Dh has suddenly discovered FIRE

[eleighj]

It’s not that he expects me to also “retire”, it’s that he refuses to put my income into his calculations. On the theory that if he has retired, I should also be free to simply announce one day that I am not going to work any more.

I left my classroom, while my students were engaged in a project, to carry a heavy object down three flights of marble stairs. I told my (teen) class “i’ll be back in a couple of minutes. If i’m not, I probably fell down the stairs, so maybe you should tell the teacher next door.” And one of the boys said “or you found something better to do with your life and left.” I smiled at him and said “highly unlikely.” He responded ”hey, I can hope for good things for you.”

Sounds like a good plan. I "retired from corporate life" over two years ago. It was the best thing I could do. My wife kept her private music lessons going for nearly two years afterwards mostly to get her last group graduated from high school. Now she is retired except for a few music gigs here and there. You and your husband are going to find that retirement evolves which is a good thing. From your description of the plan, it is very conservative, "which is good", but I bet that you both will find that you may have more than you think as things progress.

Good luck.

[catherine]

I left my classroom, while my students were engaged in a project, to carry a heavy object down three flights of marble stairs. I told my (teen) class “i’ll be back in a couple of minutes. If i’m not, I probably fell down the stairs, so maybe you should tell the teacher next door.” And one of the boys said “or you found something better to do with your life and left.” I smiled at him and said “highly unlikely.” He responded ”hey, I can hope for good things for you.”

So cute! Kids are great.. I'm sure they love you.

I'm jealous of your DHs Saul/Paul conversion. Not sure if I'll ever be that lucky. I keep reminding DH that I'm not interested in working until I'm 80. I don't mind just doing my consulting things until it dribbles away, whenever that might be. In fact, once I've sold the NJ house and become eligible for full retirement benefits at age 70, I don't mind picking up 5-10 projects a year, as long as people hire me. what the heck. It's hard to turn down decent money for a job I can pretty much design around my own schedule, working from home. I just don't like the "have to" part.

I think you guys sound like you're in a place where you truly don't have too many "have-to's". That's wonderful. Congratulations to your husband for wanting to turn on the heat for the last mile before retirement.

[Teacher Terry]

Catherine, it is really different working from home p.t. then working f.t. in a office. Seems much less like work. Getting rid of your NJ house is going to be the key to your success.

[Chicken lady]

So I am getting more clues about where this is coming from. Last night he went out with friends from work. All his work friends are older. I shall name them alphabetically.

Al and Bob are retiring by the end of the year. Chris is retiring next year. Dan has reached the point where he is simply evaluating each day wether or not he wants to come back tomorrow. His plan is literally to one day toss his few personal items into a plastic bag, hand in his ID and tell his boss he quits. Possibly mid task. Eric is going to work until he dies. He has no family but an out of state brother he last saw at their other brother’s funeral 6 years ago, and a girlfriend with a full and independent life. He took 48 days off last year.

we have been talking more. Dh wants to work from home more and take more days off. He is also thinking about asking for transfer to a less demanding (lower ranked) job in the next three years (like, I don’t want to be store manager anymore, I just want to stock shelves) only in his case the equivalent of shelf stocking could be done from home. Or any location with internet.

[Teacher Terry]

Great idea for him to downshift into working at home with less stress. His friends leaving made him seriously think about it.