60 YO from PA and not sure when I will retire

[Jimbo125]

Hi all. I posted an answer to another thread on here and realized I have never introduced myself properly.

I just turned 60 in January my wife turned 61 the month before that. She has stated quite emphatically that she is retiring from her high stress job at 63. I on the other hand keep changing my mind as to when my date is.

I am a partner in a CPA firm and I can pretty much make my own hours and take time off as I wish. Except January through April.(Tax Season).

I have run all the financial scenarios like a good CPA should, and I am probably on track to be FI by 63, but I just took off a couple of days after April 15th and I have to say I am not sure I am mentally ready for retirement. I am in a quandary!

I have read on here about the OMY syndrome and I can understand how you can get sucked into that. It is difficult to spend all of your life in a wealth building mode and then all of the sudden turn that off.

Anyone else have similar feelings leading up to retirement?

[braumeister]

You say that your wife definitely feels the stress, but what about your stress level during tax season? How many more of those seasons do you think you can take easily? That's what I would focus on.

[pb4uski]

I was in public (Big 4 advisory) prior to retiring and had some apprehensions as well. For other reasons, I dialed down to 75% time and then later 50% time and the free time gave me a good preview of what retirement might be like.

In the end, the nature of the work we did was such that we were continually on-call so it became hard for me to commit to do things such as play golf with the boys each 2pm on Tuesdays (as an example) and I was more interested in free time than more wealth so I decided to hang it up.

You may want to consider dialing down your time to 3 days a week during the off-season this summer and see if you find enough to do to keep happy. I did. in fact, it was too easy.

[MRG]

Welcome to the forum.

Yes it bothered my to start eating the nuts I'd saved up for so long.

I went through a lot of issues retiring, health related. I'm starting to believe my issues we're due to the stress related to staying somewhere too long. It made me feel like I lived in pressure cooker, one day I realized I was "done".
Best wishes,
MRG

[Dog]

Hi Jimbo125,
I'm fighting a form of OMY syndrome. My goal was to stay until I vested (to get matching $ on 401k). I hit that early earlier this month. Now, I feel like I need to stay until end of fiscal year to get annual bonus (June 30). That date is rapidly approaching and now I'm starting to waiver. So - I understand. I just can't picture not earning a paycheck :-(
Good luck!

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dog ....I just can't picture not earning a paycheck :-( ....

Part of the price one pays for freedom. If you want to play, you gotta pay.

In my experience it is just discomfort with change, which is understandable. I made it easier by structuring an automatic transfer that is my retirement "paycheck" - that was the same as my employment take-home pay (after taxes and retirement savings) - from my "investment" cash account to my checking account. I realize and concede that it is totally form over substance, but there is an odd comfort in seeing that transfer happen every month.

Only difference is my employment was semi-monthly and my transfer is monthly.

[Dash man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jimbo125 I have run all the financial scenarios like a good CPA should, and I am probably on track to be FI by 63, but I just took off a couple of days after April 15th and I have to say I am not sure I am mentally ready for retirement. I am in a quandary! I have read on here about the OMY syndrome and I can understand how you can get sucked into that. It is difficult to spend all of your life in a wealth building mode and then all of the sudden turn that off. Anyone else have similar feelings leading up to retirement?

Being financially ready and mentally ready for retirement are two different things. I believe a lot of the mental preparation depends on your attitude toward your job, your family situation and your general health. To answer your question, I did not have similar feelings because I did not like my job or the stress that went with it, and sitting at a desk all day was affecting my health in several ways. My family was supportive of my leaving the job, so that didn't hold me back. Financially we felt we were ready, though my DW wanted to work a little longer and will retire later this year.
I didn't see anything in your post that indicated you dislike your job. If you still enjoy the work, stick with it until you're ready to give it up. Look at your health and make sure you're not paying a hidden price for continuing to work. You'll know when it's the right time.

[CaliforniaMan]

I think I know how you feel, I stressed a lot about it for the year before I finally pulled the trigger at the first of this month. It is new to me to plan my life without some earned income. And thrashed my numbers through every calculator I could find, and some of my own for the past 6 months, stressing upon stress. But I didn't feel at ease until I made my first transfer for the next 12 months expenses. Now for some reason I feel ethereally serene about it. Realizing whatever else happens at least I don't have to think about it for another 12 months. So it is now off to other things and I am really really looking forward to it. I think it was finally actually doing it that released the stress. Will see what happens from here... Best of luck to you.