Your Biggest In-Retirement Surprises (Article)

[rescueme]

An article just posted today on M* for those that want to see others and the different "challanges" (or not ) when they retired.

It's a look outside of this forum for stories of what retirement turned out to be.

Your Biggest In-Retirement Surprises

 

[W2R]

Many of them appear to have been surprised by the fact that they were not financially prepared for a plunging market and higher cost of living than they had anticipated. As a group, we are probably better prepared than most but I can sure sympathize with those that got caught in that squeeze.

This one was pretty sobering:

Snray03 wrote, "I retired in 2004 at full retirement age. [My b]iggest negative surprise is how fast your health can go south after age 70. I have had five major cancers since I turned 70 three years ago. Still fighting lung cancer and multiple myeloma. I guess the positive surprise is I am still alive."

Health issues that severe at just 70 years old would be such a scary surprise.

 

[Nords]

Lotta turnover on that board. I hardly recognized any of those posters from five years ago.

Pretty sweet gig to write an entire article by regurgitating your discussion board onto your website magazine!

 

[thoreau]

Re: "Alpha28 wrote, "My biggest retirement surprise is how little I miss work. "

This was the first September in 58 years that I wasn't either going to school or working in a school. I figured that I would miss it. The reality is that I don't miss it even one little bit. I'm relieved that it is finally over for this life. After all, even the Israelites got to go to the promised land after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

 

[Amethyst]

After all, even the Israelites got to go to the promised land after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.

Only 40 years? They had it easy, didn't they?

Amethyst

 

[JPatrick]

Several praising I-Bonds. or at least the early issues, something many of us have done in recent threads.

If I had to guess, I say a similar article 5 years from now will be even more grim, at least as related to unpleasant pension outcomes.

Given these responses came from Morning* members, I would think they represent part of the cream of the crop so far as individual investors go, much like the folks here..Wonder what the responses would be like from the sit at McDonalds all day gang would be.

 

[thoreau]

I talked to the Assistant Superintendent today in the Grocery Story. I was in there with all the other retired folk. He's about 37. I was working for four years, when he was born.

He says, "We had a WIB meeting the other day, and I was thinking of you." Holy Crap! Has it only been five months. It took me quite awhile to remember exactly what a WIB meeting might have actually been about.

 

[walkinwood]

Thanks for posting. Ifind it very useful to read the first hand experience of other retirees - early or not. There is much we can control, but so much that we can't. I am getting better at accepting this as each month rolls by.

 

[thoreau]

Thanks for posting. Ifind it very useful to read the first hand experience of other retirees - early or not. There is much we can control, but so much that we can't. I am getting better at accepting this as each month rolls by.

Our proces of actually getting to our retirement home in Northern New England has been so long and fraught with so many temporary roadblocks that we feel like Salmon fighting to get home up stream. Rather than saying that the universe is trying to tell us not to move, we remind ourselves that we have learned that the best things in life are not free, and they are the things that you worked the hardest to get.