View Full Version : today really IS the first day of the rest of my life
Blackdog Lin
10-3-12, 10:47am
It's official. I am now, for the first time since September of 1976, unemployed, albeit in a good way: I am now officially retired. It feels wonderful, even though I don't think it has quite sunk in yet.
I am blessed in so many ways right now: that I am able to retire from the rat race relatively young (55); that I will be getting a (modest, but livable) pension for the rest of my life; that I have good health right now to be able to enjoy my time; that I have DH's support with my decision, and his help in adjusting our lifestyle toward a fixed-income one; and really, most of all, I feel blessed to have found THIS forum, for without this forum's ideas and support, we would have never gotten to the financial position where I could retire this early.
I joined the earlier incarnation of this Simple Living Forum back, I don't know, in the early oughts? And I was made immediately to feel at home, among friends. I took the ideas and support from everyone on here and used them to not only get us out of debt, but stay out of debt. The same ideas and support helped me learn the joys of living simpler, of "making do" without deprivation, and to learn the difference between needs and wants. Truly, this forum helped me "rewire" my brain, I think - I have slowly over the years learned a new way of thinking about how to live, a new way to be happy without being bogged down in all the consumerism.
(seriously, y'all need to take a bow. I truly thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for this community and all I've been able to take away from it.)
My answer to the standard question I've been getting for the last week: "well, I have lots of ideas for what I shall do in retirement, but no real plans." I intend to make this up as I go along.
And a question: I'm an internet addict (but I don't think of it as a time sink - I think of it as learning time). Would appreciate any ideas for frugal living/retirement living blogs and the like. I like Mr. Money Mustache, and Early Retirement Extreme, but they are younger people, with kids and the attendant lifestyle - I haven't been able to find any good blogs/sites that are more geared to a frugal living/empty-nester/retirement kind of thing.
And off I go toward the next stage of this life! Thanks y'all.....
Congratulations Blackdog! Quite the achievement!!
Retirement is great! I have been enjoying it for 7 years now. You will too.
Free at last! Congratulations.
catherine
10-3-12, 12:11pm
And a question: I'm an internet addict (but I don't think of it as a time sink - I think of it as learning time). Would appreciate any ideas for frugal living/retirement living blogs and the like. I like Mr. Money Mustache, and Early Retirement Extreme, but they are younger people, with kids and the attendant lifestyle - I haven't been able to find any good blogs/sites that are more geared to a frugal living/empty-nester/retirement kind of thing.
Wow!! Congratulations! While I haven't retired yet, I do remember when I quit the corporate rat race to start my own consultancy, I woke up on my first day of "unemployment" and literally, literally got out of bed and jumped up and down for joy in my bedroom. If anyone had seen me...
As far as your request for blogs for simple living in "the second half of life".. hmm, is there an opportunity there?
Congratulations! Well done!
Would appreciate any ideas for frugal living/retirement living blogs and the like.
I am certain that others will have excellent ideas for you, but I think that you should put part of that time to having fun. Play healthy-mind games, you know, keep it all juiced up. And, let us not forget mah jong!
Congrats Lin - I think you'll love it!! It seems to take about a year to sort of get the hang of it and make adjustments from work to play (I'm STILL making those :-)!) but once you figure out what it is you want to do with all that free time (and the beauty of retirement is that you can change what you do with your free time as often as you want!) it will be great!
No blog or website info about retirement persay, but you might want to look up websites that focus on individual interests you have rather then focus of retirement issues. Once you are actually retired, then most of those become less important then focusing on doing all those things you want to do each day.
Gardenarian
10-3-12, 2:51pm
Wow, that's a huge step. Best of fortune to you on this new life journey!
Congratulations!!!! Welcome to the most amazing part of your life!
Blackdog Lin, that is great! Congratulations! At least for me there was sort of a "honeymoon period" after retirement where I just kicked back and regrouped and reprogrammed. Then things just seem to fall in place for interesting and enjoyable things. I find list making for projects, travel, bucket list types, and fun things to be helpful.
I haven't looked for a while, but the only early retirement forums I ran across were pretty much money and finance based. Maybe you could start a blog or forum! I am in the slow lane on technology stuff and only recently learned that you can make money with blogs and have thought a little about it. Though money doesn't seem to be a big motivator these days.
Congrulations !!!!
Yeah, I know that is totally misspelled but we once bought a "congratulations" cake for my niece's dance recital and THAT is how the bakery spelled it on her cake. So, ever since then, that is our family way of saying congratulations. A friend said we should have returned it and complained but we preferred just to laugh and turn it into yet another amusing incident in family lore.
What a happy day for you!! Oh what a feeling!!
That is phenomenal. Congratulations to you!
Blackdog Lin
10-3-12, 8:18pm
Thank you for your good wishes. I appreciate it more than I can say, as you are my internet family. I post sometimes on a couple of other forums, but this is the one I feel is truly my "family", the one I come back to day after day.
catherine and Rogar: interesting and Mmmm indeed, that there are no recommendations of a blog or site for an empty-nester/simple living/retirement kind of thing. I think I shall put some serious thought into this internet lack. Perhaps I could learn to fill this empty space....
Simplemind
10-3-12, 8:27pm
First let me say congrats! I am a couple of months ahead of you. I went at 55 back in June against well meaning advice that I would regret it. So far I don't have one regret. I have spent my time looking for balance because I was a workaholic and didn't want to replace the hours with big projects so I couldn't tell where one phase stopped and the other started.
I left thinking I should still keep my hat in the ring and every month I have asked myself, if they asked me to come back part time would I say yes? I can honestly say that so far I would say no no no! I love this time of discovering who I am with no financial responsibilities. Being in the same position I think you are going to enjoy it too. I have also wondered how to network with other early retirees. I miss the youth aspect of work and find that many that I run into of the retired set are older and retired from activity as well.
Volunteering in a community of special interest to you is a great way is a great way to meet likeminded people who are peers in age. Many of the older adults are stepping back from organizations and younger members are stepping in and causing a good revitlization. Nie to see when it works.
rosarugosa
10-3-12, 8:53pm
Congratulations, Lin - that's exciting news indeed!
Tussiemussies
10-3-12, 9:31pm
Congratulations, glad for you!:). For a frugality website, you might want to look at dollar stretcher. Don't remember if they have forums or not but a lot of interesting articles...
Wonderful news, Blackdog Lin. 35+ years of work is enough for anyone, so enjoy all your free time!
Congratulations, Blackdog Lin! I agree, 35+ years of work is PLENTY, and you've just identified a great niche in the "blogosphere" that you might end up pioneering. Whatever you do, enjoy yourself! Mazel tov!
Good for you, BL! You're gonna love it.
I'm not officially retired myself (not 55, for one thing; not quite ready to think of myself that way, for another), but I have not been very busy with my photography business since I left work in May. A lot of it has been that "honeymoon period" Rogar mentioned. It's a big change from waking up to an alarm five days a week and rushing through a day of chaos. I teeter-totter between taking the time to finish projects which have been waiting (sometimes for years) and doing pretty much nothing just because I can. After four months off, I am starting to get the itch to do something more structured, though it's looking more like "I can do this and get paid for it" rather than "Gotta make money. Gotta make money."
So take the time you need and enjoy it! There still are lots of things you can do.
Lin that is great news, so glad to hear it!
Ok, what are you doing for health insurance? That's the big stumbling block for me in getting out.
Lin that is great news, so glad to hear it!
Ok, what are you doing for health insurance? That's the big stumbling block for me in getting out.
If I remember correctly, BDL was a government employee so probably has low cost health insurance along with her public pension. Of course, at least in Calif, they have recently changed (or are in the process of changing) public employee retirement benefits. But I think that's just for new-hires and wouldn't effect current retirees or employees. I know they changed the retirement age from 55 (50 for public safety employees like I was) to 65 or maybe 67 (63 for public safety employees I think) to be more inline with Soc Security. I also think that theretirement health insurance benefits have changed too in that you now have to pay a larger portion.
I had union-negotiated health and dental care when I retired at 47, with no monthly payment until a few years ago when I had to start kicking in something like $13 a month. I used it very little, being generally healthy, but I'm glad it was there.
ApatheticNoMore
10-5-12, 1:41pm
Yea, I don't know how to feel confident about the health care stuff much less what health care will be in 10 years (won't be old enough for Medicare), in 20 years (still won't be old enough for Medicare!) etc..
It seems to me there are two factors working massively against any possibility of early retirement: 1) premiums naturally increase as you get older, this has always been so 2) premiums are increasing every year even for a given age (even if you can work around the 1st, try to work around this as well - that premiums are not only increasing due to your age increasing but are in a run away cost explosion for all ages - and project that forward a decade, two decades - really has anyone projected current healthcare premium rises ahead that long, just graphed it out?). Although at a certain point it becomes more than the market will bear I think. And that doesn't even get into the possibility of developing a preexisting. I certainly have come to think that a private sector career is a big (irrecoverable probably) mistake to make in terms of wanting to retire early. They never told us this when we were in high school and college though. It's truly unbelievable but they never did. I've never worked anywhere where I would be eligible for healthcare benefits after retirement (beyond CORBA of course).
So I've come more to the conclusion that you better try to like your work as best you can .... it's a more realistical plan, I don't wish it was thus, I just think that healthcare alone especially in say 10 or 20 years poses such a giant black hole of uncertainty.
All that said, jobs are just not to be taken that seriously, if you are perhaps inevitably in it for a marathon, no point burning yourself out like it was a sprint. It's a long run, no point worrying about temporary crises, which will almost certainly pass.
Blackdog Lin
10-7-12, 12:38pm
Thanking the rest of ya' for the good wishes.
Simplemind: you said something that resonated with me: "taking the time to discover who I am". Yeah, that's one of the main things I'm looking forward to (hope I end up liking who that is!) :) For 32 years my identity has been consumed with my job; even my off hours were consumed with things like how can I get enough sleep for my next shift, or do I have enough time to run those errands before I have to be back at work, or how bad is tomorrow gonna be and do I need to do anything to prepare for it, weatherwise etc.? Other than my one- or two-week vacations, I never felt I had the freedom to "turn it off". Really looking forward to living life on MY terms, not my employer's.
Iris Lily: Spartana was right, I worked for that huge "quasi-governmental" agency, and thus have guaranteed health insurance into retirement, though I don't know how low-cost it would be considered. This year as an employee I've been paying $300/mo. for our family plan, in retirement it jumps to $430/mo. And of course the cost will keep rising. Personally I think some pretty serious inflation is gonna continue as it has been for the last few years (on basic necessities like food, energy, health care). My plan to deal with inflation is to hunker down even more than we do now (there's lots of room in our budget for cutting back without feeling too deprived), and enjoy even more frugal/simple living. Brainstorming for ways to live well on less money is kind of a hobby of mine - I enjoy the challenge, weird though it may be. :)
Tomorrow I'm gonna put in for my first volunteer opportunity: our small town is remodeling a former National Guard building for a community center and needs volunteers. I have no skills, but I have a good back and I'd make a great gopher (go-fer?) and all-around stoop-laborer, so I'm gonna at least let them know that I am available for any non-skilled labor they may need. Kinda looking forward to it - hope they can use me!
Simplemind
10-7-12, 1:31pm
Blackdog you have perfectly described my situation as well. Government 24/7. I was still somewhat on duty even when I wasn't there. I was available by phone or e-mail for questions or just somebody wanting to give me a heads up on what I was going to be walking into when I went back. There is a lot of adrenaline associated with that type of situation and a bit of addiction to it. I still think about it every day and people keep in contact with me for advice etc BUT, I didn't have any idea how much of life I wasn't experiencing because that was always eclipsing everything else. It took me a couple of months to relax without feeling like I should be doing something. That job had been my identity for so long. It served a purpose and had lots of perks but now I want to identify with something else.
You will find that there is so much out there that you didn't have time to see or experience before. It will make you feel like a kid again, before all the responsibilities of life locked you in. It is very liberating even though those I left behind continue to tell me they just don't think they can let go. Retiring was the best thing I have ever done for myself.
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