patrick.net

I'm retired technically at 41. Going to Mexico in a couple weeks. I'm spoiled and lucky though. Wife has a private sector job that pays mid 6 figures. She can work remotely. They don't count vacation days. Small company employee wise but big revenue.

Summers are golf and entertainment. Most of her clients are now our friends. Basically she doesn't have to work hard. Pays for stuff with the business money and just pops in "when are you gonna do work" and they do it. I'd argue she's retired, she just has to answer to people weekly.

I still work 12 hours or so a week. Not for a lot. But gets me out of the house and it's not with my ping pong group though I do that weekly if there are no kids sports. Haven't golfed as much this year as I'd like. Have a cruise for spring break. Probably go to MT in March for a concert and snowboarding solo. Wife will almost certain sit down and plan something for MLK weekend so the kids miss the least amount of school.

That's the hard part of being semi retired with kids. Travel is more difficult as they get older. The teachers get pissed. So does the school. The factor of jealousy in our lives is massive though. That would be one drawback. Your peers will be nice to you, but secretly hate you and take the occasional jab at you. You need a good friend network or it might be more stressful. Family that's not as successful will hate you and again be nice.

I have bad knees from athletics. I want to enjoy life when I'm somewhat in good shape. Enjoy time with the kids. 55+ and on I don't imagine will be pleasant physically. I'm going to enjoy the hell out of it now. I'm trying to get my kids to $20k before they graduate high school. Invest it all. I'm going to open them Roth accounts. Stack those first as an insurance policy they can pull out the gains after 5 years with no penalty. I plan more for them than myself.

@gabbar I agree with that screenshot completely.

For years, while sitting in stupid meetings which were wasting everyone's time so that a manager could justify his job, I would think about just getting up and leaving. What kept me there? Only the need for a certain amount of money, just enough to cover my likely expenses for the rest of my life. My savings kept going up and amount I needed to retire kept getting smaller as I had less time left to live. Then a few years ago I found I had enough, and I quit. I don't regret it at all. Not living in great luxury, but I have time to do what I want like working more on this site, collecting memes, reading, and printing genealogy books (see https://webfam.net/ for that project of mine) and that has all been great.

Well, you need to save up enough money to live a comfortable retirement, so usually that means you have to work.

I kind of retired in my 20’s. After college I didn’t want a stressful “adult” life, so I retired to San Diego and worked as a lab rat at an academic research organization and then a biotech company. I was only supposed to take a break for a couple of years, but somehow it stretched to 8. The academic lab job was a breeze - 5 hours of work got paid for 8. Cool people. Lived on the beach in a cheap studio apartment and took a bus to work that went right down the coast to Torrey Pines where I got off. Even the biotech company was pretty non-stressful and paid a little better. I had very non-serious friends - deadheads, anarchists, druggies, surfers, drug dealers, folks who jumped bail and were on the lam, but also post-docs from Oz who would always put me under the table with their endless beer drinking. I windsurfed, took up guitar, and smoked a ton of weed. Played a lot of tennis and got quite good at it.

But I had this nagging internal voice that I had to make money and get a career, so took the easy way out and got an MBA, full time, two years. And then got on the career treadmill, got married, yada, yadda. But I look back on those early days with a great deal of fondness. When I retire, I doubt that my life would be like that again. For one, my wife would not allow it. :>))

I work it out so I could retire at 38 (paid-for nice house, enough passive income to pay bills, plus savings) yet when I was able to I did not feel like retiring. Being financially independent did mean I could be selective about where I wanted to work.

You can dream your life away, but the body ages and before you know it, that nest egg hole nags. You can't make the world go away forever. Unless you are a trust fund kid, gotta buckle down and at least try to get those savings in line.

However, even in Santa Cruz, there are the old addled brain damaged hippies and mentally impaired who scrape by on very little and use all public assistance. The factory that manufactures the old gray beard long haired dudes cranked them out by the millions and it drives my wife crazy, she can't stand them.

For such an expensive place, she thinks most of the men are unattractive, the perpetual adolescents. There is one lady in the Section 8 apartments down the street who wheels out every day (weather permitting) in her wheelchair and chain smokes all day in the yard facing the street. That being said, most of the stragglers in Santa Cruz have some kind of outpatient money when you scratch the surface and talk with them. Trust fund kids and inheritors always like to portray their advantages as breezy insouciance and superiority while pretending to be 'humble'.

There are still rent controlled trailers in the county areas, and Guv will send out handy man once or twice a year and replace appliances every five years for free.

You can tell the homeless and old druggies by the way they have that stiff gaited Parkinsonism shuffle from long term drug abuse, you can spot them a mile away from their body language.

HeadSet says

I work it out so I could retire at 38 (paid-for nice house, enough passive income to pay bills, plus savings) yet when I was able to I did not feel like retiring. Being financially independent did mean I could be selective about where I wanted to work.

I think you're one of the few younger people on patnet with a pension? Former Airforce? My dad and uncle have those and uncle has an additional pension from the city of SA for doing IT work after AF retirement.

I tell them it's like they are multi-millionaires. I'm barely a multi but I don't feel like I could retire without at least one more. At least not this young being mid-gen-X. I GTFO out CA a couple of years ago too.

SoTex says

I think you're one of the few younger people on patnet with a pension? Former Airforce? My dad and uncle have those and uncle has an additional pension from the city of SA for doing IT work after AF retirement.

Not my super rich uncle, but another got the double dip pension delight. Superintendent of a school district and county president. He's been making $400k/yr doing nothing for about 20 years. His wife was a teacher as well. Another $90k/yr. Kids are grown and successful. House paid off.

Weird thing is they don't travel or do anything. And I'm not joking. They do nothing but sit at the house and I think read or something. They're likely sitting on $20M unless they've been giving it to my cousins or grandkids. They're healthy enough, but going back to the OP, they don't do anything because they're old. Doesn't invest because there's no more income besides SS money. That's funny money for them. He could take some risky gambles if he wanted. He is about 75 I believe.

It would be fun to be old with tons of money and just toss $50k on red at a roulette table and not worry about it as long as you have discipline to walk after the first loss or walk after 2-3 wins in a row.