I pulled the plug and retired from my Aerospace career yesterday.
As with many others there are mixed emotions.
My DW has been thru 10 years of cancer and now has "short gut" condition where she lost 90% of her short intestines and requires liquid nutrition from a bag. After the initial surgery the doctor comes out to me and states she is living hour by hour. After several years she is better but still has limitations. Talk about putting things in perspective ! She had to retire from her elementary teaching position and focus on getting better. The other month I come home from work and she tells me she's not sure how long she'll be around. This was incredibly hard to hear. We always had plans to travel when we retired. After hearing that I started looking seriously at where we were financially. After 40 years of savings and LBYM it appeared we may be OK. Being an engineer and use to analyzing everything on a worst case basis I found it somewhat frustrating to look out 35 years in the future and estimate how health insurance premiums. longevity, and all the uncontrollable factors will change. I decided that we have a chance at making it and will have to adapt if needed. I didn't want to take a chance of working another year and then find out that her health might not allow travel. That would be a major regret. We just got back from a trip to Italy. We took all her meds with her with spares. We had a few anxious moments where she fell once and was on her last spare bag but we made it back home. That was a big hurdle for us to clear. My point is that I was glad to delay gratification for all those years so that I had options open to me later in life. I was able to leave Megacorp a few years earlier so we could travel while we can. That makes it all worth the trouble. My kids are just graduating from college and I keep telling them to set something aside for emergencies and retirement. I hope they will listen.
As with many others there are mixed emotions.
My DW has been thru 10 years of cancer and now has "short gut" condition where she lost 90% of her short intestines and requires liquid nutrition from a bag. After the initial surgery the doctor comes out to me and states she is living hour by hour. After several years she is better but still has limitations. Talk about putting things in perspective ! She had to retire from her elementary teaching position and focus on getting better. The other month I come home from work and she tells me she's not sure how long she'll be around. This was incredibly hard to hear. We always had plans to travel when we retired. After hearing that I started looking seriously at where we were financially. After 40 years of savings and LBYM it appeared we may be OK. Being an engineer and use to analyzing everything on a worst case basis I found it somewhat frustrating to look out 35 years in the future and estimate how health insurance premiums. longevity, and all the uncontrollable factors will change. I decided that we have a chance at making it and will have to adapt if needed. I didn't want to take a chance of working another year and then find out that her health might not allow travel. That would be a major regret. We just got back from a trip to Italy. We took all her meds with her with spares. We had a few anxious moments where she fell once and was on her last spare bag but we made it back home. That was a big hurdle for us to clear. My point is that I was glad to delay gratification for all those years so that I had options open to me later in life. I was able to leave Megacorp a few years earlier so we could travel while we can. That makes it all worth the trouble. My kids are just graduating from college and I keep telling them to set something aside for emergencies and retirement. I hope they will listen.
