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Maggie’s The Retired Guy Thread

I have been retired for a year 1/2, been remodeling the house from top to bottom since. I have a nice shop for my wood working side business and a few motorcycles including a chopper project I putz around with for the winter.
Having been in construction my entire life I’m used to working long days and I still do but now it’s doing what I want to do and on my projects not someone elses. I did do some consulting for several projects right after I retired but gave that up to, I realized I was done done.
 
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greg1147 said:
Turned 76 this year retired at 62 after 40 years as a construction electrician, then took a job with a DOD contractor that was interesting, now just
do the RSO thing PT when I want too. Shoot a lot too. And of course hang with the dogs.
ObaVrgvm.jpg
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Color me jealous. I am still doing the electrican thing, office manager at a company. Technically, another 11 years to full retirement benefits but who knows, I might be better off retiring at 65 and working PT. Damn it, that is not really far away.

What the hell happened to the time?
 
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Year to go, btw how much weight do you retirees gain after the work boots are tossed, 😂 something I can look forward too, lol.
 
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johnl said:
Year to go, btw how much weight do you retirees gain after the work boots are tossed, 😂 something I can look forward too, lol.
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Well, they stand a little straighter since they no longer have to carry the rest of the company.
 
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I’m a truck driver too.
I hand in my keys August of this year.
3.5 million miles.
Brand new custom built home, 20 acres in Kentucky all paid for.
64 years old probably have a few more years.
Going to expand my firearms business a little.
Looking forward to sitting on the back deck in the morning and the front porch in the evening.
 
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hino895 said:
I’m a truck driver too.
I hand in my keys August of this year.
3.5 million miles.
Brand new custom built home, 20 acres in Kentucky all paid for.
64 years old probably have a few more years.
Going to expand my firearms business a little.
Looking forward to sitting on the back deck in the morning and the front porch in the evening.
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Please, for the love of God and all that is enjoyable in hunting, please tell me you are planting feed crops.

And, then, don't forget about me, I may have one day have the time and resources to drive there from Texas, though I already have an invitation from a fine fellow in Tn.

And my high school mate said we should try and adjust schedules to visit near his dad's place in west Texas where you get an eyeful of mule deer.
 
Ronws said:
Please, for the love of God and all that is enjoyable in hunting, please tell me you are planting feed crops.

And, then, don't forget about me, I may have one day have the time and resources to drive there from Texas, though I already have an invitation from a fine fellow in Tn.

And my high school mate said we should try and adjust schedules to visit near his dad's place in west Texas where you get an eyeful of mule deer.
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The deer population around my place sucks but I have a nice flock of turkeys.
I like turkey hunting.
I shot this a couple hundred yards from the house a few weeks ago.
 

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hino895 said:
The deer population around my place sucks but I have a nice flock of turkeys.
I like turkey hunting.
I shot this a couple hundred yards from the house a few weeks ago.
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I have not harvested a bobcat, either has varmint management or even food. I might not want to eat it because I do have a house cat and that is little close to home, as it were.
 
it is very important to have good hobby—like shooting, reloading, comps—that consumes much of your time and takes you out of the house on a regular basis or else your wife will make chore lists and consume every minute of your time. I know from experience. To her, you are now a free handyman with no bounds

REMEMBER: EVERY DAY IS SATURDAY

Semper Fi
 
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Marine52 said:
it is very important to have good hobby—like shooting, reloading, comps—that consumes much of your time and takes you out of the house on a regular basis or else your wife will make chore lists and consume every minute of your time. I know from experience. To her, you are now a free handyman with no bounds

REMEMBER: EVERY DAY IS SATURDAY

Semper Fi
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Very true. My wife is a very good manager of my time, if I do not have plans for the day...
 
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A colleague of mine in my world of work is retiring for the second time. I told her that if she comes back to work again, she is definitely not doing retirement correctly.
 
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534 days.

For the next six months we are going to bank my entire check. Just to see what it would be like. I don't think it will be the nightmare the wife thinks it will be.

Perhaps she is getting ready for me to croak. But then there is the I am worth more dead then alive part....so that can't be it.

I figure by June I will get that Japanese mini truck, and likely call it a day there. Not sure about the ride to pick it up, long car rides are just hell on my back.
 
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For those of you close enough. It doesn't go out far enough for me.

www.timeanddate.com

Retirement Countdown

Countdown to Apr 15, 2024. Showing days, hours, minutes and seconds ticking down to 0
www.timeanddate.com www.timeanddate.com
 
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Years ago I worked with a guy who had a count down to his retirement on his phone. He was quick to pull it out and tell people just how much longer he would be caring about work.
 
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Last week I got a text from a former employee of mine that my former boss had gone off on a partner and had been fired. This guy is the same age as me but his incompetence had caused me to throw my hands up and leave.

I have to admit while it was funny that he finally got fired, I really had zero effs to give about the situation he caused at the company.
 
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Getting cleaned up this morning I was thinking of the little things in retirement like;

Shaving twice a week to make razor blades last longer
Letting my hair grow out to save on the cost of haircuts
Dressing in gym shorts and a t-shirt instead of slacks and a dress shirt to prolong the life of my good clothes

Then I realized I was just rationalizing behaviour that I was going to do anyway because I don't give an eff.
 
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The problem really is not people who worked decades and retired collecting social security. It is the 12,000,000 foreign criminals the Democrats let invade America since 2020 collecting social security, it is drug addicts and scumbags collecting social security disability they never contributed to in the first place. It is the tens of millions of foreign scum that have got free, unearned social security since Jimmy Carter got a law passed that allows assholes who came to America and never contributed a dime to social security to collect social security. And those fucking assholes in congress, from both parties who drain the cash from social security every god damned year and replace the money with utterly worthless federal bonds.


Yeah, it is a fucking Ponzi Scheme and it would have worked fairly well if leftists had not decided to use the money to buy votes.

Anyhow, I'm newly retired and looking forward to my leisure time.
 
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For 5 more years I’ll be singing

And now we're back where we started
Here we go round again
Day after day I get up and I say
I better do it again

Do it again

Do it again…



 
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I retired at 55. God, was I ready.
2 things kept nagging at me.
1. Everybody you know, thinks you have unlimited time available. "He aint got nothing to do, ask him to do it". R i g h t.
I fixed that. I'm in a Ham Club and a Veteran's association. I strictly limit what I am available for.
2. Something was STILL missing after a couple of years of "Every day is Saturday." I finally figured it out, and that single item fixed almost EVERYTHING else. It goes like this: "I have 5 Saturdays, 1 Sunday, and 1 Floating Day Off." Now why would a retired person need a floating day off? Well, suppose you decide, "Tomorrow I am going to cut the grass." You get up early, look outside and say, "Fuck that. It's a great day to go fishing (hunting, shooting, watch the game, play with the grandkids, insert as needed)". Take a Floating Day off, no asking, no notice, no nothing, just go.
 
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hankpac said:
I retired at 55. God, was I ready.
2 things kept nagging at me.
1. Everybody you know, thinks you have unlimited time available. "He aint got nothing to do, ask him to do it". R i g h t.
I fixed that. I'm in a Ham Club and a Veteran's association. I strictly limit what I am available for.
2. Something was STILL missing after a couple of years of "Every day is Saturday." I finally figured it out, and that single item fixed almost EVERYTHING else. It goes like this: "I have 5 Saturdays, 1 Sunday, and 1 Floating Day Off." Now why would a retired person need a floating day off? Well, suppose you decide, "Tomorrow I am going to cut the grass." You get up early, look outside and say, "Fuck that. It's a great day to go fishing (hunting, shooting, watch the game, play with the grandkids, insert as needed)". Take a Floating Day off, no asking, no notice, no nothing, just go.
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And you've successfully identified a major obstacle that most people have to overcome in retirement.

That is, your time is now your own. It no longer belongs to others that used to decide how you spend it.

Nicely done, style points awarded. ;)
 
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Look, Man…

We are the most fortunate group of people to ever walk the face of this planet.

Because in no time in history, has such a large group of people been able to “retire” with so much discretionary funds and time. And to live in a country that provides so much luxury, food security, *BLM and National forest lands*, is the icing on the cake.

God bless America and God bless capitalism.

Full speed ahead.

*Sorry for you guys who live on the wrong side of the Mississippi.
 
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I find myself in a quandry. I could retire early. I could retire in 5 years at the standard age. Or retire in 10 years to get the maximum SSA benefits. In addition to my retirement funds. Which do I do?

I am getting older and getting a job in my field, if I was to lose the one I have, would be hard because of my age and my big, fat license that scares people. (They think I would steal business or try to run their company.)

I saw a talk on this subject. If you retire sooner, you don't get as much money but you get to enjoy it longer. Or, retire later with more money and less time to spend it.

I am really hoping that pay for poop thing works out.
 
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Ronws said:
I find myself in a quandry. I could retire early. I could retire in 5 years at the standard age. Or retire in 10 years to get the maximum SSA benefits. In addition to my retirement funds. Which do I do?

I am getting older and getting a job in my field, if I was to lose the one I have, would be hard because of my age and my big, fat license that scares people. (They think I would steal business or try to run their company.)

I saw a talk on this subject. If you retire sooner, you don't get as much money but you get to enjoy it longer. Or, retire later with more money and less time to spend it.

I am really hoping that pay for poop thing works out.
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Every day is one day closer to our final day. We never know when that is. Is it 5 years? 10? or 1?

My old boss (about 15 years ago) was going to retire Dec. 1. In Nov. he told me he felt good and that he even lost a little weight and was looking forward to retirement. A week later he asked me about an ulcer I had a while earlier, and how it felt. He told me what he was feeling and it was not centered under the sternum like mine was. I suggested he get a check up with his doctor. By early December he was diagnosed with duodenal cancer and lasted another painful 14 months. I took note. A couple more years of padding our retirement account would have been icing on the cake, but we never know the day the Reaper will show up.

All that said, have your plan and budgets figured out. Health insurance, when to draw SS, etc.
We could make it work, so I decided (much at my wife's request) to call it a career and move forward to the next chapter of our lives.
 
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I asked myself when I retired a couple years early at a reduced benefit; how many years would it take to make up with a larger benefit to account for what I had already collected with the reduced benefit. I would have maxed out on my retirement if I had stayed about 3 years longer. It would have taken me something like 26 years to make up for what I had already collected. No brainer.
 
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jpjulian said:
I asked myself when I retired a couple years early at a reduced benefit; how many years would it take to make up with a larger benefit to account for what I had already collected with the reduced benefit. I would have maxed out on my retirement if I had stayed about 3 years longer. It would have taken me something like 26 years to make up for what I had already collected. No brainer.
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That is, to say, what you lost was not that much and it would take 26 years to make up the difference? So, retiring 3 years early didn't hurt enough to be significant?

I am one of those people looking forward to retirement. To do the things I like to do. To have time for chores around the house. Wake up when I damn well please.

I just don't have a lot of money in the bank. I have more in retirement. I had to roll a largish chunk of my simple IRA into an annuity to help my wife qualify for Medicaid (she is living in a skilled nursing facility, long story for another time.) But I am still working and putting into my IRA, to which my employer adds some. I have a vehicle to pay off (I got in Dec 2022) and a personal loan for my dentures. I want those paid off before I retire.
 
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Ronws said:
That is, to say, what you lost was not that much and it would take 26 years to make up the difference? So, retiring 3 years early didn't hurt enough to be significant?

I am one of those people looking forward to retirement. To do the things I like to do. To have time for chores around the house. Wake up when I damn well please.

I just don't have a lot of money in the bank. I have more in retirement. I had to roll a largish chunk of my simple IRA into an annuity to help my wife qualify for Medicaid (she is living in a skilled nursing facility, long story for another time.) But I am still working and putting into my IRA, to which my employer adds some. I have a vehicle to pay off (I got in Dec 2022) and a personal loan for my dentures. I want those paid off before I retire.
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Simple math, and someone smarter than me can maybe put it differently, but, let's say you would earn 1,000 per month if you retired 3 years early. 3 years later, at normal retirement, you would have already collected 36,000 gross in retirement pay. If you would earn, let's say for example, 1,200 per month at the later date, 36,000/1,200=30 years it would take to theoretically make up the difference in what you would have already collected. This is the justification I used to tell myself to take a slight cut in pay for the better good of my future. YMMV but if you can, take the plunge. But do try to do it debt free. Makes life much easier that way.
 
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jpjulian said:
Simple math, and someone smarter than me can maybe put it differently, but, let's say you would earn 1,000 per month if you retired 3 years early. 3 years later, at normal retirement, you would have already collected 36,000 gross in retirement pay. If you would earn, let's say for example, 1,200 per month at the later date, 36,000/1,200=30 years it would take to theoretically make up the difference in what you would have already collected. This is the justification I used to tell myself to take a slight cut in pay for the better good of my future. YMMV but if you can, take the plunge. But do try to do it debt free. Makes life much easier that way.
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A slight adjustment in the math returns this: $36,000/$200 extra per month = 180 months / 12 months in a year = 15 years to break even (in total dollars collected) on waiting for the higher monthly amount of $1,200. So if the early retirement age was 60, and the later age in this example was 63, then at age 78 (age 63 + 15 years) you would have collected the same dollars in both scenarios.

Interestingly, comparing the totals collected by age 90 in this scenario, a person would only collect an additional $960 per year on average (starting at age 60) if they waited 3 years to collect an extra $200/mo. $28,800 in total extra collections at age 90 / 30 years = $960 on average per year more in your pocket.

YMMV. Check your actual benefits at various ages by visiting the social security MYSSA site and then do the math for your situation.
 
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I've done the math and the break even points is around 80yrs old. Take it early for a little less per month because the older you get, the less you will need/be able to use the higher amount.

The exception to that is if you would be 100% dependant on the full retirement amount to cover your monthly expenses at 65 then keep working till you get there and you have my condolences.
 
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I did the math (I'm a CPA-Inactive) and for Social Security it would take me until I'm 83 for it to make a difference in taking it two years early so I sent in my SS application last month to start 1-1-24. My life expectancy calculator says I die at 82 so I think I'm good.

Having a steady revenue stream from a separate business that I don't have to spend all my time with helps.
 
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I left my third career sometime around 2011. (Damn it’s been a long time ago). My only two worries, time is really flying by, 75 now, and I can’t imagine how I was able to get so much done while I was working. Now, if I get one good project completed in a day or one recreational activity in a day, it was one heck of a busy day.

Used to get in more than than my 8 hours, got to the range for some shooting or on the lake for some sailing and get the lawn mowed or work in the shop all in one day. Now, forget it.

Still, it’s fun, can’t wait to see what each new day is going to bring.
 
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remaction said:
A slight adjustment in the math returns this: $36,000/$200 extra per month = 180 months / 12 months in a year = 15 years to break even (in total dollars collected) on waiting for the higher monthly amount of $1,200. So if the early retirement age was 60, and the later age in this example was 63, then at age 78 (age 63 + 15 years) you would have collected the same dollars in both scenarios.

Interestingly, comparing the totals collected by age 90 in this scenario, a person would only collect an additional $960 per year on average (starting at age 60) if they waited 3 years to collect an extra $200/mo. $28,800 in total extra collections at age 90 / 30 years = $960 on average per year more in your pocket.

YMMV. Check your actual benefits at various ages by visiting the social security MYSSA site and then do the math for your situation.
Click to expand...
Your point is functionally the same as mine, that it will be a very long time to make up the difference.
 
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