Celebrating Your FIRE Escape

[Kickernick]

For those of you who have already reached FI and retired early, how did you mark the occasion with your family or friends? Did you throw a party (or link to a birthday party)? Did you go to dinner with close family or friends? Did you do nothing at all?

 

[Walt34]

I was busy preparing to move from traffic hell.

 

[razztazz]

Two people from work who thought the world of me took me to lunch.

 

[Sunset]

I let everyone think I was unemployed.
It was interesting to see who tried to offer job hunting advice/help.

I don't advertise it, as it will only bring on the requests for $$$$ or jealousy.

 

[jjquantz]

No ER oriented celebration here. DW and I already had a trip to Europe planned to celebrate our 35th anniversary. When ER got moved up a few months, that trip became the first ER trip, but it wasn't intended that way.

 

[Which Roger]

A big party was suggested for me by a relative, but I declined since most of the guests would have been older than me and still w*rking. I felt like I would have been rubbing it in. I did celebrate informally with a handful of already retired/ERd friends.

 

[Tom52]

We celebrated with a trip to Key West about two weeks after I retired.

 

[freebird5825]

For the first few years of FIRE, I would set my alarm for the exact time I used to have to for w*rk, get up, dress in jeans, and drive to the parking lot of the building. I would sit with coffee in a to-go mug, listen to the radio, and watch the cube lemmings go into the building. Then I would go do some shopping errands and head home.
My FIRE anniversary date was April 1st.
I have no idea if anybody ever recognized my vehicle, but it was a great April Fools' joke for me to enjoy all to myself.

 

[Donzo]

I took the wife and kids RVing on Lake Tahoe for a week. We had such a great time, my cheeks hurt from smiling! It will be 9 years this June already, so fast. Got to enjoy 5 years of the kids being home - priceless. My daughter graduates UC Davis this June, my son next June. Time FLYS. We are taking a family trip to the coast of Maine this summer to celebrate my daughters graduation...going to eat lobster til we are sick of it

 

[Kickernick]

FreeBird 5825 - my FIRE date will also be April Fools Day!

 

[W2R]

For those of you who have already reached FI and retired early, how did you mark the occasion with your family or friends? Did you throw a party (or link to a birthday party)? Did you go to dinner with close family or friends? Did you do nothing at all?

You mean, the anniversary of the day I retired? I keep forgetting and haven't celebrated it even once. Frank retired two or three months after me, though, and now and then we remark on the fact that the first five years of retirement have been so happy.

Or, you mean the actual day back in 2009 when I retired? I went home at noon, and IIRC Frank took me out to dinner that evening at a nice restaurant. He paid since he still had a job.

 

[Whisper66]

Officially celebrated with a lunch with good folks at work and also had a nice dinner out with my wife and family. The real celebration was simply waking up every day after retiring with plans to do whatever I wanted to at whatever pace I wished to progress those things. It's been a great, ongoing celebration for months now. I can't wait to get up each morning and I enjoy virtually every single day. Maybe someday it will get old but I really don't think so!

 

[MBAustin]

Went to the beach for a few days with DH.

 

[Midpack]

I very politely declined almost all the customary retirement events, to MegaCorp's chagrin.

But I had a nice dinner with my favorite co-workers (I got to choose, took 8 people out of 80 local, about 600 North America) who I truly enjoyed working with, the night before my last day. DW took me out for a nice dinner, nothing extraordinary, about a week later when we got around to it. And she bought be a bottle of my favorite Scotch, that I'd quit buying several years ago because it's just gotten too pricey (and Scotch isn't my drink of choice anymore anyway).

I assume the OP was not talking about retirement day anniversaries, I don't even think about that, just another day now...

I thought the idea was to celebrate being retired every day after leaving cube world.

 

[Kickernick]

Yes - interested in how people marked their actual early retirement day (not anniversary). My is less than a year away, and I have a bottle of Dom Perignon from 2000 that will be uncorked. My 50th birthday is two weeks later, so I thought maybe I would wait 14 days and invite friends for a birthday party.

 

[travelover]

Yes - interested in how people marked their actual early retirement day (not anniversary)......

I took the next day off work........and the next and............

 

[Ally]

No personal party, but our board is having a retirement party/reception for me in 8 days. I'm not crazy about it, but people are being so kind that I guess I'll deal with it.


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[ElizabethT]

We left immediately for a 25-day RV'ing trip. It was the most wonderful feeling to know we would not be coming back to a pile of built up work. Prior to our departure we wondered if 25 days away would feel too long. On day 25 we had our answer - no, it definitely did not.

 

[Ronstar]

Did nothing at all. It was just an ordinary day. Came home from work and spent the night at home with DW.

 

[SumDay]

DH celebrated by beginning chemotherapy the next day. Wasn't exactly what we'd have planned, but 6 months later the doc gave him the all clear and we left for a trip to Mexico. Years later, he's still in remission, or actually now I think he can just say cancer free.

 

[Nodak]

I tried to discourage it but for some reason the military likes to do retirement ceremonies. I had hoped that being a DoD civilian would let me get out of it but that didn't work.

 

[irishgal]

My entire team work from home and I do a lot of international projects so there was no way to have a party thank God!
I'm on my own so no spouse to celebrate with, so I simply bought myself a nice Van Cleef and Arpels necklace.. I thought I was pretty cool until I found out my female friend bought herself a new Porsche Carrera as her retirement gift lol!


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[2017ish]

My entire team work from home and I do a lot of international projects so there was no way to have a party thank God!
I'm on my own so no spouse to celebrate with, so I simply bought myself a nice Van Cleef and Arpels necklace.. I thought I was pretty cool until I found out my female friend bought herself a new Porsche Carrera as her retirement gift lol!


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Da*n. those are pricey! Don't see DW being interested in even the cheapest one on their webisite. OTOH, she is talking about flying to San Juan, staying on that island until bored; traveling south to the next island, then repeat until we hit Venezuela. Different strokes for different folks!

 

[Kickernick]

Porsche Carrera ... Now that's a way to mark the occasion ... with an exclamation mark!

 

[scrabbler1]

On my last day of work, a bunch of my coworkers in my division wanted take me out to lunch as they normally do for people who leave the company for any reason. Being one who at the time had been to only one of those in the last 14 years, I declined. Instead, my one good friend/coworker I had often gone to lunch with took me out for lunch that last day. Nice.


The coworkers who wanted to treat me to lunch gave me the money they would have used on my lunch, about $160. Nice!


That night, I had my scrabble friend over for our regular scrabble night. Because it was a Friday, my ladyfriend came over, too. Nothing special.