Or do you not intend to? Or have you already? Retirement is coming up for me in a few years, so I’m considering my options.
Whatever the fuck I feel like that day. Maybe some gardening, maybe some backpacking, maybe just laying on the couch and fucking around on my phone all day. The best part of this mythical retirement I’m teased with, is that I wouldn’t have any obligations on a day-to-day basis.
Not die. But that’s a tough ask as my current retirement plan is unaliving.
Yell at clouds
Not starve or be homeless.
OK Boomer has entered the chat. Seems most comments are from those looking forward. I left the paycheck life in 2019. Except for 2020 (catching up on every episode of The Office), I’ve been having a measured good time. I have lucky stars to thank. Got married in ’85. Adopted a daughter in ’91. Wife and I inherited a home when my mom died. We spent 30 years saving for retirement instead of paying a mortgage/rent. Was self-employed the whole time in marketing communications. Wife was a mid-level manager in health services, retired 2 years before me. We spent decades living below our means. I threw the towel in at 62. I think being self-employed (and a one-man show) prepared me for my after work life. I wasn’t going to miss the office life and friends because I didn’t have any, in the conventional sense. These days I work in the garden, getting dirt in my fingernails. I teach QiGong and Tai Chi pro-bono to a dedicated senior group at a local park, and I’m getting a similar gig with the city rec services to do the same. I’m a small-time landlord (one-unit granny flat behind the house). I recently transitioned from Mac to Windows (sorry Linux users, I know…) with great success. I drive a 25 year old stick-shift Toyota truck and hope it makes it to 300K. At 66, I exercise almost every day, and while I could be convinced to take a nap in the afternoon, I never do. My wife is a pickleball queen, and we manage to have lives together and apart. We both have pretty good health for oldies. Several of my peers have died recently, and the end of the road looms closer for me than ever before. My life is devoted to staying healthy and paying it forward as long as I can keep it together.
This was a good read! I’m also lucky in that I’m part of an actual retirement plan through the state, although I am also putting money away as well. I actually plan on working, but not in my current industry. Maybe give different things a try and just focus on enjoying myself.
Least ok boomer boomer I’ve ever seen
Retire?
Ha, good one
Camping, traveling, hiking and going places that are enjoyable and accessible with my wife and dogs.
Gardening / homesteading in such a way to live as self-sufficiently as possible.
My way I want to give back in retirement is working as a volunteer urban/wildland canine search and rescue team.
I train my dogs in scent/detection sports and tracking now so I’m prepared to understand how to do the real deal once I have time to volunteer in retirement. My current job is in a related field, so I already have many of the other skills and certifications that would be needed, but I don’t work with dogs for my job.
If I need extra income in retirement, I’ll probably get into offering dog training for detection/tracking.
I train my dogs in scent/detection sports and tracking now
I’ve been training our puppy in scent work. It’s pretty fun. He gets so excited when he finds his little birch tree oil soaked cotton ball in a perforated tin.
I’ll keep myself in a low key part time job. I’ve read studies that retirees die sooner if they don’t feel like they have a purpose.
Create a better purpose than slinging hours for dollars, my dude.
haha, retire. as long as we’re dreaming, i guess i’ll spend my time riding unicorns on the moon.
but seriously, if this is somehow really an option for you… i’d teach community education classes. art, programming, basic cooking, whatever. i’ve met a lot of great friends in community ed. i think it’d be rad to contribute back.
I talked to one person near retirement age who talked about climbing down the corporate ladder. The idea is to take jobs of progressively less responsibility and more vacation and use the time to transfer knowledge to junior staff.
Use the money to fund better and longer vacations.
Jobs with less responsibility typically have less vacation time too, and pay a lot less money.
It depends on the industry. In the kind of industry where someone is running an office department, they can negotiate for more time off and less responsibility in return for a lower salary.
“when”? Lmfao it’s a big fat “IF” for those of us 30 and under, buddy.
36 here, I don’t expect to retire
40, not planning on it
51 here. I haven’t picked out a grave site, so I don’t have any idea where I’ll be when I can’t work any more.
J/k. Compost me or something. Don’t waste any acreage remembering me. Point being I guess I’ll retire when no one will pay me for anything, and I hope I’m still around for a bit after that but I doubt it.
Play video games. Make myself go outside for twenty minutes a day. Do some stretches as exercise. Hope my daughter visits me.
Travel a little, volunteer in the community, use any (if any) excess funds to try and better the things around me, cook more, adopt pets.
I want to grow enough killer weed to tank the local economy.
Sounds like a job / work to me
I can’t even conceive of that. I’d sit and rot until I died. I’ll be working in some capacity until death.
The trick is to work for yourself instead of for someone else. This is what hobbies are for obviously those can be difficult to achieve under the current system of work for literally every goddamn fucking hour of your life other than sleep and eating but I assure you there is plenty of fulfillment to be found doing something for yourself and sometimes depending on what it is you find a passion for you can even turn it into a little side hustle job to make some extra money
I’m afraid that I’ve never had a hobby, I don’t derive pleasure from the completion of tasks. Work is the only thing I really do.
