Hey all, considering retirement in 6 month's but have no idea on what comes next.

[Slim11]

Ok, so hello. I'm 49 and considering retirement in 6 months, as the title says. This is more of what I refer to as forced fire. I really dont want to retire but they merged my job and in one word, its awful now. So, staying isn't an option. Retirement at say 50 wasn't my plan. Fortunately, I think I can make due , even without working. I will have a pension of say 100k a year, no cola. Medical costs of say 700 a month. Lower morgage of 2400 ( for NJ thats with taxes and insurance so low ) , I have one wife who works part time and a 14 year old. I will not get SS. My money saved isnt bad and should last if I am smart. I have never budgeted, nor can I . Just something I never did. I have no other debts. Basically I am the last one that still carries and pays cash for stuff, if I dont have it in my pocket, I dont buy it. My questions, are , I am afraid of not working. And doing it so early is frightening. My skill set isnt a ton of use outside of my feild, and tbh my body is too beat up to do say physical stuff like I used to. And thats pretty much the only stuff I enjoy for work. My options are limited, staying at work will run me to an early grave, but retirement may bore my to death. Any insite, or advise. Or scolding is appreciated.

 

[TheWizard]

You have just one wife, you say.
Hmmmmm...

 

[Dtail]

You have just one wife, you say.
Hmmmmm...

Noticed that too

 

[TheWizard]

You can certainly pause things for a while until you see if another opportunity presents itself.
Not enough info in your OP to understand your field of employment...

 

[TheWizard]

Noticed that too

Quips like that are what got me in trouble on a different forum with NO SENSE OF HUMOR that I no longer frequent...

 

[Dtail]

Quips like that are what got me in trouble on a different forum with NO SENSE OF HUMOR that I no longer frequent...

I hear ya and might even know the site, but we are also here to help Slim but do need more financial info to do so.

 

[COcheesehead]

Go out on your terms, not their’s. Pain is temporary, quitting is permanent.

 

[Slim11]

You have just one wife, you say.
Hmmmmm...

I figured in this day and age you have to be specific! For work I run a fire department.

 

[Slim11]

Go out on your terms, not their’s. Pain is temporary, quitting is permanent.

Im retiring, not quiting. Lol. Pain is also subjective, and everyone has a diffent limit. Mine has been surpassed.

 

[COcheesehead]

Im retiring, not quiting. Lol. Pain is also subjective, and everyone has a diffent limit. Mine has been surpassed.

You used the term “wasn’t my plan”.

 

[Slim11]

It wasn't, i planned to work longer, but as I said, not good for my well being. My own terms would be diffrent. With the merger its 3x the work, no one to do it, unsafe conditions, liability, and people will get hurt. I dont want that on me. So, my plan was to work as I was used to, instead they threw together a merger with no insite other then to merge for a political feather and let us figure out how to run it with less people , money and no direction. We as a department are merged but working with 2 payrolls , accounting sytems, computer sytems, 3 diffrent contracts, and at minimum another year or two like this. So, ending up in a situation like this was not my plan.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I figured in this day and age you have to be specific! For work I run a fire department.

Is your pension available now at age 49 ? If so that is great.

I retired from a larger volunteer FD at age 50 after 24 years. Firefighting was the easy part, the BS involved in fire service is unreal and I understand why you want out. Do it on your terms, take a breather and look for work (if you want to) in a different field. I learned that once you leave your field it passes you by in a hurry.

Watch your health. Physical and Mental.

ps. I understood what you meant when you said you had one wife. I am 57 and many of my peers have a former wife that they support financially.

 

[Slim11]

Yes , I can get the pension immediately after retirement. I will have finished 26 years in. If I wait a few more years, I can get a little more, but its not worth the stress. And , people will criticize the pension, but I do not get SS, or does anyone pay i to it. My payments were 10 percent of my salary, and the towns contribution was basically the same as for SS. I found that calculator thing on this fourm and imputed the numbers, it looks very doable. If I am using it corectly. I dont spend a ton, but I also don't pinch every penny. It also helps that the pension is baised on a top tier salary, so that helps.

 

[perez99]

It up to you if you want a second sets of eyes on your financial picture. If you do, need to post numbers.
On the emotional front, it seems you are determined for a change. Obe thing I have read consistently is to always “retire to something “ instead of running “away of something”. Think about that before pulling the plug.

 

[old medic]

You have just one wife, you say.
Hmmmmm...

LMAO.... I was wondering if the 2nd one was 14.....

OP... can totally relate to your line of work. I retired from EMS, but have also been with our local volunteer dept since 1984, holding every position but Chief... and I turned that down. The political and regulation BS can get insane. If you been around long enough to get that kind of pension, then you definitely should have the management skill set to run just about anything.. My cousin was the manager of a Pizza Hut in NY and was making more than me as a 30 year paramedic supervisor... Retire, collect the pension, consider another management position that includes insurance for a few years and pad your savings.
Best of luck to ya

 

[Slim11]

It up to you if you want a second sets of eyes on your financial picture. If you do, need to post numbers.
On the emotional front, it seems you are determined for a change. Obe thing I have read consistently is to always “retire to something “ instead of running “away of something”. Think about that before pulling the plug.

I agree, unfortunately this was sprung on us, and I had no intentions of retirement, nor did I think about what to do afterwards. Thats kinda why I am here posting, its a blow to the gut. The running away part is partially corect. I wake up before work at 430 am agrivated at the way things are being done. The weight of having to be responsible for a large department and the citizens in the towns that we protect coupled with lack of direction and forsite to correct deficiencies to me only equals a bad outcome. Its not something I want to happen or think about. And, I have sceen and been through a lot. For me to see this as a mess and no one wanting to fix it or follow through with ideas and plans to fix it is daunting.

 

[Slim11]

Yea, I thought about full time stuff, and then though that maybe I dont want to work full time anymore. I may take like a year off reassess life and look for something part time. I really dont know and flip flop back and forth. The unknown is scary. But the calculater thing helped me settle down a bit. I have been running numbers weekly in my head for the past 6 months. Seeing if I dont work , in case of the worse case senerio, If I could survive. Now , It looks like I have enough saved. I did slow and steady, and got made fun of for not getting huge returns. But , in the end, its not bad. I live in NJ , so high cost of living and property taxes most cant imagine. But , 100k a year may be good enough for the next 5 to 10 years. Then I have some stocks, 250k with a 3.5 % dividand to draw down. After that I have roughly 400k in a 457b plan at a set 4% rate. In 15 years, compounded may be aprox. 728k. Then at 65 I will draw the roughly 30k in intrest to subsidized the 100k pension? Collage funds are maybe 30k for the kido right now. I will save what I can. House is 2400 a month, and medical will be 700 a month. Eveything else is paid off. Its a plan anyways. But I will probably need to work part time at some point as to become a couch potato.

 

[SJhawkins]

If I read the OP correctly you will not be eligible for SS?

Im not an SS expert by anymeans, but, did you work somplace prior to the FD? If doing something other for say 5-6 years gets you enough SS credits that maybe something to look at. If it makes any tax sense I have no clue, will never have a pension so not sure how SS and a pension work together.

Nothing wrong with pulling the plug now either if it works.

 

[pacergal]

Welcome to the Forum!
Under the Forums section under Early Retirement FAQs is a sub forum:
Some Important Questions to Answer Before Asking - Can I Retire?

Answer those questions helps to see if you are ready.

Having a pension helps tremendously.
You say you don't budget, but I would recommend that for 2-3 months, at least, you track every single expenditure, just to give yourself a check. And then think if the one offs/yearly costs- car insurance , home insurance, etc. and add extra for ongoing repair/maintainance for home and car.

There are many helpful folks here who will answer any questions you may have.
Several good books recommended on the Bogleheads forum for reading.
One I like for looking at the "what will I do in retirement " questions is:
Ernie Zelinski "How to Retire Happy, Wild and Free". His Get a Life exercise is pretty good.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

I agree, unfortunately this was sprung on us, and I had no intentions of retirement, nor did I think about what to do afterwards. Thats kinda why I am here posting, its a blow to the gut. The running away part is partially corect. I wake up before work at 430 am agrivated at the way things are being done. The weight of having to be responsible for a large department and the citizens in the towns that we protect coupled with lack of direction and forsite to correct deficiencies to me only equals a bad outcome. Its not something I want to happen or think about. And, I have sceen and been through a lot. For me to see this as a mess and no one wanting to fix it or follow through with ideas and plans to fix it is daunting.

I don't disagree with people who say that you have to have something to retire to. But, it's not always necessary to know what that thing is at the time you retire. I didn't and I did fine. Sometimes you need to get out of where you're at to know where you want to be.

I'll give you an analogy that I gave someone when I retired without having a plan on what to do next. Lets say that you're fighting a fire. You're doing interior attack work and are on your third bottle of air and are exhausted. The heat on your back is starting to hurt and its getting worse. Then your air alarm on your SCBA starts going off. You don't think to yourself "I wonder what I'll do next when I get out of here ?" No. You just get yourself out, cool off, drink some gatorade and figure out what you can do next. Staying in a dangerous environment too long is dangerous to you and the people around you.

Good luck to you.

 

[38Chevy454]

It sounds like you are in a good position to retire and start your pension, based on successful results in Firecalc. Given your management experience, there are a lot of ways to apply that in a retirement job. Just depends on what you are interested in. One of the best things about retirement is working because you want to, not because you have to. Or not working at all if that is what you decide to retire to.

I agree that you may not need as much additional SS paying income to qualify at minimum level. You need 40 quarters credit to receive any SS. Assuming you had some SS paying work as a kid or young adult before the Fire Dept. Let's say that was 5 years worth (20 quarters). Then you only need another 20 quarters. which can be doing anything you want. It can be part time, or working at a low stress lower paying job. The point being you can get up to the minimum without a lot of effort. Sure your SS will be a lot less, but better to receive something than nothing if you can without much trouble.

 

[Slim11]

The SS thing is basicly a no go, its like a railroad retirement. So, even if I put my quarters in I will only get a fraction back, 40 percent maybe? I think I have 30 quarters in. I will get the medical at 65, just not the $$.

 

[Gumby]

Sounds like the WEP applies to you. The good news is that the WEP cannot totally eliminate your Social Security benefits. Yes, it can reduce it, but not completely. I would consider 40% SS to be better than no SS . And it wouldn't be that hard to get your last 10 credits. If you made about $7k per year for 3 yrs working part-time, you would get them.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

The politicians don't always do their due diligence and many times don't understand the impact of their decisions till it's too late. If things are as bad as you say, I'm guessing the situation will cause your ISO score to drop, then look out for higher insurance rates for everyone and guess who they will try to blame.
By the way if I was you, I would not be so specific as to your location in your profile.

 

[Slim11]

Sounds like the WEP applies to you. The good news is that the WEP cannot totally eliminate your Social Security benefits. Yes, it can reduce it, but not completely. I would consider 40% SS to be better than no SS . And it wouldn't be that hard to get your last 10 credits. If you made about $7k per year for 3 yrs working part-time, you would get them.

Ill look onto it, obviously I will not turn it down if I qualify. I am feeling better about this decision. At least no one said, what are you crazy. Or I'm too young and dont have enough money. My biggest fear is running out of $$$.