Early next year, I’ll be 55, and eligible for early retirement. It’s something that we’ve been looking towards for quite long while.
It can be kind of scarey thinking about it. There’s several other guys in my work group that are a bit older than me — all of them are already over 55 — and none of them have made a definite decision about when they will be leaving. One “can’t” leave yet because he doesn’t have enough saved to keep from lowering his standard of living. Another won’t leave unless he finds another job, because he’s never “not worked.” One other has too many big bills, even though for years he had been planning to leave at 55.
I don’t have as much saved as what I would like to have, but we will have almost wverything paid off — and if you have most everything paid off, you can live on quite a bit less, if you need to. We won’t have more than one or two bills other than utilites.
I don’t need to find another job. Work is not that important to me. I plan to do without a job for at least a year. Then, if I need to, I’ll find something to suppliment the retirement pay and the disbursements from the savings.
The big step that I made today was deciding on Freedom Day. I’ve set a goal for my last day of work to be April 30. That will be the day I go back to work from 5 weeks of vacation, to do all the HR things that you need to do when you are leaving the place that you have worked for over 25 years.
Scary.
I think it’s the right thing to do.
306 days and counting.
One Response to “Retirement — one big step closer”
- durante vita Says:
June 29th, 2006 at 7:01 pm Congrats on deciding on Freedom Day! I can only imagine. Just started working full-time, graduate school too. Can’t wait to read more.
Post from one of my abandoned blogs – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine; March 2011
