What does retirement mean to you folks? Did you ever have a regular job to retire from? Did you manage to find the perfect place/career/whatever, where the idea of retirement doesn't exist?
My sweet Larry has retired from an actual JOB. he worked for years as a trucker, hauling gravel, asphalt and dirt from here to there.. Now he is on his social security, and while it is not much, we have managed to downsize our lives to where his SS check and my income selling art and jewelry is enough. We live in the woods on 8.5 acres in a house we built ourselves. e do without some of the creature comforts ie: sewage and county water, but have everything else. We pay 167.36 a month for our land and house. And another 250.00 for insurance, electric,phone, computer and land taxes. Food runs about another 250-350 a month. We haul in our own free slab wood for heat. And grow what we can in vegetables. We also brew our own beer and wine. And this year , plan to grow our own mushrooms. So it carries us through.
not a bad life if i say success in life is learning the things that you can do without and do for yourself its great to live with out the complications of everyday modern life
Retirement isn't really part of my vocabulary. I now only work 2 hours a day but like teepi it's enough to keep the wolves from the door. I live relatively frugally bu don't think about it - it's just how it is. I still do all the other things I used to do in my spare time (what little I had) but now it fills a bigger part of my day. I take some jewellery commisions but am very selective. I don't want to be tied to having to do things.
I've been gradually retiring for the last 12 years. I quit my rat-race job and took a year off. Then realized I still needed some income, so went back to the same job part-time as a self-employed contractor. Then quit that again to move to a rural community. (Cue "Goin' up the Country"...) I still needed some income, so I did some construction and some college teaching. Then got offered my old part-time contract back remotely over the Internet. So right now, I'm semi-retired. I work two days a week from home at an insanely boring job, but I have 5 days a week to do other stuff. My wife and I are growing veggies, volunteering in community organizations, and enjoying not being in the city. Retirement looks like, maybe in a couple of years, pulling the plug on this contract and taking my pension early.
Life is good here. I left North America 30ish years ago and now live in a small village in England. I retired many years ago due to health problems and was awarded a pension for life from my last full-time employer. Health problems cleared up and here I am.....I grow my own vegetables, work in greyhound rescue and make clothes to sell at hippie festivals. My husband is 9 years younger than me and he still works, but only part-time. He is paid enough that he only needs to do about 3 days a week. We can spend a lot of our summers travelling about with our dogs, going to festivals and camping.
I semi-retired four years ago from developing business software. I bought a 20-ft travel trailer and now I wander the Western US fulltime, going where the weather suits my clothes, parking the trailer on BLM or Forest Service land. At the moment, I'm in southern Utah, where I'll spend a couple of weeks hiking in the remote sections of Canyonlands National Park. I say "semi" retired because a couple of years after I left, my old boss emailed to ask if I would consider doing overflow projects for them part-time. Well, of course I said "yes". The money is good and I can work wherever and whenever I feel like it. I'm not tied to an office, which to me is a very big deal. Being retired takes a little getting used to, though. As others have mentioned, I've downsized my life quite a bit. You discover that you can be a lot more frugal than you ever thought possible and not really miss anything that matters. I live quite comfortably on $1,000 a month or so, and I want for nothing. Just as one example ... speaking as an ex-junk food junkie, I've been astonished at how easy it is to be healthy and spend less money when you cut out junk food. And it's gratifying to look at your online bank statement and realize you haven't used your debit card for anything other than gas for two or three weeks at a time.
I love being retired. I loved my career, too ... I had a long and satisfying one, but I'm glad it's done. I keep busy now and I'm never bored, but I don't want to work anymore. I was an elementary school teacher, and I still hear from quite a number of my former students, a few of which are grandparents themselves now! Good god, how the years have flown by. I'm a little puzzled when you say the "perfect" career when retirement "doesn't exist". Why would that be perfect, necessarily? Retirement from working isn't retirement from life, you know. It simply means you've entered a new phase.
Finances dictate my wife and I keep working at jobs outside the house. We're fairly recent empty-nesters so the last couple of years we've been simplifying life and needs and are always exploring ways to reduce even further. It'd be nice to be able to leave those jobs and to concentrate more on the things we like to do. She getting back into her crafts and I've started writing again. This part of life for us is interesting and fun and we're trying to enjoy the trip as much as possible.
For me, I see retirement as that of an escape from the convention of the regularity of work. There is in retirement; as I have mused recently, also of possible redundancy that of opportunities. Time is so often viewed as an enemy, though can be that of an ally if one makes the most of it. My home is not a Palace (far from it) though neither is it an abode of squalor - a pile of disarray hmm - maybe. The choice of spending time in spring cleaning the home each free moment away from my workplace employment is less important than the pursuit of knowledge within and without of the Interweb. It is a much more productive use of time .'. bring it on . Or is that just me then?
It means to me, that as a child I depended on my parents for my needs, as the second phase came, it meant training and making money, then the next phase was retirement from that job, and joyfully entering with grace, the final phase of enjoying life once again without the restraints of a job & alarm clock. This phase is the best time of my life, because I am doing exactly what I want to do, writing, oil painting, traveling & making new friends of like mind. I can't turn the clock back, but I have a source of wealth in what I have learned and put into practice. I have grandchildren with their smiling faces, I get to watch my children make mistakes and sometimes learn from them. I don't own a house, but travel full time with my husband in a 34 foot fifth wheel. He was not a hippie, but envy's my life experiences. He lives vicariously through my peaceful free spirit. Retirement is slowing down to actually smell the moss in the woods. Listen to the music in the roar of the waves and deafness of the Rocky Mountain National Park on a hiking trail. Making a pot of Tea and sharing it with a new neighbor in the campground, which can be a few days or weeks. Life is just growing where you are planted.
I had a long, good career and in it was able to practice and teach mercy. For the last three years I've worked 2-3 days/week. This week is my first week of complete retirement. It's a very strange feeling. My wife and I have been traveling a lot in recent years, I'm baking primo sourdough and other breads + cookies, gardening, exercising, backpacking. I'm getting involved in helping at psytrance campouts. Headed to Wyoming in 2 weeks for 9-10 days in the Wind Rivers. Any backpackers on the forum?
Also, it was really cool reading about the different paths people have taken/are taking. Sounds good! Thanks.
I worked for 40 years in construction and then was disabled in a construction accident the last 10 disabled. Always been a hippie and proud. Ive built houses, com. buildings and football stadiums.As long as i were honest and true never faced discrimination. I stood by my liberal,progressive,hippie values.
