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Old 05-05-2017, 06:35 AM   #21
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Told everyone at my college graduation party that I was retiring at 55. They laughed. I didn't quite make it as I did OMY, but I retired at 56!
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Old 05-05-2017, 06:53 AM   #22
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Never gave any consideration to early retirement until I ran across a high-school classmate when I was 31. I'd made a career change the previous year and was miserable in my new job. When I met the guy for dinner and he told me about his plans to retire at age 50, I realized there was an alternative to slogging through another 30+ years of grief and stress.

I started planning ER that night.
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Old 05-05-2017, 06:55 AM   #23
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DH and I realized shortly after entering the working world at 22 that we really didn't want to do this for 40 years. This was in the late 90s, so there were plenty of stories of young millionaires cashing out their company stock and retiring. The Retire Early Home Page had recently gotten going, and the Motley Fool message board for REHP really kickstarted it for me. Down the rabbit hole of the Trinity Study I went.

We set a realistic (for us) goal of 45; 3 years out and still on schedule.
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Old 05-05-2017, 07:00 AM   #24
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I wonder if a lot more people could do what it takes to get to retirement. I think they realize right away they would have to take a dip in their living standard. So they just turn a blind eye towards the whole scenario and keep working and say it can't be done. I don't know, but I suspect they know it can be done, they just don't want to do what it would take to get there.
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Old 05-05-2017, 07:16 AM   #25
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I didn't have a set date, but I never planned on working until SS FRA. First plan was to retire from the Navy in my late-30's, then work for a while until I had enough cash to supplement my retirement check to cover spending. That plan disappeared with my medical discharge and thus loss of the "retirement check" part of that plan. Started saving/investing in earnest once I knew that plan was likely out the window. Recently got disability from the VA that will help supplement that plan, while not quite as much as the retirement check would have been it's still going to allow retiring earlier than would otherwise be possible. Currently on track for retirement in 7 years when I'm 47 with current spending levels.
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Old 05-05-2017, 07:44 AM   #26
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I did not have a FIRE plan at all till I was 50+. Prior to that it was just a habit of savings "in case something bad happened". We both were laid off about then and enjoyed the time off, and realized our lifestyle was not negatively affected as we still had plenty of money to pay bills. We both went back to work for a while but did not really like our new jobs, so we decided to get out. It's been 4 years now (59) and we are still very happy with the decision.
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Old 05-05-2017, 07:45 AM   #27
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For the most part i have always enjoyed my job and career so job frustration was not a factor. I did not think much about retirement until I saw changes in the late mid-late 90s with Megacorps layoffs and retirement policy changes. Fortunately we were already LBYM but decided to ramp it up. Then the big college expense years hit, but we still managed to save through that.

Around 2007 I first estimated what my retirement income would be, and realized that once I become fully eligible for Megacorp retirement in 2009 I could retire and work part time if needed.

Then in 2012 Megacorp offered a retirement transition program, I found this site and got good advice about it, looked at the numbers again and saw that odds were good that if I kept working to 57 - not a given since Megacorp has been doing lots of layoffs - I could hit my "retire and not be forced to do part time work" number.

Things did work out for me to reach FI. Now the desire for ER is more about wanting to decide for myself how to spend my time.
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Old 05-05-2017, 07:48 AM   #28
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 97guns View Post
Just curious if your mindset was to get out early or if the cards just landed that way for you?
No initial thoughts to "get out early". I chose a career I thought I would enjoy and be able to support a growing family with. Hired in a company that was large enough to support a long term career with many career options. Was lucky and truly enjoyed the vast majority of 30+ years I worked, all with the same company. Worked with many good people and had many good experiences there.

One of my philosophies from the start was that I would quit any job that I hated. Would set ourselves financially to quit at any time and go find another job I might be happy in. That philosophy led to LBYM style of life for us which meant we could have retired at 50 yrs old if we really wanted. Ended up retiring at 55 when job changed to something I didn't like and family health issues became a high priority.
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Old 05-05-2017, 08:12 AM   #29
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My father had his first stroke at age 59 when I was 27. Although he nearly fully recovered, that incident turned my focus toward the possibility of retiring earlier than "normal". His second stroke at 62 - which forced him to retire with permanent physical and mental damage - made my focus laser-like.

Of course, "life" can intervene, and a divorce and other events took me down a few side roads I hadn't intended to take. But I always found my way back to the retirement highway. Ultimately and ironically, I retired last year just two weeks after my 59th birthday.
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Old 05-05-2017, 08:14 AM   #30
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In our 20's retirement was a far off ideal goal, but we certainly didn't make a plan to get there. In our 30s and 40s we aimed toward the general direction of that as a goal. In our 50s we got more focused and realized that maybe we could pull this off!

DH was planning on working until he reached 30 years of service in his pension plan, that would be age 58. Things at his job started to look insecure when he had almost 25 years of service at age 53. Two years later his contract was not renewed. He had just short of 27 years and could take a reduced (80% of 30 years amount) pension at age 55.

Since we saw it coming we had focused on paying off all debt and saving everything we could. His reduced pension covered our fairly low monthly expenses so he retired at age 55 with 26.67 years of service.

On June 1st it will be the 7th anniversary of his retirement. Sometimes we grin and giggle over how well this has worked out.
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Old 05-05-2017, 08:17 AM   #31
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Although we always socked money away, especially once DH's megacorp froze the pension and started a DC plan that included previous profit-sharing, we didn't even think about retirement, as day-to-day life was much more entertaining. Then we had enough money and then it was just time. The real planning started about eighteen months before the ER date.
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Old 05-05-2017, 08:42 AM   #32
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I've never been averse to work, but I've always felt constrained when I've had to work on someone else's terms. So retirement has been in my blood from the beginning, but it was on the backburner until I realized (about 10 years before I pulled the plug) that ER was a realistic goal. From that point on, it became my focus.
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Old 05-05-2017, 11:45 AM   #33
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For me it just happened meaning my Megacorp ER'd me after 31 years. I'm nine months into it and still adjusting to non-corp M-F 8-5pm routine. Each week gets better. Pension check on the first of the month is a very nice perk. I'm in Colombia right now doing a three week "vacation". Ha...

Since my original post I decided to payoff the mortgage to free up some cash flow. : )

Here is my original post:

http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...day-82015.html
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Old 05-05-2017, 11:49 AM   #34
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Always thought I would w*k until SS eligible (10 years from now). Been putting some money away since 1992. Started putting money away like a madman 5 years ago. Wasn't till about 4 months ago that I ran the numbers for expenses vs income and realized that I could ER in less than 5 years.
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Old 05-05-2017, 12:02 PM   #35
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In our 20s, we started putting money away to retire in our early 50s--didn't get chance to travel extensively up to that time due to school/jobs, and knew that it would continue. Detoured/delayed by me leaving full-time work to raise the kids, but we are out this year at 57/56.

Were able to continue maxing out DWs (and "employer's") share of 401k nearly every year and benefited from my coming back to work to handle the college bills and additional savings.

We don't have pensions or post-COBRA health insurance from employers. Thus, I can't imagine having been able to do it without many years of planning and preparing.

Edited for clarification.
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Old 05-05-2017, 12:07 PM   #36
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It hit me that I didn't want to work when I was in my mid-20s. So I dropped out of the workforce for a couple years.

After the break I didn't give it any real thought, I was happy being back in a "normal life". That didn't last long. Less than a year in realized I still didn't want to work. But instead of running away I start researching how I could stop working, but not end up homeless. I started investing my cash stash and reading up on withdrawal rates.

Not long after that I moved into a job that, if I could stick it out, would let me ER in about 10 years. My income has gone up and so have my goals, but I've also knocked a couple years off my target date. Having a goal, and a plan to get there, has helped immensely in keeping me focused.
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Old 05-05-2017, 01:17 PM   #37
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I had no specific plans to retire, but based on Fidelity projections I thought I'd quit the corporate gig in my late 40s and teach for awhile. Then the tech bubble happened. About the same time I met my DH who on our first date said he was planning to retire at 55 (he was 43 at the time). Thought that was a little nuts but not a deal breaker. Fast forward to 2013, he retired, I quit in 2014. I was asked to come back to a former employer for contract work a year ago and I'm still at it. I don't mind work, and it's keeping my brain engaged. I'm dropping to PT for the summer while we go to our cabin in Minnesota. A hybrid retirement I guess.
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Old 05-05-2017, 01:33 PM   #38
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I wanted to, but didn't have any specific plans.

My father passed away unexpectedly at the age of 62, after being retired for a few months. Spent his whole life working and saving for retirement, raised 8 kids, and died just after retiring. Made me determined that was not going to happen to me.

My older brother passed away at the age of 54 after a short illness. He was in the prime of his life. When I cleaned out his estate - mostly his workshop - I found dozens of projects he was in the middle of, but never got the chance to complete. I realized I had too much in common with him - I had so many plans on the drawing board, and never any time to do the things I wanted to. And no way of knowing how many years - if any - of retirement I would even get.

Within a year, I reduced my working hours to 32 hrs/week, giving me a 3-day weekend every week. That was a good start! I started making more serious plans for ER, running the numbers and trying to figure out how to make it work. I only had a few months to go before I was eligible for retirement at MegaCorp, and was seriously considering taking it. Then they solved the dilemma for me - as painfully as possible - by screwing me over laying me off before they became liable for retirement benefits.

So, I guess I planned for it a bit, and then it just happened to me.
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Old 05-05-2017, 01:39 PM   #39
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I just happened to pick a public safety career and ER is part of that, and was lucky to be in an area that had a decent, but not luxurious, retirement package. At the time I started "normal" retirement was 25 years and I had intended to retire at 48. By the time I was 48 I was in a position where I enjoyed the work very much and had no desire to retire so I stayed until age 52. By then the normal retirement was 20 years so the extra time I worked made our finances a lot better than I had planned on.
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Old 05-05-2017, 03:05 PM   #40
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We had no real defined retirement plans either. Just work until we were old and then retire. A proposed expressway that was initially going right through our house got us thinking about our options.

DW has worked a manual labor j*b in a factory most of her adult life and her 50+ body wasn't holding up like it used to. I am in middle management at a small company performing a j*b that had changed over the years into something I disliked immensely but felt that I had to stay the course. We had put 2 kids though college, paid off the mortgage and no other long term debt.

Then the expressway thing happened. As we looked at our options we discovered that we could probably retire early. We ran FIRECALC and found we got 100% success rate even at 130% of our annual budget. Checking with other calculators we kept getting similar results.

So DW retired @ 55 in 2015 and I am retiring in 2 months a @ 59 and looking forward to it!
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