[masraum]

What a great thread (with lots of depressing posts).

I wish we were better off financially than we are. I'm going to put the blame on us for that. We should have been more frugal. I'm not anticipating retiring early, but then I enjoy what I do, and it's a very mentally stimulating job with good people for a company that treats it's employees pretty well. I think I'd need to win the lottery to retire early. What I realized many years ago (when I was still an hourly employee) was that taking time off is (or can be expensive). When I was young, I realized that if I worked a day and made $200/day, that if I took a day off to do something fun with the missus, it was very easy to spend $200 which really meant that I was $400 "down". These days I'm salaried and we are unlikely to spend what I make in a day, but retiring early and traveling and doing what we want could get very expensive very fast. I'll keep working and hopefully won't be laid off or retired before I'm ready to go to be replaced with younger, cheaper folks.