Is retiring without work backup "irresponsible"?

[scrabbler1]

Uncertain times indeed. One should never retire in uncertain times. However who can tell me when we had certain risk free times?

I retired at the end of October, 2008, when the market was in free-fall. I was able to take advantage of this by being able to buy at very low prices, mainly into a bond mutual fund whose price was greatly depressed. I bought about 25% more shares than I had originally planned in my ER spreadsheet while being able to liquidate my shares of company stock while they were still pretty high. The end result of his is that my ER finances have been better than I had originally planned, not that I'd have trouble covering my expenses with a sufficient cushion anyway.