Retirement sounds great till you try it. The expression is “even your garage can’t get any cleaner”. This refers to the boredom retirement can be for some. The solution that I found was a part time job, not for the money, but doing something I enjoyed. You no longer have the pressure of a “real” job. The best job that you will ever have is the job that you really don’t need.
Honestly, it scares me a bit. I’ve known men who retired and just… stopped. Sat in their chair, or maybe went for a little shuffling walk. Dead within a few years.
I could probably retire now, finances wise, but I enjoy my job and don’t know what I’d do all day without some structure.
I saw my retired parents waste away in front of the TV every day. As mentioned before … the best job is the one that you don’t need. So besides enjoying my part time “get out of the house” job there are other benefits. I save money and stay healthy by only drinking on Friday and Saturday. These of course are not my work days. I also don’t go out for meals during the week. I have retired neighbors that seem to spend 5 or 6 days a week out for lunch or dinner and boozing everyday. That would never work for me
Doing stuff is important. But I have enough hobbies that I think I could stop working and not get bored.
Barring societal collapse I believe I will be able to retire, but that’s only because I’ve gotten extraordinarily lucky in life.
Nope, never. My retirement plan is a ditch with a nice view of the Rockies in Colorado and a bottle of gin on a cold winter night. Everything I’ve saved into (SS, TSP, retirement accounts) will inevitably disappear before I can access them/hit the age requirements. I don’t trust the system at all (I didn’t trust it before the election outcome either). I’m fucked. We’re all fucked. Might as well live it up now while I still can.
No, and crying
If I ever get off my ass and actually make all these games, maybe. If the ideas are as good as I hope they are.
I don’t think think I’ll ever “retire” in the traditional sense.
My thought was to always have a severe mental breakdown around 50 and run off to the woods to build a log cabin and grow my own food. My wife knows of this plan but I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s a joke. It’s not.
Yes.
By Planning.
I didn’t think it would work for the first 10 years. I just wanted to eat better cat food in retirement.
Pursuing higher paid jobs when I can. Changing jobs periodically. Pursuing higher pay until the pay asked for my soul. Then stepped back, changed jobs, and make way more for less.
Paying down debt when possible. Building up to a constant dollar figure of debit and investment per month. Growing that when I can. I now save 40%+ of my income.
Keeping my spending low by prioritizing my time on free things. Prioritizing the money I spend on high pact purchases.
Planning with 4% rule. Works out to needing 300 times your monthly spend in savings. Driving that number down. A $15 a month expense requires $4,500 invested to support.
A great market runup.
I am glad I did too. My friends are dying. One’s 40’s are rough.
Yup, sometime in the next year or two I’ll get laid off, then I’ll just mooch off my spouse.
Sure. I mean death still comes one to a customer and I’m no different.
No. Retirement age is already higher than the age I’ll probably reach, considering hereditary bad stuff. Aside from that, I have no skills and keep getting fired. Not to mention our planet will be on fire by then anyway.
I’m lucky enough to be a state employee so I’ll still have OPERS when Social Security is annihilated next year, but I’m not sure that’ll be enough.
I started maxing my Roth Ira out when I was earning $10/hr. Avoid spending money on things that don’t literally matter and save for the things that do. Pay attention to where every single dollar/pound/Euro/shekel goes. Stay out of debt. Keep drug/alcohol use reasonable. Most of the time folks who are concerned about retiring/money have no idea how much they spend on what. Saving for retirement is easy once you start doing it and get used to it, but you need to start early and you need to invest in the stock market. Avoiding chronic illness or accidents or long periods where you aren’t earning income are probably necessary too. Staying out of legal trouble is probably necessary as well.
Yes, as a Swede I’d say we have way greater chances of reaching retirement, but it still comes down to saving by yourself if you want to live reasonably while retired.
I set myself a “spending budget” every month. After salary comes in i move what goes to bills and such expenses into a separate account. I divide whats left into 50/50, one half into savings the other to leisure. My savings account is set up to make long term investment into stock groups managed by the bank (unsure if there’s an english word for this, we håll them “fonder”). Usually i dont spend all the leisure money either way because i rarely purchase things and whats left when next months salary comes around also goes into savings.
I’ve been blessed by my parentes to start off with some savings so saving by myself once i started working was also allt easier.
To properly secure your future you need to earn enough money to even be able to start saving. Truly a “society” moment.
Yep. My wife and I are in our thirties and have good whole life insurance policies that will supplement our retirement accounts nicely in our old age. I’ve been paying into mine for almost two decades (maybe longer, my parents started it for me and locked in good rates when I was young), my wife’s is newer. We also both have matching retirement accounts and are making sure we hit our matching totals each paycheck to draw as much from our employers as we can.
It’s not ideal, but with good planning (and stable income) you can still do well. Now, stable income is the important part. I’m a software developer, my wife works for a non-profit, so my income is generally a bit more stable than hers.
I recommend finding a financial advisor. Our life insurance guy is great and because he gets commission on the life insurance plans he doesn’t charge us for advisory services (and also doesn’t try to sell us on other stuff, he actually recommended we NOT move our old 401ks from other jobs over to him because we’d end up paying him more than we’d make, he recommended we roll them into our current employer plans).
Intentional heroin overdose.
Nope
