Languish.org

I was reading an article about the FIRE (Financial Indpendence Retire Early) Movement (https://twocents.lifehacker.com/the-basics-of-fire-financial-independence-and-early-re-1820129768).  While this isn't as alien to me as following beauty community influencers; it is quite different than how I thought as a young man.  Back when I was in my 20s I assumed I'd be working until they hauled my corpse out of the anaechoic chamber (bury me with my radios and my soldering iron.)

I plan on retiring at age 70.

No idea, to be honest.

Current plan is to retire around 55 if my career continues as it has, though I might simply do a career shift around ~50 (to teaching) and do that until they haul me off.

Eligible for full retirement at age 55, in 2030.  Of course the longer I work the more I receive in retirement.

Problem is in 2030 my oldest boy will be 20, and my youngest 17.  Taking retirement will still be a massive drop in my income which I probably won't be able to afford, even with my house well paid off at that point.

So hopefully 2035, at age 60.  My youngest will be 22 and God willing none of the boys should still be living at home.  At that point it depends - if I've moved on and am doing some new and interesting job I'll keep working.  If I'm still doing the exact same kind of work I'm doing now I'll get the heck out of there.

From there I'll probably try and find some kind of part-time legal work just to keep busy and give me some spending money.

Quote from: Barrister on January 30, 2019, 03:58:05 PM
Eligible for full retirement at age 55, in 2030.  Of course the longer I work the more I receive in retirement.

Problem is in 2030 my oldest boy will be 20, and my youngest 17.  Taking retirement will still be a massive drop in my income which I probably won't be able to afford, even with my house well paid off at that point.

So hopefully 2035, at age 60.  My youngest will be 22 and God willing none of the boys should still be living at home.  At that point it depends - if I've moved on and am doing some new and interesting job I'll keep working.  If I'm still doing the exact same kind of work I'm doing now I'll get the heck out of there.

From there I'll probably try and find some kind of part-time legal work just to keep busy and give me some spending money.

Why do you call it full retirement if you'd not be getting the maximum pension?

Quote from: The Larch on January 30, 2019, 04:10:36 PM
Why do you call it full retirement if you'd not be getting the maximum pension?

If I retire before my pension fully vests I'll take a substantial hit to my benefits.

But once it vests, I get something like 2% of my salary per year of service.  So in 2030 I'll have 26 years service, and would be entitled to a pension of 52% of my final salary.  But if I work 5 years more, that's an extra 10% of my final salary, or 62%.

So the "maximum pension" means working for as long as you can - but that would be madness.  Sure I could work till age 75 (not sure what the mandatory retirement age here is) and get 92% of my final salary, but how much longer would I actually have to spend that?

Oh, and your pension "vesting" means you have to hit the rule of 80 - that your age plus years of service equal 80.  Which for me is in 2030, when I'll be 55 and have
26 years pensionable service.

At the University of California after I turn 60 (oh hod, 7 years from now) I am eligible for the highest level of retirement - years of service x .025 to give you a number (effectively a percentage).  My three best years of money are averaged out and multiplied by that ratio to give me my annual retirement.

Since I started late here, in order to get more and to tie in to Social Security, I will work til I'm 67 - That will get me 40% of my UC salary, plus my 403 money from here and the University of Wyoming, and my sweet sweet government check.  2033 or somewhere around there.

Since the economy will crash before that, I will actually end up with nothing and live in a cardboard box under the Interstate, but that is my plan above.

I still haven't decided if I want to get SoSec at 62 or 65.  I'll probably keep working, some, even if I do start at 62.

Oh, yeah, my entire plan is predicated on the USA not going to shit within the next 20 years, which is not at all guaranteed. So I've stocked up on guns and ammo as a backup plan.

June 26th 2049. That's a Saturday, the friday before is my birthday & I don't work on my birthday & I'll turn 65. I guess I'll actually retire June 28th 2049, the first monday following.

Doubt I'll live that long. The odds are against it.
And its unlikely my generation will get much of a retirement anyway.
So never.

Quote from: Tyr on January 30, 2019, 04:47:50 PM
Doubt I'll live that long. The odds are against it.
And its unlikely my generation will get much of a retirement anyway.
So never.

The only reason you won't retire is because you don't plan or save for it. Being fatalistic about something that is, to a large degree, in your own hands is downright silly.

Between 55-60, fingers crossed. 

Maybe sooner if I can get my kid's fastball velocity high enough, or have him develop a slider :P

I'm pretty much retired now.  :sleep:

Quote from: derspiess on January 30, 2019, 04:54:28 PM
Between 55-60, fingers crossed. 

Maybe sooner if I can get my kid's fastball velocity high enough, or have him develop a slider :P

That way lies madness spiess.  You could spend enough money to retire yourself trying to send him to enough camps and tournaments.  I know that's the way at least for hockey.

Probably 70+. No pension, and I didn't get a job with a 401k or decent salary until recently. I'm making enough to put away a good amount in my IRA and 401k, fortunately. I'll probably go back to teaching in my later years.

Either yesterday or I'll die in the traces, can't decide which is best.   :hmm:

I already retired at 64. I was expecting to work until my full retirement age of 66 at least but during the last few work years I just had a change in mind and feeling. I felt like I needed and wanted to retire, it just hit me. I have a few friends who said the same, that they expected to work longer also but felt the same towards the end. I think the biggest issue was the heavy work load so  figured if I was doing less stressful work I could have continued. I was just tired of it all, really hit a wall, so to speak.

Then after a year off, one of my former managers asked if I wanted to work part time as they were so busy going through multiple projects and company expansion. I went back, working two or three half days a week, but not doing the heavy lifting. No on call, no traveling to sites, etc. So it's working out ok but it may only last until the projects are done. I've been there just over a year, it's just a few miles from home.

I'm hoping to lose a leg in an automobile accident so I can retire on disability next month.

Quote from: Barrister on January 30, 2019, 05:02:40 PM

Quote from: derspiess on January 30, 2019, 04:54:28 PM
Between 55-60, fingers crossed. 

Maybe sooner if I can get my kid's fastball velocity high enough, or have him develop a slider :P

That way lies madness spiess.  You could spend enough money to retire yourself trying to send him to enough camps and tournaments.  I know that's the way at least for hockey.

It was a joke. I'll be ecstatic if he makes the high school team. I'll still probably continue to spend plenty of money on football/baseball equipment, camps, tournaments, etc. as long as he wants to put forth the effort.

Well, this is *the* question.  It is a function of how much stuff I want, how much pain I am willing to endure, and how confident I am about the investment markets. 

I have followed the FIRE movement for many years.  The cardinal rule used to be I need to be able to survive on 4% of my liquid assets every year.  But recent investment market performances have called that into question.  The latest discussion points to 3.5%.  So that makes it a lot harder. 

I can retire now and survive on instant noodles for the rest of my life, but obviously I don't really want that. 

Secretly, Mono loves his job and will never retire.

I'm a Millennial, so my answer is nihilistic laughter.

Quote from: Eddie Teach on January 30, 2019, 10:45:53 PM
Secretly, Mono loves his job and will never retire.

This is just not true.

On a serious note, I hope to be able to retire at 62, but that depends at least in part on how well aa is able to reach her career goals in the next 5 years--if she's where she hopes to be professionally, we won't really need my income, but otherwise, it'll be dicey if I can retire.

Quote from: Habbaku on January 30, 2019, 04:49:56 PM

Quote from: Tyr on January 30, 2019, 04:47:50 PM
Doubt I'll live that long. The odds are against it.
And its unlikely my generation will get much of a retirement anyway.
So never.

The only reason you won't retire is because you don't plan or save for it. Being fatalistic about something that is, to a large degree, in your own hands is downright silly.

Or you die.

The problem is there is too much uncertainty.  I don't know how long I'll live, the future inflation rates, interest rates, performance of investment markets, etc.  Once I take the plunge, there is no going back.  Ideally I should have spent every last penny when I die.  But since I don't know when that will happen, it is preferable to die with money left, rather than to live the last years penniless. 

The official civil service retirement age is 60.  Retiring at 60 is the safest choice, but also causes the greatest amount of unhappiness.  I think my absolute limit is 55.  Maybe earlier.  Retiring between 48 and 55 is entirely possible, though the safety margin will be less. 

Quote from: Monoriu on January 31, 2019, 03:32:48 AM
The problem is there is too much uncertainty.  I don't know how long I'll live, the future inflation rates, interest rates, performance of investment markets, etc.  Once I take the plunge, there is no going back.  Ideally I should have spent every last penny when I die.  But since I don't know when that will happen, it is preferable to die with money left, rather than to live the last years penniless. 

The official civil service retirement age is 60.  Retiring at 60 is the safest choice, but also causes the greatest amount of unhappiness.  I think my absolute limit is 55.  Maybe earlier.  Retiring between 48 and 55 is entirely possible, though the safety margin will be less.

If it's certainty you want, you could always plan your death to coincide with the money running out.

Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on January 30, 2019, 11:00:12 PM
I'm a Millennial, so my answer is nihilistic laughter.

Which is how I thought when I was younger.  This is why I was surprised to see that there are Millennials who are eating brown bananas and sharing Netflix passwords so that they can retire at age 40.  (Not that that is bad; it's just different than how things were in the Age of Grunge and Internet Millionaires.)

Ideally I'd want to work in some capacity until the day I'd die. What I see is many men just utterly vegetate, rapidly, both mentally and physically after they retire.

Quote from: Legbiter on January 31, 2019, 08:47:58 AM
Ideally I'd want to work in some capacity until the day I'd die. What I see is many men just utterly vegetate, rapidly, both mentally and physically after they retire.

I think keeping yourself busy to some degree is the key. It doesn't have to be work-work, any hobby would do that requires some thought and effort (so watching TV doesn't count).

However, I don't think I'll be able to ever retire without a significant dent in living standards, so I am planning to roll off dead from some office chair in my mid-70s.

Given what I've seen and knowing myself I'd most likely revert to a lazy teen.  :lol:

I'd do what I already do when I'm not working - draw my artwork.

I do wonder though if I'd be able to keep up enthusiasm for that, if drawing wasn't a blessed release from work ... so many people I know have all the free time in the world to do their art, but come up with a million excuses for procrastination.

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 08:32:23 AM

Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on January 30, 2019, 11:00:12 PM
I'm a Millennial, so my answer is nihilistic laughter.

Which is how I thought when I was younger.  This is why I was surprised to see that there are Millennials who are eating brown bananas and sharing Netflix passwords so that they can retire at age 40.  (Not that that is bad; it's just different than how things were in the Age of Grunge and Internet Millionaires.)

It's a pretty common attitude amongst other Millennials I know as well. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the worst.

Quote from: Maladict on January 31, 2019, 04:42:50 AM

Quote from: Monoriu on January 31, 2019, 03:32:48 AM
The problem is there is too much uncertainty.  I don't know how long I'll live, the future inflation rates, interest rates, performance of investment markets, etc.  Once I take the plunge, there is no going back.  Ideally I should have spent every last penny when I die.  But since I don't know when that will happen, it is preferable to die with money left, rather than to live the last years penniless. 

The official civil service retirement age is 60.  Retiring at 60 is the safest choice, but also causes the greatest amount of unhappiness.  I think my absolute limit is 55.  Maybe earlier.  Retiring between 48 and 55 is entirely possible, though the safety margin will be less.

If it's certainty you want, you could always plan your death to coincide with the money running out.

There was a Somerset Maugham short story that had this as the premise: a guy plans his dream early retirement on a Med. Island paradise at age 40. Only problem: not enough money to go past age 65. So, he buys a shotgun and plans to live only to 65, then shoot himself.

This goes splendidly, until he reaches 65 ... only problem is that 25 years of pleasure have weakened his resolve. So he dithers and puts it off. His credit is excellent, so for a while he just borrows, but eventually that runs out ... he gets kicked out of his house ... sells all his possessions. Eventually, his old landlord takes pity on him, lets him live free in a chicken shed out back. 

Edit: it's called The Lotus Eater:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lotus_Eater

QuoteThe story begins in 1913 with the narrator's visit to a friend on the island of Capri in Italy. The friend introduces the narrator to Thomas Wilson, who had come to the island for a holiday sixteen years earlier. A year after that holiday, Wilson had given up his job in London as a bank manager to live a life of simplicity and enjoyment in a small cottage on Capri. Enchanted by the island during his visit, he had made the decision during the intervening year to forgo working another twelve or thirteen years for his pension and instead to take his accumulated savings and purchase at once an annuity that would allow him to live simply on Capri for twenty-five years. And what will happen at the end of that twenty-five years, fifteen of which have already passed, asks the narrator; many men die by sixty, but many do not. Wilson does not directly answer the question, but he implies that if nature does not carry him off by the age of sixty, he will be content to dispatch himself, having lived a life of his own choosing in the meantime. The narrator of the story is stunned by such a bold plan, all the more because Wilson has the appearance and manner of an unremarkable, ordinary man – very much that of the bank manager he once was.

The narrator soon leaves Capri, and, what with the intervening world war and other events, nearly forgets his acquaintance with Wilson until thirteen years later, when he revisits his friend on Capri. By then, of course, the ten years that remained of Wilson's bargain with fate have expired. His friend describes for the narrator what has happened in his absence.

Wilson, his annuity exhausted, had first sold all that he owned; then he had relied on his excellent credit to borrow sums of the islanders to sustain himself; but at the end of a year after the expiration of his annuity, he could no longer even borrow. Wilson then had shut himself in his cottage and lit a charcoal fire to fill the room with carbon monoxide in an attempt to kill himself. But he lacked the will, the narrator says, to make a good-enough job of the attempt, and survived, though with brain damage that left him mentally abnormal but not unbalanced enough for the asylum. He lives out the remainder of his years in the woodshed of his peasant former landlord, carrying water and feeding the animals. As the narrator and his friend walk along, the friend nearing the end of the tale, the friend warns him to betray no sign of his knowledge of Wilson's presence; the confused and degraded man is crouching nearby behind a tree, like a hunted animal. After six years of this existence, he is found dead on the ground overlooking the beautiful Faraglioni (coastal stacks) that had enticed him to the island so many years before – slain perhaps, the narrator suggests, by their beauty.

The narrator had told Wilson shortly after meeting him that his own choice would have been the safe one: to work the additional dozen or more years that would have secured his pension and, thus, a guarantee of enough money to live on, however long that might be, before setting out for his idyll on Capri, even though, as Wilson said, the pleasures of a man in his thirties are different from those of a man in his fifties. But it is not to Wilson's original choice that the narrator attributes the tragedy of Wilson's final years; he applauds Wilson for having had the nerve to make of his life what he wanted instead of following society's approved path. The narrator speculates that Wilson might indeed have had the kind of resolve needed to carry out his decision to end his own life, if necessary, at the time he first enacted his bold plan to leave his workaday life in London for the full-time leisure that, Wilson had argued, is all anyone is working for anyway. But the very ease and indolence of his life on Capri had deprived him of the will he needed to carry out his decision when the time came. Without challenge, the narrator argues, human will grows flabby, just as muscles used to support one only on level ground will lose the capacity to climb a mountain.

Somerset Maugham also wrote this one on the same general theme :

https://schools.ednet.ns.ca/avrsb/070/rsbennett/eng12/coursematerials/shortstories/Ant%20and%20grasshopper.pdf

OK, so hiring an assassin to do the job for you is key.

Is working really so horrible that we are now planning on how to commit suicide just so we can retire a bit earlier?

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 31, 2019, 11:06:49 AM
Somerset Maugham also wrote this one on the same general theme :

https://schools.ednet.ns.ca/avrsb/070/rsbennett/eng12/coursematerials/shortstories/Ant%20and%20grasshopper.pdf

I suspect "dying homeless" is the more likely outcome for the wastrel life than "having a rich widow will everything to you, then conveniently kick the bucket". But then, I'm not a charming early 20th century dandy, so what do I know?  :D

Quote from: Malthus on January 31, 2019, 11:23:35 AM

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 31, 2019, 11:06:49 AM
Somerset Maugham also wrote this one on the same general theme :

https://schools.ednet.ns.ca/avrsb/070/rsbennett/eng12/coursematerials/shortstories/Ant%20and%20grasshopper.pdf

I suspect "dying homeless" is the more likely outcome for the wastrel life than "having a rich widow will everything to you, then conveniently kick the bucket". But then, I'm not a charming early 20th century dandy, so what do I know?  :D

Yes, true enough, but I totally agreed with him that the ant is annoying and sanctimonious; my sympathies were also always with the grasshopper  :D

Quote from: Valmy on January 31, 2019, 11:16:49 AM
Is working really so horrible that we are now planning on how to commit suicide just so we can retire a bit earlier?

You're looking at this all wrong; don't think of it as a problem:

Quote from: Maladict on January 31, 2019, 11:08:32 AM
OK, so hiring an assassin to do the job for you is key.

Think of it as a business opportunity.    :bowler:

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 11:29:38 AM

Quote from: Valmy on January 31, 2019, 11:16:49 AM
Is working really so horrible that we are now planning on how to commit suicide just so we can retire a bit earlier?

You're looking at this all wrong; don't think of it as a problem:

Quote from: Maladict on January 31, 2019, 11:08:32 AM
OK, so hiring an assassin to do the job for you is key.

Think of it as a business opportunity.    :bowler:

But what if the assassin wants to retire?  :hmm:

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on January 31, 2019, 11:27:00 AM
Yes, true enough, but I totally agreed with him that the ant is annoying and sanctimonious; my sympathies were also always with the grasshopper  :D

That reminds me of one of my favorite sketches from The Muppet Show. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88u8Nl7QK9E)

Quote from: Malthus on January 31, 2019, 11:30:16 AM
But what if the assassin wants to retire?  :hmm:

We've got to keep up with the times; rather than staffing up with full time assassins, we'll use the power of the "Gig Economy."  Just punch in your desired location and time of departure and one of our gig assassins will be with you.  I'm thinking of calling this service "Auff."

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 11:44:03 AM

Quote from: Malthus on January 31, 2019, 11:30:16 AM
But what if the assassin wants to retire?  :hmm:

We've got to keep up with the times; rather than staffing up with full time assassins, we'll use the power of the "Gig Economy."  Just punch in your desired location and time of departure and one of our gig assassins will be with you.  I'm thinking of calling this service "Auff."

It you tie this in with Last Meal delivery you have a winner.

Quote from: PDH on January 31, 2019, 11:59:25 AM

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 11:44:03 AM

Quote from: Malthus on January 31, 2019, 11:30:16 AM
But what if the assassin wants to retire?  :hmm:

We've got to keep up with the times; rather than staffing up with full time assassins, we'll use the power of the "Gig Economy."  Just punch in your desired location and time of departure and one of our gig assassins will be with you.  I'm thinking of calling this service "Auff."

It you tie this in with Last Meal delivery you have a winner.

Perhaps you could call it "Grub Out".

Quote from: PDH on January 31, 2019, 11:59:25 AM

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 11:44:03 AM
We've got to keep up with the times; rather than staffing up with full time assassins, we'll use the power of the "Gig Economy."  Just punch in your desired location and time of departure and one of our gig assassins will be with you.  I'm thinking of calling this service "Auff."

It you tie this in with Last Meal delivery you have a winner.

With the synergies we'll make a killing! :w00t:

Sorry  :Embarrass:

Quote from: Malthus on January 31, 2019, 01:24:00 PM

Quote from: PDH on January 31, 2019, 11:59:25 AM

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 11:44:03 AM

Quote from: Malthus on January 31, 2019, 11:30:16 AM
But what if the assassin wants to retire?  :hmm:

We've got to keep up with the times; rather than staffing up with full time assassins, we'll use the power of the "Gig Economy."  Just punch in your desired location and time of departure and one of our gig assassins will be with you.  I'm thinking of calling this service "Auff."

It you tie this in with Last Meal delivery you have a winner.

Perhaps you could call it "Grub Out".

Or the undertakeout.

Well, it wasn't exactly planned but about 20.

Spanish pension system is already bankrupt, so pretty much never.

Quote from: Habbaku on January 31, 2019, 10:32:27 AM

Quote from: Savonarola on January 31, 2019, 08:32:23 AM

Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on January 30, 2019, 11:00:12 PM
I'm a Millennial, so my answer is nihilistic laughter.

Which is how I thought when I was younger.  This is why I was surprised to see that there are Millennials who are eating brown bananas and sharing Netflix passwords so that they can retire at age 40.  (Not that that is bad; it's just different than how things were in the Age of Grunge and Internet Millionaires.)

It's a pretty common attitude amongst other Millennials I know as well. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the worst.

Millennials will be sent to the camps in a few years anyway so I'm not sweating retirement at all