Anyone have any stories about ERing earlier than you had planned?

[ESRBob]

I love that!

Mainly because of our dog, we RE'd. We could have done it sooner and wish we had. We now realize that we should have done this years earlier.

That's the first time I've heard that one... It makes perfect sense -- I'd rather be home with the dog than at work -- but I'd not heard this as the catalyzing factor yet. Was the dog ill and requiring regular attention?

 

[Goonie]

This is something I struggle with. The job has changed, admin has changed, do I wait or do I go?.....

I ER'd earlier than I had planned. Not much earlier...but none the less, earlier than planned! I had planned my last day to be this Friday....however! Standing back watching and listening to all the 'namby-pamby' bullsh*t going on finally got to be a PITA. I walked in to the twit's boss's office and gave him my FINAL time sheet summary (of all the vacation, sick days, personal days, and comp-time due me), tossed my keys on his desk, and told him "Bye!" I walked out to the time clock and 'glad-handed' and back-slapped my (now former) fellow employees....and walked out the door for the LAST TIME!!!

I threw him a nice curve ball doing that. He had planned a big retirement party for me for Friday morning (which I've been telling him for 6 months that I would NOT attend)....he'd invited a bunch people (his friends and cronies), and ordered all sorts of food (finger sandwiches and that sort of sh*t). He can contact the jokers & losers folks he had invited and tell them not to come, BUT the food is already ordered and can't be canceled! I guess the guys will be having a nice lunch though!!! That was my parting shot....I screwed up the boss's big plans!!! Hahaha!!!

Anyway....Yep! I ER'd earlier than planned!!!

 

[OKLibrarian]

Anyway....Yep! I ER'd earlier than planned!!!

LOL! I love it. Congratulations!

 

[Sparky]

That's the first time I've heard that one... It makes perfect sense -- I'd rather be home with the dog than at work -- but I'd not heard this as the catalyzing factor yet. Was the dog ill and requiring regular attention?

No, our dog was 3 years old at the time... he deserved more than we were giving him. He was SO unhappy and grumpy when we left him alone for 8-10 hours per day. In reality, we'd been planning our escape long before we got him ... What happened is, DH HATED his job - I said, just quit... he said, oh yeah? Today, we can thank a little puppy for leading us to ER.

 

[DRiP Guy]

Sometimes I feel like the parable of "how to catch a monkey":

I have transitioned out of my prior 28 year mode of thinking 'first the job', at least to the degree that I am now ready to take 'the package' from Megacorp if they would just let me go.

But I am not yet willing (or ready?) to just turn and walk away without so much as a dime of severance plus Cobra. I have no defined benefit plan, as I came to Megacorp after it had been eliminated, and was not in military long enough to get retirement, and my job between those two was a small private place where the retirement plan was just a lot of hot air about 'someday you'll get a piece of the action.' Yeah, right.

The cash-out from Megacorp using our standard exit plan works out to be at least a couple of years of my frugal expenses, and if they have planned reductions, they have previously had even more attractive packages than that for 'volunteers' -- of which I would certainly be one.

But waiting for something external to trigger my future is not the way I like to do things.

I am starting to think that the way I am going to break this dilemma is to bookmark the current value of the package, if it were provided tomorrow. I will then figure how long it will take at my current savings rate to match that, and that becomes my exit date. If they decide to RIF prior to that, super, but if that date approaches, I simply figure ["mental accounting", to be sure!] that the extra work time was to build my own severance.

I sure do hate to leave money on the table, but then, I don't want to be that monkey, either. Glad to hear any wisdom or thoughts from others who have thought about this or dealt with it.

 

[kcowan]

My Dad retired at 65yo. The month of his retirement was the month Mom died of breast cancer at 57yo. He lived for 30 more years without a spouse or companion.

That was a big motivation for me to RE.

 

[Dreamer]

I was a federal employee and stayed under the old retirement system, CSRS, so that I could retire at 55. My motto was 2008 will be great, because that was the year that I would be 55. However, my office changed dramatically. I had transferred to my office 05/80 and had worked with several of the people for 20 some years. Retirements started happening and 7 people out of 14 left, including my boss, who was a great boss. An early out (no money) was offered again and I was 53 years old, so I said that was close enough and I was willing to take the reduction for leaving early, so I retired 06/06. I am close to one of the ladies that is still there and I can not imagine having to work in that place. I have no regrets and consider myself fortunate that I was close enough in age and had almost 33 years in and was able to retire early! I feel so sorry for the ones that I left behind.

 

[unclemick]

Layoff Jan 1993, age 49, aerospace engineer. Pretty much started from there - with one yr jobshopping around 1995 in the stretch.

heh heh heh - my 'plan' was age 63. 2006.

 

[happy2bretired]

I mentioned in my introduction that I had planned to retire in Jan of 2007, but, my husband died in Jan of 2006, causing me to re-evaluate my plans. I retired in April of 2006. There is nothing like a death of a loved one to make one pause and think about what is important in their life. My j*b was important to me when I was younger but it lost it's appeal about 10 years ago with major reorganizational changes. I had 31 years with the Federal Gov and I was 55 and believe me I was ready to walk out that door as soon as I could. I wanted to make sure that I could enjoy time with my daughter before she started off on her own life's journey. Things will never be the same for me, but, I hope that I can find a new life after FIRE...and I think I can.

 

[Goonie]

Retirements started happening and 7 people out of 14 left, including my boss, who was a great boss.......... I feel so sorry for the ones that I left behind.

We were a small (municipal) department....only 9 people. Retirements began happening. Seven of the nine retired, 2 of them were never replaced...but their work still had to be done. So those of us remaining got MORE work. Add to that the fact that as the city has grown, so has our work load. Of the new ones hired, only 2 have ANY work ethic at all! The others have to be led by the hand ALL of the time! Our fantastic boss retired, and was replaced by a MORON! New boss WON"T deal with the problem, just assigns their work to the others who are productive, thus overloading them.

The fellas that were my friends retired several years ago, and the replacements weren't the type people I'd hang out with. I guess I was the dinosaur!

Anyway, I took the early-out they offered, and I'll NEVER regret it! I DO feel sorry for those two good guys, though....poor suckers fellas!

 

[Nords]

My Dad retired at 65yo. The month of his retirement was the month Mom died of breast cancer at 57yo. He lived for 30 more years without a spouse or companion.
That was a big motivation for me to RE.

Ouch-- my Dad was in the same situation. He's been ER'd for 20 years now, and he helped me see the light.

 

[Original Wally]

Hi Glen - my story is similar to others, but diferent. As they ALL are. My ER was @ 55.5 years. DB plan of 2+% per year of service (21+) = 43% of so. BOUGHT another 5 years of service (pd from 401k) - so annuity was something like 55%. That LOOKS bad, BUT - we had paid off house and had been slamming BOTH 401k ##and## 457 plan to the max - about 20% EACH. So, I was already "living on" (say) 60% of my salary. NOW the spread was close. Then I realized I was contirbuting 7.45% to S/Security - which does NOT come out of my retirement... so in reality, my NET NET NET takehome went up a tick when I retired. Then I had some health issues and now get some early Social Security bennies too, and I am now in a significantly better place financially than when working. Go Figger.

 

[Alan]

Hi Glen - my story is similar to others, but diferent. As they ALL are. My ER was @ 55.5 years. DB plan of 2+% per year of service (21+) = 43% of so. BOUGHT another 5 years of service (pd from 401k) - so annuity was something like 55%. That LOOKS bad, BUT - we had paid off house and had been slamming BOTH 401k ##and## 457 plan to the max - about 20% EACH. So, I was already "living on" (say) 60% of my salary. NOW the spread was close. Then I realized I was contirbuting 7.45% to S/Security - which does NOT come out of my retirement... so in reality, my NET NET NET takehome went up a tick when I retired. Then I had some health issues and now get some early Social Security bennies too, and I am now in a significantly better place financially than when working. Go Figger.

If you look at glen12's profile you'll see that he hasn't visited the site for over 4 years, so don't expect a reply from him. (you can look at a person's profile by clicking on their name).

 

[scrabbler1]

I did not expect the pieces of my ER plan to fall into place so quickly in 2005-2008. While I had been developing an ER spreadsheet for several years even before 2005, I did not think I would be able to actually go through with it until I was at least 50. But the value of the company stock in my ESOP grew at such an astronomical rate in those years that I was able to simply walk away and take the money wit me. A tax law change around 2005 allowing me to use NUA to cash it out at lower tax rates helped, too. I had also run my plan by a FIDO advisor and their retirement planning software and got a thumbs up. By late 2008, despite a declining overall stock market (not my ESOP, though), I was able to ER before the end of that year at age 45.

 

[REWahoo]

Zombie thread, back from the dead!