Can We EVER Really Retire?

[forHISglory]

Whether you are retired or not, the times we live in are making us all readjust our lifestyles. You may have planned to take early retirement and now you wonder. Or you may be younger and wondering if you can EVER retire!! Do you think people in America will ever be able to retire the way the old stereotypes picture it: golfing at resorts, lots of traveling, living off investments....

OK. So we are retired teachers. We loved our jobs, but after a lifetime of saving and planning, we were able to take early retirement. We are super blessed to have a pension and some savings.

Then some reality set in. We were no longer on the school health insurance plan; now we had to pay for it all. Fortunately, we had enough in the budget to do this, but it took out a huge chunk that we had planned to use for some traveling. We had anticipated paying for our own insurance, but had not anticipated the big spike in premiums that just happened. Insurance takes about 1/3 of our monthly income!!!

Then more reality set in. Gas costs soared, and since energy drives our economy, consumer prices went up, and our investments went down.

Still more reality: Hubby will never get Social Security because he gets a public school pension. I can get SS, but not until I'm past 66, and that's a ways off. Not sure I am banking on it!

We aren't in the poor house. We meet all our bills and obligations. We have a nice home, no debt, good health, enough to eat. We took a nice vacation this summer. Life is still good, but just not exactly what we anticipated.

There are a lot of colleges and universities in our area and both of us had taught night school at one university for several years. We continue to do that. For this fall, I am teaching 2 classes and Hubby is teaching 3. But a few days ago, he got a call out of the blue from another university begging him to please please please come teach 2 classes for them. (He never even applied there; they just heard of him....) So now he is teaching 5 classes.

We use the income from our university teaching to pay our insurance (health, car, house) and have a meal out every so often. What do you want to bet that now with the extra income from the new classes, that our insurance rate will go up again?

So how about you? What is your vision of your retirement? Do you think you will ever really retire? Do you see yourself working full time for a long time? Part time? Do you see formerly taken-for-granted ways of life evaporating? How are you planning your future now that the rules of the future seem to be changing?

I'm not really complaining; God has blessed us too much for that. I just know that I need to keep on working as long as I can since the future is iffy in so many ways. (And fall semester starts next week........)

[3tomboys]

We are in are early 40's and have seriously started talking about the age we would like to reitre. We have always wanted to retire at an age where we can really enjoy are dream of traveling. Of course this may not be reality. I have been fortunate that my dh has always insisted on a 401K and an IRA and an emergency fund (I can't tell you how many times I was thankful that was available). We just got are last statement from are financial company, it was depressing. For us we are reminded that we are young and have time to make up the losses, but what exactly does this mean? We have to keep adding years to the age we want to retire? We have dreams of selling are home and purchasing a motorhome and traveling all over the United States. Then to purchase a nice little cabin in the mountains near where all the dd's decide to settle down and raise families. Take periodic trips to see the world. With the recent economy we have to keep are dreams in focus and adjust the best we can.

[forHISglory]

3tomboys, you have a wise hubby. With that kind of foresight, you will be able to retire more quickly and securely than many others. Nevertheless, the rules keep changing. Social Security is no longer available for my age group at 65. The years keep changing, just like it does for adding on those years to your working life. But for now, go hug your hubby and let him know what a great guy he is!!!!!!

[madhen]

I have a federal job, six figure salary and dumping every extra penny into retirement accounts, so I am hopeful that I will be able to comfortably retire when I'm eligible (ten years from now, when I'm 53). My goal is to have the mortgage and cc bills all paid off by then, and I'll have my retirement savings plus a pretty decent pension to bank on for all other expenses, then soc security eventually, as well.

Happily, my desires are simple. I travel a LOT for work already, sometimes to other countries, so I have no great yearning to do so when I'm retired. I love working on the house and the garden, and I have have several hobbies that, if I had time to really devote to them, would pay for themselves. I'm working on developing my property to have all the organic fruits and veggies (at least what I can grow in this zone) established by the time I leave work. (I HAVE found out that one of each type of fruit tree can be a problem, as all the birds in the neighborhood think I planted the tree for them. Between them and the ground squirrels, they got EVERY plum and all my grapes this year.)

So, yes, I fully intend to REALLY retire once I am eligible. The only thing that might pull me back into the workforce would be if I got bored and wanted a part-time job just to give myself a reason to remember what day of the week it is!

[alch]

I retired at age 54. That was 4 years ago and I love it. I made sure major bills like house and car were paid off first.I work part time jobs that I love since it gets me out of the house. Both are 5 miles within my house which is a godsend especially with prices of gas. I also save incase of an emergency. My drawback is that I need to shop for better health insurance soon...... It can be done but you have to have a plan.

[PrairieRose]

I don't know if my dh will ever completely retire. We are self employed and our business is seasonal so that affords him time off during the year, almost equally matched with his busy times. His job is a little physically demanding but we have been paying more summer help and will continue to do so as we age I'm sure. After seeing how retirement has affected my dad I don't know that I want Gripey to retire. Naturally, I don't want him to do manual labor till he croaks either....
And as far as 'my job'......a woman's work is never done.....

[Russ]

I think the DW and I would too much.

kidding aside, I don't think I will ever be able to afford to retire. The health care costs would kill us.

[The Muse]

I'm not worried about it. Our mortgage will be paid off by the time we're 35 and hopefully we're not at the top of our careers yet, so it will only get better.

We live well below our means and have been socking away the max in our retirement accounts for a while. Of course, the value of our accounts seems to shrink everyday, but I'm confident it'll recover. If it doesn't, we've got a fair amount in stable value investments, too and that's where I'm concentrating at the moment.

We'd like to retire around 50 to a hobby farm/country house. DH would like to teach a few classes at a university and I'll probably work part-time or volunteer for an animal welfare organization.

Not having kids puts us at a huge financial advantage.

[thriftstorequeen]

We don't think my hubby will ever be able to retire. I've been a sahm and now a sahw. When I bring up the fact that I could get a job and save what I make my hubby wants no part of it. He loves things the way they are. He's thinks if I worked we wouldn't be able to spend so much time together. He works shift work and sometimes we don't get as much time together as it is. The only retirement we have is a very small pension and SS. So we are working to pay off all debt and get some savings. It's a slow process but we seem to be making some headway.

[PrairieRose]

I just wanted to add something and I waited too long to edit...

Since we are self employed we have been paying for our healthcare all of our lives. It's really, really expensive and being self employed we can't qualify for 'group' rates which means every insurance plan we get on, can and does raise our rates to the tune of about 15% per year until we can't stand it anymore and then we have to shop around again. I really hate this process.....but there ya go. The price keeps going up and the benefits going down. Tis a necessary evil however.... I feel your pain ForHISglory....really I do.......

[forHISglory]

For those of you who are younger than me (which is like, gulp, almost everybody....), I congratulate you on thinking ahead and planning for your future and your retirement.

I'm so glad that Hubby and I were on the same page (most of the time) about saving relentlessly and being debt free. But I'll tell you what...... we just did not think our insurance premiums would rise this drastically. And we did not think we would see energy prices be this high. Nothing in our past truly prepared us for that.

Now I'm wondering what the next surprise will be. As I mentioned before, the old rules of the game, and the old assumptions are not necessarily valid anymore.

[Fotobug]

My dh and I both "early-retired" a year ago (I'm 58 and he is 60). I haven't regretted it a bit.

Health insurance is about 20% of our gross income. But the house is paid off and we have no debt (we use credit cards to get the 1-5% rebates but pay them in full each month) so, aside from the insurance and taxes (another roughly 6%), we really have a lot of control over most of our expenses.

We're flexible - I shop differently now than even a year ago adjusting to the huge increases in some items. We walk and bike a lot more now instead of using the car for everything (small town living does have some advantages) but since we aren't always pressed for time, we don't mind that at all.

Because of flood-related expenses we won't take a fall vacation this year... but I'm not complaining - we HAD the money to do the repairs and we only lost part of a basement, not our whole house.

Even combined we never earned so much as $100K but we lived frugally and took advantage of lifestyle changes. For instance, when the children were out of college, I didn't start spending that "tuition payment" line on the budget but put most of it into savings instead. So for us, living on a retirement income of about half of our "working" income hasn't been that huge of a change.

We have simple needs and are totally loving the flexibility to do what we want to do. I enjoy being able to volunteer and set my own schedule - I deliver Meals on Wheels, e.g., which I couldn't do while I was working.

My former department head has called every semester to see if I'd like to come back and teach part time, but I really wanted to escape the academic year and so far I haven't been tempted!

Barb

[cheapskate 49]

We are both retired DH for 11 years and myself 4 years we are not big spenders or travellers-all I ask is a trip to Calgary once a year to see my sister...well my hobbies too.My sister and her DH are at retirement age BUT they do like to travel big time and they are not able to retire yet... they are working to pay for their travel,so it is all about choices..we have a frugal life,and we get to stay home.I know in Canada the health care system is ailing...wait times,lack of physicans,traveling for certain treatments etc. but not being able to retire because of health care coverage is not among the problems and it saddens me to hear that is happening...we have nephews in the U.S. who have told us they will never be able to afford to retire because of it.

[maryea]

My dh retired at age 60 and I went part-time and then finally quit a few months later...I was only 52 at the time. We have been retired since 1995. I found I couldn't stand leaving him home and going to work! I had only planned to work another year or so any way. And throughout the last year I had began to get our finances in shape for both of us to retire. I was kinda scared but wanted to do it so bad by that time I said if all I could do was sit on patio and drink my tea and watch the birds, I'd be happy not to work!

We are very fortunate. My dh is retired miliitary and has a decent retirement...we're not wealthy but have enough and usually get a small cola each year. Of course you never know some day that might be taken away, but we don't worry about it...we trust the Lord to take care of us. I only have my little bitty SS check but if my dh passes on before me, I do get a portion of his income. It won't be a lot but again, I think I can manage.

We are fortunate in regard to health insurance. After paying (our share of it), for Kaiser for several years, we went on the government insurance, Tri-Care. I had to pay $19 a month at first cause I wasn't 65, but my dh's was free and now we are both free only now it is just the supplement as we are both on Medicare B too. We pay a small fee for meds but if we can drive to a base, they are free. Sometimes that doesn't pay though.

We find we can get along with a lot less now, so really our living costs aren't that high...our house is paid for and we don't need much clothes or food really...we're both on diets anyway for diabetes and in my case for weight looss too.

Our worst problem has been debt...we foolishly ran up a lot and the year before we retired, we consolidated it and then ran up more after retirement. But we finally got our heads straight and now we don't debt at all and we are almost done paying off the old debt. After it's paid off we should be fine.

We love to travel and that was our main goal for retirement. That's how we ran up a lot of debt in the early years though. So we slowed down a bit but we still travel...usually 2 or 3 shorter trips and 1 long trip a year. We do it very frugally...these days diesel/gas is our biggest expense...we use our RV or our timeshares (paid for a long time ago in prep for retirement)...don't often stay in hotels. We cook most of our meals just like at home, maybe eat out a little more than when we are home but not often. We try to do a lot of free things, doing only things that cost when we REALLY want to see/do something. We have a lot of fun together.

We don't have to be running around all the time...we actually enjoy our home and just watching the birds in the yard, watching tv and I love to read. What a pleasure to be able to do these things and whatever I want without having to punch someone else's time clock! I love, love, love being retired! I told my dh I finally found out what I wanted to be when I grew up and it is retired! LOL

[Bethany]

We have planned from a very young age to retire. My first paycheck when I was 22 and fresh out of college had a deduction for my 401k. Slow and steady is the road to retirement for us. DH has a pension, too, so that is very helpful. We both just turned 40. If we could both retire at 60, that would be great. I think I can retire earlier since DH make alot more money than me.