we do like to travel. The past two years put a slight dent in things.
My g/f does contract work for a bank. She can work if we travel.
My pension covers most of my expenses. If I need more I dip into my funds, but I get have to pay tax on it.

I had to retire at sixty. Sixty was the mandatory retirement age for pilots when I retired in 2006. My house was paid off a year before I retired which was the really big thing for me. It took me a whole year to get used to not having to go to work. Although I miss my Hong Kong trips, I am really happy to have been able to retire when I did. By the way, Fidelity has been a very good company to work with.
Cheers and congratulations on retirement, Elliot

OP Here again:

Thanks for the responses.

I'm 53. Assuming I live until Im 93 thats 40 years I need to plan for. 40 years exposed to the long tail. Seems totally implausible given how bad we are at estimating risk. Given the volatility of our world its hard to imagine what will reliably be around in 40 years.

I quit work previously just to rest and recover from a very fun and stressful ~30 years working in tech. Before I quit I was a zombie and I had no plan but for brain to recover. I took 3 years off, travelled a lot, learned a lot, did lots of athletic type stuff. Once brain recovered I became a crazed enthusiastic learner, lots of math but reading and devouring knowledge. I'd often make a written plan for the month so projects wouldn't step on each other. Is a blast and I'd sometime overwork and need to veg out for a few days.

I've been at the new job a year. I considered it only because of covid, because recruiters kept calling. Seemed reasonable because I couldn't take college classes in person and international travel was so messed up. I took this new job because I thought I'd love it but I've really disliked it from the start. Problem is they're paying so much its just eye popping to me, is hard to walk away. Now with the analysis it looks like even if they doubled this new number it makes little difference to my long term outlook. Is there a name for when your investments grow to overwhelm your salary?

I did consider if there was something special that would be worth working for. A week, a month, a year. Really if we wanted something special today we'd have bought it - and we don't. Don't want a new car, or an embarrassingly expensive mountain bike. We don't want to eat at restaurants more often than we do. We've been talking for a decade about wanting a better hood and range in the kitchen but its tough to find anyone right now because covid. We're getting a tankless water heater so we can take a full hot jacuzzi bath for first time in 15 years (house originally had two water heaters.)

If I could snap my fingers I might like a cabin somewhere quiet away from tourists that has good access to mtb trails - and food. Kerala? Dolomites? Galicia? Pyrenees? I could buy that right now. What I can't casually buy are really top properties, and I can't 'afford' them even if I work another decade, the taxes and maintenance? Lost opportunity? I feel unreasonably fortunate, but then there's a whole 'nother level of lucrative that isn't available on my current path. Can't imagine what its like today for people that had 10x-100x my assets 10 years ago. Is healthy for me to know that at my current rate I'll never get 'there'.

I'm not read up on retirement literature but it looks like everyone's got a future asset band and once the obvious is handled (save, keep it in pants, don't be stupid) it seems the future is mostly controlled by outside factors (luck, economy). Is there a name for that?

I trained myself to focus and deliver on a paid job at the expense of everything else. The work was the thing for so long and I give it 100%. Now I'm finding that the work really isn't relevant to my future so why am I doing it? There is some difficulty getting my intuition to believe the logical argument, its like I'm a machine inside. I know I'm going to be using the new stuff I learned at the new job, I believe it will be useful in lots of places. I'm not going to be idle but I will be happy not having so many meetings and setting my own work schedule. The mountains are calling.

I'm going to checkout bogleheads, maybe they have a unique perspective that can help me tolerate planning against that long tail. My intuition doesn't believe fidelity planner and all the professionals that are telling me the future is fine.

I currently have a pace maker on one side of my chest, and a chemo port on the other side, so I may have a different perspective on life than many do. The only concerning aspect of retiring early is getting/keeping a good health care plan that I can actually afford. I have a 23 year pension, a large/growing 401K, a small schwab account for personal investing/dabbling. I make a modest amount at a good job as a prototype engineer for a large rubber company.

My wife is a site engineer for a large local home builder, and makes probably 50% more than I do, but has no benefits/retirement. She has alot of stress, and demands in this job, and deals with her Fibromyalgia better than most. Even though we have worked as a team for the last 34 years, the saving for retirement is mostly on my shoulders, while household finances are in her court.

We paid off our 10 acre farm about 5 years ago at age 51, and have worked our way out of any debt since that point (we still help our kids getting established). We have driven older used cars for many years, and even raise some of our own food with many farm animals, and a nice greenhouse.

We are both so ready to call it quits, and have more time for our hobbies (hiking/biking/kayaking/camping), and to finish some projects in my barn (project dentside pickup truck, JD garden tractors), while she is looking forward to cooking/baking more, and organizing all of her craft projects in her new she shed.

We live a simple life in a LCOL area, so having enough $$ to last us both is not the issue, health care is my big concern.

I retired two weeks ago today at age 58. I find myself doing a whole lot of nothing lately. It’s like I’m in a state of shock. No more emails, conference calls, meetings or deadlines. I don’t know what to do with myself and it’s great. I highly recommend retirement now or at least earlier than 65 if you can swing it.

By the way, I use the free retirement planner built into Personal Capital’s money management tool. Check out the numerous YouTube reviews of it. You don’t have to be a customer of theirs to use the tool. It’s totally free and it’s the best out there.

"Seems like I should walk away from salary and use my fitness while I have it, spend time with friends and family".

Ditto.

Never know when the master of the house will show up and you have to pay the piper or your health takes a crap.

That would be the millions of people who ran out of money and either had to go back to work, or worse, were not able to go back to work. Ever live in someone's basement as a grown adult?

Last year was a record breaking year.
It is folly to expect the same results in 2022

Working an extra two years allowed me to buy a nice vacation home for cash. I am sure we will enjoy it (and have). If one can have tangible results, maybe working a little longer is not a bad thing...unless you don't live long enough to enjoy them. Like anything else, it is a crapshoot.

Hopefully most here are able to do some basic planning and not jump ship without sufficient funds.

I don’t think the millions living in someone’s basement we’re the living below their means type and investing for the rainy days ahead.

I meet a ton of people who decided 62 or 65 was when it was retirement time, whether they could afford it or not. Probably 90% of my customer/prospect base are folks who don't get a dime outside of SS for income. I don't understand how able-bodied people can live like that. If you can't afford to retire, then you can't retire. Living out one's twilight years in abject poverty has to really suck.

That’s great. It’s never a bad thing if it’s what you want. Unfortunately I’ve had several friends that kept putting off retirement and passed away still at work. One was 57, the other 64. Both had more than enough to live well.

And as I’ve mentioned before, my mother passing at a early age probably also influenced my decision. I know I started planning for retirement back when I was 40. And my wife was a good saver and also on board.

I agree...but always assumed that if I suddenly died before I retired, I would not know the difference (plus my surviving spouse would be better cared for). Most of my family has died very young (generally from things they caused themselves) or lived to be very old (many in their late 90s or early 100s). My wife and I seem to be of the more heathy/well-preserved, so wanted to make sure we just did not run out. The vacation home can become a primary (downsize) home or just another investment (diversification). Yes, lots of folks that I know that are my age or younger seem to be passing on (not Covid). A guy I knew at work just died (younger than me). He retired last summer at 62. I am not sure if he was sick when he retired or not.

I use to track my spending for years, and also my investments. I had a pretty good idea on what I needed to have saved to maintain my lifestyle. I don’t bother tracking my spending anymore, but I do keep track on the investments.

My wife and I have a very nice lifestyle, we don’t worry about money. Things worked out well for us and we are happy that we did. We would have several more million in the bank if we worked another 10-15 years. But it has been worth it to us so far.

I’m now getting ready to turn 65 and have to figure out what Medicare supplement to sign up for. I don’t get the ,your too young to be retired anymore.

Sounds like you chose well...but also planned well. Congrats. I hope mine turns out the same.

Especially all of you Californians!

DL

Yep...that's why I drive a Honda Fit. Don't want to spend my 10 mil. :rolleyes:

Oh man - BEWARE! I have known several men who lost their way when they retired. Loss of purpose seems to be a big issue, and that concerns me. And a few started drinking too much etc. as, for the first time in their adult lives, they were bored.

And I know people say you've got to have a hobby. And I'm sure that's true. But how many hours of the day/how many days a month are you likely to work on that hobby?
Others say they'll travel, but even if you get away for a couple of months a year (and that's a lot of away time), there's still ten more months at home.

Just a few things to ponder....