Unemployed = Early retirement for me?

[NervousNellie]

Hi, I am a new member that has been lurking for several months and decided to join in the fun! I'm not sure I have much advice to give but I know I have lots to learn.

I am a 52 yr old female and am laid off from my job. I am a computer programmer but I think I will have a tough time finding another job since I have not kept my skills up to date. Who would hire a 52 yr old when they could hire a recent college grad with the latest skills? So I am thinking this might lead to an early retirement for me.

My DH is 55 and is eligible to retire from the federal govt in a few months but plans on retiring in about 3-4 years. We want to help pay for my youngest son's college tuition.

I have 3 sons. The oldest has left the nest and is independent. The middle one is a recent college grad with a fulltime job in his field and is currently living at home. The youngest is a freshman in college.

I chose my username NervousNellie since I am nervous about the future. We have always lived below our means but I'm not sure how living on one income will be. I'm sure we can make it on one income but we probably will need to cut back some. We haven't tracked our spending in over 15 years. In the past we would just transfer any excess money to savings every few months. I plan to start tracking our spending in January. This should help us now and in the future for our retirement planning.

I'm looking forward to reading/posting and getting to know everyone.

NervousNellie

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

Welcome aboard. Aside from tracking your expenses, have you checked out Firecalc?

It may help answer some of your concerns, after which you can change your forum name to just Nellie .

Share as much as you feel comfortable here regarding your specifics and I am sure you'll get lots of good advice.

 

[travelover]

Welcome.

I've found that when I am anxious, it really helps to have information to help me assess my risk. In your case, knowing what your expenses are now and will be in the future would seem to be critical, as well as knowing your DH's projected income in retirement.

I'd start tracking expenses now.

 

[DayDreaming]

Hello Nellie! I was a long-time IT professional laid off from my job at the age of 48, and that turned into ER for me. My first bit of advice would be to start tracking your expenses now. Why wait 3 months? How much you need to spend is one of the most important factors in determining if you can call this retirement. If you use some Quicken-type of software to track your finances, you can probably pull in the last few months of transactions from your credit cards and checking accounts and that gives you an even bigger head start in knowing what your expenses are. The software I use is called Moneydance, but there are plenty of others.

Good luck with your research and I hope everything works out for you and your family.

 

[Fireup2020]

Welcome Nellie! Tons of useful (and useless fun stuff too!) here on the board!

 

[Emeritus]

Hello Nellie

If you would like to w*rk, I would not give up quite yet. Even if standard jobs are scarce in your skills area, the general ability to negotiate systems is still highly prized.
In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed person is king . Many non profits and school systems routinely hire older flexible hours workers. We hired the PT person in our office at the age of 55.

 

[Emeritus]

My DH is 55 and is eligible to retire from the federal govt in a few months

NervousNellie

FERS or CSRS?

 

[Amethyst]

Hello Nello, or Hellie Nellie,

If I were you I'd start tracking expenses asap! It just means that 3 months sooner, you will have a year's worth of expense tracking to look at and analyze.

I now have almost 2 years' worth of down-to-the-dollar tracking, thanks to encouragement from this forum, and the data are really starting to be useful in projections, conversations with husband, etc.

Amethyst

 

[CoolChange]

If those old, outdated skills include things like COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, JCL of any flavor, old databases that aren't supported any longer or any number of other skills that are no longer taught in schools (and, which the kids just out of school are not interested in learning), you might be surprised at just how valuable you are. If you do not need full timer security and are willing to do some travelling, you might really be able to pull down some serious hourly wages on a contract/consulting basis.

Good luck with whatever path you take; I may not be that far behind you.

 

[Richard8655]

Welcome Nellie! At least you can rest assured you and DH will always be covered nicely under FEHB - federal employee health benefit. Health care for your family is one huge expense, risk, and worry out of the way.

 

[NervousNellie]

Welcome aboard. Aside from tracking your expenses, have you checked out Firecalc?

It may help answer some of your concerns, after which you can change your forum name to just Nellie .

Share as much as you feel comfortable here regarding your specifics and I am sure you'll get lots of good advice.

Thanks Rich. Yes I have run Firecalc and several other retirement calculators with the estimated pensions and estimated SS. The only big question I have is the income we need. I used a guesstimate for it! That is why I want to start tracking our current expenses.

 

[NervousNellie]

Welcome.

I've found that when I am anxious, it really helps to have information to help me assess my risk. In your case, knowing what your expenses are now and will be in the future would seem to be critical, as well as knowing your DH's projected income in retirement.

I'd start tracking expenses now.

My DH just ordered Quicken from Amazon. I previously used an older version of Quicken to keep track/balance our checkbook. I could probably get some expenses from the old files I just would not know what we spent the cash stream withdrawal money for (any we made many of those withdrawals )!

 

[NervousNellie]

Hello Nellie! I was a long-time IT professional laid off from my job at the age of 48, and that turned into ER for me. My first bit of advice would be to start tracking your expenses now. Why wait 3 months? How much you need to spend is one of the most important factors in determining if you can call this retirement. If you use some Quicken-type of software to track your finances, you can probably pull in the last few months of transactions from your credit cards and checking accounts and that gives you an even bigger head start in knowing what your expenses are. The software I use is called Moneydance, but there are plenty of others.

Good luck with your research and I hope everything works out for you and your family.

Thanks. Quicken ordered today.

 

[NervousNellie]

FERS or CSRS?

CSRS Offset

 

[NervousNellie]

Welcome Nellie! At least you can rest assured you and DH will always be covered nicely under FEHB - federal employee health benefit. Health care for your family is one huge expense, risk, and worry out of the way.

Yes that is one thing I am thankful for! If they ever talk about changing the retirement health plan and grandfathering current retirees klready enrolled then I am sure DH would retire asap whether my youngest son was finished with college or not!

 

[NervousNellie]

If those old, outdated skills include things like COBOL, FORTRAN, PL/I, JCL of any flavor, old databases that aren't supported any longer or any number of other skills that are no longer taught in schools (and, which the kids just out of school are not interested in learning), you might be surprised at just how valuable you are. If you do not need full timer security and are willing to do some travelling, you might really be able to pull down some serious hourly wages on a contract/consulting basis.

Good luck with whatever path you take; I may not be that far behind you.

Fortran and C here. Very little experience with the Object Oriented languages (C++ or Java) or web programming which is what all of the jobs here seem to be looking for.

 

[NervousNellie]

Thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

NervousNellie (NN)

 

[Emeritus]

Fortran and C here. Very little experience with the Object Oriented languages (C++ or Java) or web programming which is what all of the jobs here seem to be looking for.

I learned Fortran on an IBM 7094
Damn near killed me

 

[dex]

I chose my username NervousNellie since I am nervous about the future.

Have you considered a more hopeful name such as Positive_Paula? It might help with your outlook.

 

[NervousNellie]

Have you considered a more hopeful name such as Positive_Paula? It might help with your outlook.

I might be ready to change names in a year or so after I track our expenses and am convinced we are OK on one income!

 

[TooFrugal]

Very little experience with the Object Oriented languages (C++ or Java) or web programming which is what all of the jobs here seem to be looking for.

If you are interested in still working you could go back to school and update your skills.

 

[CoolChange]

Fortran and C here. Very little experience with the Object Oriented languages (C++ or Java) or web programming which is what all of the jobs here seem to be looking for.

I have always said that if God wrote code, it would be in C: All the power and efficiency of assembler without the annoyance of actually writing assembler code.

But, seriously: Java would be a breeze after Fortran and C. It is just a different set of tools. C++ does take a bit more effort; but, nothing you aren't already familiar with from you C experience (pointers, memory management, etc.).

Good luck with whatever route you take.

 

[TooFrugal]

But, seriously: Java would be a breeze after Fortran and C. It is just a different set of tools. C++ does take a bit more effort; but, nothing you aren't already familiar with from you C experience (pointers, memory management, etc.).

I think if you know C, then both Java and C++ would be relatively easy, and a lot of the web stuff like Dreamweaver and HTML would be a piece of cake for someone like you. With web stuff you don't have to wait until someone hires you to get experience. You can take college, community college, adult ed and online classes to learn the basics and then get experience making sites for friends, volunteering for nonprofits, making your own sites, etc.

 

[Rambler]

Welcome NN-
Have you tried looking with one of the job-shopper places like Ajilon or MPS? I think they hire a lot of IT people with a variety of skills to help with legacy systems. They are contract or temp jobs though, if I remember right.

R

 

[braumeister]

We haven't tracked our spending in over 15 years. In the past we would just transfer any excess money to savings every few months. I plan to start tracking our spending in January. This should help us now and in the future for our retirement planning.
NervousNellie

I really think you answered your own question here.
As others said, having a good handle on your expenses makes household financial management pretty straightforward.

By all means, start immediately, because you'll most likely find yourself tweaking how you categorize expenses quite often in the first year you do this.