Retired? Why?

Tom Young

Tom Young

Member
Location
Illinois/Florida
Hmmm...
Because it was time?
Didn't want the stress of working?
Had enough money?
An offer you couldn't refuse?
Spousal pressure?
Fired? EGAD!
Wanted to get out of the way of younger workers? (no kidding?)
Health?

So, in my case... after working for major corporations, went into business for myself. Small business working out of my home, with two of my sons. After thee years decided to "go big" and began serious plans to expand. Loans, new location and new equipment plan in place, when the cancer diagnosis came in. The thought of leaving my bride with a big debt and a business she didn't understand made us think about retiring.
No possible way... at first... 53 years old, and at least 10 years before Social Security.
So... in 1989, before internet retirement planning calculators... began a many dozen page analysis (big green spreadsheets) to see what would happen if we retired.
... cut to results:
Colon Cancer operation was succesful, we retired (very frugally)... and through very good luck, remain solvent today, with high hopes for another ten years or so..

Not millionaires, but have learned how to be happy, comfortable, and worry free.

So if YOU are retired, wanna share how, or why?:confused:
 
I was a very happy teacher and I always said that I would go on teaching until it stopped being fun.
That day came when I was 55. The joy went out of it all of a sudden and I decided that I was more needed by the three old ladies in my life: my mum, mother in law and maiden aunt. After retirement I dabbled in a bit of contract work in the education/curriculum field always with the proviso that I needed flexibility so that I could look after my elders.

The crunch came when our government introduced a goods and services tax (GST) and I was then required to submit tenders for work rather than just claim an hourly rate, so I decided to pull the plug.

I've been happily retired ever since and my definition of retirement is "doing what I like, when I like and if I like." I'm a volunteer but I'm no martyr. This week I'm preparing pot plants and cooking cakes for our church spring fair but this is the last year for the plants. It's getting too hard for my joints but more to the point I've lost interest and it's not so much fun as it was. Cooking is still very interesting and fulfilling so that will continue for a while yet.
 
Because it was time?
Didn't want the stress of working?
Had enough money?
An offer you couldn't refuse?
Spousal pressure?
Fired? EGAD!
Wanted to get out of the way of younger workers? (no kidding?)
Health?
Click to expand...

All in red, mostly 4. A big fat redundancy offer at exactly the right time in life. I retired at 48 as like Warri, I had an 'oldie' in need of more care than I could manage on shift work so I snatched the offer and ran. Nothing even approaching regret about it, can't imagine why I bothered working at all..... oh yeah, the welfare wasn't all that great back then.
 
I was feeling guilty about not giving 100%, my mind just wasn't into the job anymore. Also got an offer I couldn't refuse and was lucky enough to get a good pension.

Another reason was that I wanted to still be healthy when I retired so did when I didn't have any issues and still don't so I do what I want, when I want.
 
Why? Was in the 'retirement zone' and got tired of the 8 to 5.
Not planning to jet set around the world or anything, so a quiet simple life works for me.
 
Warrigal said:
... This week I'm preparing pot plants and cooking cakes for our church spring fair but this is the last year for the plants ...
Click to expand...

They finally figured out they were illegal, huh? :p

I usually refer to myself as "semi-retired", at least in the sense that I no longer teach public classes (martial arts) nor accept Chinese medicine patients. I DO have one private student left and I'm actively pursuing online business opportunities, so that's the "semi-" part.
 
Retirement isn't for me. Living alone and all my friends and family being married, I hated it. After a year of it, I became deeply depressed so I found myself a job. I don't like working all day 5 days a week, but that doesn't happen often. I would go bonkers staying in this condo all the time and volunteering just didn't do it for me. I wanted to be out and about and have money coming in at the same time.
 
Spending the majority of my working life in the building industry long before the Occ Health and Safety laws they have now, and battering my body in the process, retirement couldn't come quick enough. Besides my interest wasnt there anymore

Working for myself for the last 20+years I grew tired of trying to please customers who at times had unreal expectations to match their pocket, then there were small builders who refused to pay accounts on time or even at all, all the associated bookwork and overhead costs

Retirement finally gave me time to extensively renovate my own home, once I grew bored with taking my dogs to the park every day
 
I started working part time at the age of 16, and worked blue collar jobs all my life. I never really liked work, just did it to take care of financial obligations...no thrills there. I was glad to have a job for the last 30+ years that kept me physically and mentally active, and changed quite a bit, so not doing just one thing day after day. I drove forklift, loaded semi trucks, ran large production machinery, and did some jobs that required repetitive (fairly) heavy lifting, also had an introduction to using computers there. Lots of interaction with over the road truck drivers, so there were always different people to meet. I feel that I'm in better physical shape, than I would be behind a desk somewhere, so that's good.

I looked forward to early retirement since I was younger, I tried to save when I could and spend wisely. I live a simple life, and am happy in a pair of jeans, enjoying nature, etc. Not one for the bling, or fancy cars...never had those kinds of wants in my life. Since I didn't have children, I was able to retire at 56, and have been quietly enjoying my retirement ever since. I have no desire to work whatsoever, haven't even gotten things done around the house yet that need attention. Nice to sleep in, or stay up late when I feel like it, and nice not to have to drive to work at 5AM in a blinding snowstorm either.
 
I was a housewife and mother until my children were older, then I started working to help with the family income. After my divorce, and the children all being grown up and gone, I worked full time selling insurance. Combined Insurance is a route company, so I traveled all over several states on my route, usually putting on an average of 1000 miles a week, and living more in motel rooms than in my own home.
Later, I set up a little trailer on family property in Idaho, and found a delivery/sales job for Ruralnorthwest.com, which kept me close to home, and even though I still drove most days, at least I was home at nite.

I enjoyed having my little farm, riding my horse, and walking with my dog at nite after work, but I had not counted on my heart having problems. Ever since I was in a serious car wreck several years earlier, my heart kept getting worse with the A-fib, and heart failure, and finally, I had to give up my job when I could no longer physically do it.
Now, I live on my SS pension, and enjoy doing what I can around the house and yard.
 
I sometimes wish I could. Not that I liked it, I just keep remembering how glad I was to get out of there.

I retired at 48 so it's been a long time for me too, aaaannnd still luvin' it.
 
After a few years teaching, a few more years in the Air Force, a LOT of years in the mechanical repair business, I ended up in computer application and systems support with Australia's postal service. Computers had been my hobby since the early 1980s; I wrote software for the service station industry (maintenance history records & fuel reconciliation). The hobby had become a vocation.

Truth is, I got tired of trying to keep up with the advances in technology and operating systems. Besides, I needed more time to visit doctors (of all types). ;)
 
I'm in limbo. I cannot work, but I'm not old enough to formally be called "retired." My story echos yours.

Worked for a bunch of dinky businesses. (The largest company I worked for had less than 300 employees and I thought they were huge.) The last one was next to a place in Philly called "The Badlands." The Badlands is the worse of all the ghettos in the city. I worked two blocks from its border, but across the street were the only heroin dealers in the city. Gunfights every other week right outside my office door. Add to the peril, the owners were cheap so that door that lead to the neighborhood sidewalk was also a typical bedroom door--meaning a good slam with a foot, and it would have shattered. (Bedroom doors are not made to withstand the elements every day for decades on end.)

I was the bookkeeper for the factory, the only women, one of three office staff (not counting the four owners), and white. The kids in the neighborhood got the idea I was a rich boss. (How they got that idea, I'll never understand, since I drove a used Saturn to work every day and wore blue jeans frayed by the factory cat warming in my lap while pawing me for hours at a time.) They rocked my car. No, that's not a motion. I mean they threw rocks at my car, until they broke a window. The owners would pay for the windows. (We still have that car, and it's the only car I've ever seen with dents on all sides, including the roof, trunk and hood. lol) I decided it was time to get out, before one of those bullets landed in me. (A gunfight every other week and yet no one ever got shot. I've concluded drug dealers have to be the worst shots in the world, but the factory had bullet holes in the ceiling and on the outside walls.)

I was a paper pusher with business writing skills and the college degree in Communications, so I studied how to open up my own secretarial services during my lunch at work and at night. The kids broke another window and one night, I stayed a couple of minutes late, only to have a gang of kids no older than 12 block my way out of the driveway. No older than 12, but if looks could kill, I'd be dead. They truly scared me, but fortunately my boss caught what was happening and shooed them away.

New plan. I'd do the bookkeeping at home, and come in a couple days for a few hours. It worked for a while. (Good thing. "The Mother of all Storms" hit the east coast, Philadelphia was literally closed for a week--crippled for ten days--but I was able to keep up with the invoicing and bookkeeping, so I was the only employee paid that week.) Meanwhile, I put in 40 hours of work for them and 30 hours of work developing my side business. The boss told me to come back or they couldn't use me anymore. I was too scared to go back, so I quit. Dumb. They wanted me to quit, so they didn't have to pay my unemployment.

Jokes on them. They hired a new girl (who only worked part time, but cost the same as I cost them), so we negotiated. I was available for her, if she had any questions, and they'd back up my unemployment claim. Funny thing--apparently you're allowed to quit if there is gunfire outside your door every other week. She never called me. lol

Within six months I had enough customers in my secretarial services/resume writing/small-business marketing business to make it all right that I lost the unemployment benefits. Another 6 months, and I hit the black for the business. Stupid me. No Internet back then and no AFLAC duck to tell me a one-person business ought to have disability insurance. The same month I hit "profit," I had a simple gall bladder operation. Something went wrong, but no one is supposed to wake up with more pain in her back then where the incisions were. Chronic, hard-core pain (worse than the gallstones passing through), I couldn't lean over anymore, which killed the possibility of lifting huge boxes of paper to type in the addresses on each of those letters into the database and keep the living room clean for customers coming whenever. I lost my health, my gall bladder, and my business in the summer of 1999.

It took 4 months for doctors to even believe me that I was in more pain after the operation--not that I was taking time to recover. It took another 5 months before they started to discover some of the causes for the pain, 2.5 years to get on Disability, because no one told me they couldn't process my claim, until I stopped trying to get someone to fix me, and seven years, before a doctor finally told me the cause was probably a nicked back nerve during that operation. (Statute of limitation for malpractice is 2 years. I'm pretty sure the doctors put two and two together, before that, but didn't want to give me the ammunition to file a suit against a colleague. Little did they know, I wouldn't have sued for an enormous amount. Doctors are human. They can make mistakes. All I would have liked is to pay off the $45,000ish we still owed on the house to eliminate our mortgage.)

Two years later, a "little virus" caused my hubby to become disabled too, so our retirement money flew out the door. (The recession in the early 2000s made half of it disappear already.) We both survived our health problems. We're both disabled. He just went on to retirement SSI, and I'm still on disability.

We have enough to live on, but not enough to take care of our home too. My new plan is to sell a novel I'm working on. (If things work out right, I'll make $3000 advance. If things work out well, it's the first in a series and we keep getting royalties.)

Not the "retirement" I wanted, but we must make do.
 
Warrigal said:
I was a very happy teacher and I always said that I would go on teaching until it stopped being fun.
That day came when I was 55. The joy went out of it all of a sudden and I decided that I was more needed by the three old ladies in my life: my mum, mother in law and maiden aunt. After retirement I dabbled in a bit of contract work in the education/curriculum field always with the proviso that I needed flexibility so that I could look after my elders.

The crunch came when our government introduced a goods and services tax (GST) and I was then required to submit tenders for work rather than just claim an hourly rate, so I decided to pull the plug.

I've been happily retired ever since and my definition of retirement is "doing what I like, when I like and if I like." I'm a volunteer but I'm no martyr. This week I'm preparing pot plants and cooking cakes for our church spring fair but this is the last year for the plants. It's getting too hard for my joints but more to the point I've lost interest and it's not so much fun as it was. Cooking is still very interesting and fulfilling so that will continue for a while yet.
Click to expand...
I have to ask--potted plants or pot plants? Very progressive church if you're selling pot plants there. lol
 
atwhatcost said:
I'm in limbo. I cannot work, but I'm not old enough to formally be called "retired." My story echos yours.

...

Not the "retirement" I wanted, but we must make do.
Click to expand...

Amazing story, AWC. I give mega-respect to you for being a survivor.

Many moons ago I used to drive down Broad Street once a month or so to get to Chinatown. I remember being definitely underwhelmed by the Badlands. Never had any incidents like yours, but then I was driving my UAV - Urban Assault Vehicle - as I so proudly called my beefed-up Ford Bronco. It was big and black, had metal-tube "cow-pushers" all around and blacked-out windows. I think they feared me. ;)
 
Reeeespect! ... as the saying goes AWC. I bailed out at stepping over drunks and dodging panhandlers, never even heard a gunshot. I feel a total wimp now.

May fortune fall upon your novels, they'll be well written, and you've earned, and deserve a break. :)
 
atwhatcost said:
I have to ask--potted plants or pot plants? Very progressive church if you're selling pot plants there. lol
Click to expand...

:lol: Well, we are progressive in a theological sense but we are very law abiding.
I doubt that anyone in the congregation has even seen or smelled pot.
I know that I never have.
We call everything growing in a pot a 'pot plant'.
 
Warrigal said:
:lol: Well, we are progressive in a theological sense but we are very law abiding.
I doubt that anyone in the congregation has even seen or smelled pot.
I know that I never have.
We call everything growing in a pot a 'pot plant'.
Click to expand...

You need to get out more Warri.
Smells pretty okay, but I never 'inhaled'. Unless passive smoking counts. Some of the staff were usually half potted, and a trip to the back storeroom could have you emerge downright euphoric if they'd been out there.

I'm pretty sure I got a whiff of it in the last burn-off they did in the hills behind here, saved the cops digging it up I guess.
 
There are quite a few of life's experiences that I don't regret missing out.
Drug experimentation is one of them.

How alarming would it be if my work colleagues were smoking weed while on duty?
 
How alarming would it be if my work colleagues were smoking weed while on duty?
Click to expand...

They weren't alarming Warri, they were the friendliest bunch stoned you'd ever want to meet, they were useless at the job though.
It was the management springing them while I was in charge that was alarming. They didn't get to smoke it in the office while I was on, but I didn't have control over what they did outside it.

I was only an 'acting' supervisor who took over to cover vacancies and holidays etc, although I was more often supervising than being the staff it's very hard to be the boss one day and 'one of the crew' again the next. Bit of a balancing act. We didn't all do the same tasks, or have the same level of responsibility, but we did all have to work together.
Did you ever try being the Teacher one day and the student the next? Should have, sure enhances your negotiating skills and tolerance levels.
We came to an arrangement that they wouldn't smoke on the premises when I was in charge, if I didn't dob them in and get them sacked. Best we could do.

You lived in an ivory tower in teaching Warri. I worked in a job with high turnover of staff that was used as a way station for Government supported welfare cases and rehab survivors as well as just the normal permanent employees.

Over the years I've worked with all types, from all areas of society, from ex child hookers to still almost normally functioning heroin junkies on the way down and recovering ones trying to make a life again.
From North Shore housewives between divorce settlements playing 'poor me', to beaten up Westy women with hair raising stories. People from the middle class socio economic group you and I sprang from, and some from backgrounds who thought that we were insufferable rich snobs.

Shy country girls trying to make their way in the big city and sly city kids killing time between 'jobs'.
I worked with 3 'rehabbers' who went psycho on duty, one of them threw boiling water over another girl who walked into the meal room at the wrong moment. One went postal on herself and clawed her own chest into a bloody pulp. The third went 'vegetable' after locking herself in a loo.
Add to that mix immigrants from most of the Nations you could name in 60 seconds, and even a punk rocker who was a downright lovely kid under the tats and piercings. Why on earth would I be alarmed by a few overly placid pot smokers??


All in all they were just a normal sampling from a wider range of people than you'd meet in most jobs, and very much more educational than anything I ever learned in school.


PS. Maybe that scenario explains why 'Gwen' and I were such a weird pair? She was the other 'acting' supervisor and we were each other's bosses at various times.
 
Last edited:
You lived in an ivory tower in teaching Warri. I worked in a job with high turnover of staff that was used as a way station for Government supported welfare cases and rehab survivors as well as just the normal permanent employees.
Click to expand...
More like a cloister than an ivory tower.

Some of your work mates wouldn't have been allowed within a bull's roar of our underage charges but at home that was another matter. We were constantly fighting a battle against outside influences like big brothers who wanted their younger sisters to flog drugs to their friends. We also patrolled the perimeter fences and chased away adolescents who wanted to chat to the girls at lunch time. Too easy to pass small items through the wire. The girls thought we were anti romance but it was really all about watchfulness concerning drugs. Most of the girls were very naïve.

The same watchfulness was necessary at school dances and since I hated loud music I would prowl around outside checking all the dark corners. Mostly I just broke up snogging.

Speaking of people who weren't allowed within a bull's roar of the maidens, I refused to allow visits by Canterbury Bankstown rugby league footballers and that was long before the scandals began to surface. Warrigal was very intuitive way back then.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top