Did your retirement diverge from your plan? If so, how did it go?

[LastOfTheBoomers]

Planned to retire on May 1 2016 - had that date targeted for over 5 years - even practiced the talk with my boss in my head many times. He had let me know his retirement date - and it would have lined up perfectly.
Reorgs and other corporate stuff changed that - and started taking retirement investment income January 2015.
At the time I was bummed I did not “complete the plan” now I’m glad I left when I did - able to spend time with aging parents without any work burden - do some traveling. Bought a retirement condo when the market was ok - if I had waited till 2016 it would have cost 20% more.

 

[Toocold]

I had been targeting 3/2020 for 3-4 years. In June of 2019, our org changed CEOs. I decided to be more aggressive in my wants. This resulted in an agreement to leave the company with a severance package that paid for more than a year's worth of pay.

During the transition, I had to figure out how to cash out of my stock options. Before I could fully implement it, an annoying virus hit and caused a massive dent on the worth of some of these options. Eventually everything recovered.

Net net life is good,except for the cancelled month long trip to Hawaii.

 

[eytonxav]

While I did not plan on retiring, my mega corp came out with a very lucrative buyout offer that I would qualify for at 54 yo. I did not have much time to accept this voluntary offer, but it was too good to pass up and since the culture of the company took a turn for the worse after a merger of equals a few years before, I leaped at it. However, I was not mentally prepared for how to spend my time in retirement. So after spending a few months not doing much of anything and though financially set to stay retired at that point, boredom drove me back to work until I finally retired at 63. While when one is financially able to retire seems to be a question for many, knowing how you will spend your time in retirement maybe equally or more important.

 

[kcowan]

If you have to maintain two properties, one in the U.S. and another in Mexico, does that actually increase your cost?

I guess the answer is compered to what? Our snowbird budget was for three months when we first bought and we started going for 6 months so the savings became tangible. Our main place was rented in Vancouver until 2 years ago when we realized that we no longer needed the money (after 8 years). Plus Vancouver implemented an empty condo tax which made all the empty condo owners desparate for renters. So we were not willing to rent it out for the resulting prices.

Our main concern now is the long term effect of Covid-19. The Mexican President seems to want to outdo Trump in denial. No idea where that will lead.

(And yes it has increased our cost of housing offset by cost of living. So total budget is still down compared to original plan. But we are doing our best to Blow That Dough!)