Poll: Did you retire too early, too late, or about right?

[Retire52]

I would have retired earlier if I could have. I had to put in enough time to fully vest in my military pension. I needed to get 3 years in after my last promotion to make it stick. It was a no brainer to me that retirement would work for me. I was 48 and have been retired about a year and a half with 0 regrets.

[ychuck46]

Retired five years ago at 60. Loving life and feel it was the right time. Any earlier and I would have missed some good earnings, any later and I would have felt cheated out of some great times the wife and I experienced while we are still feeling good physically.

[Leo1277]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum If they are exactly 10 years retired, they could wait a day and pick the >10 year option.

Anyway the change to ">=" fixed things. But you don't have to wait a day, just transform "10 years" into seconds, and then if you still find it's exactly 10 years, just wait a sec. Or express 10 years in milliseconds :-)

[brett]

It has been 7 years.

Planned to go at the earlier of 60 or a golden handshake. The handshake came at 59 so that was it.

Looking backwards I could have gone at 55 or 56. The numbers were there. I was simply too financially conservative. No regrets, it worked out very well for me.

[S103462]

Things can sometimes work out exactly as planned. We planned our retirement date many years earlier -- both planning to retiree at 55y/o in 2010. We hit our "number," were debt-free, everything we had planned to have in place at that time was aligned. She retired a week after her 55th birthday on 1/1/2010; me six months later (10 days after my 55th birthday) on 7/1/2010. We'll take SS in a few more years. (I did work somewhat part time for the past 8-3/4 years -- I ran for elected public office and most recently served as Mayor of my city. Now term-limited, I'm really retired!)

[dtbach]

I wasn't given the chance to decide as megacorp showed me the door about 5 years early. Still did fine, but sure would have loved to have been able to keep adding money into the 401K in 2009 and 2010.

[2lhasas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stepford Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so I can say now that I wish I'd FIRE'd at 50 instead of 55. Then again, even with recent reversals, we are still near a market high after 10+ years of growth. Another crash/recession and my FIRE at 55 might start looking about right again.

Our goal was 55 but our portfolio made 50 quite do-able. I decided I wanted to spend those few years with my son before he left for college and have not regretted it one bit.

[Dreamer]

I always planned on retiring at 55 years old, but six people in our small office retired beginning 12/31/2004 and I took an early retirement at age 53 6/2/2006. Our office manager was one of the people who retired and we a manager come in who had never been a manager before this time. She was a nice person, but she was not cut out to be a manager. After I retired, she left management and went back to the same job title that I had in her hometown. This was from my career job. I am glad that I retired when I did.

I later worked a part-time job, 3 days per week, for 5 years, in order to finish earning my social security credits. I started 03/10 and quit 5/15. I did finish earning my social security credits. The job started off earning $8.50 per hour and I think that I was earning $12.00 at the end. I regret that I ever worked this part-time job. The schedule limited me in doing exactly what I wanted to do. The 401K was in a variable annuity, that I was putting 90% of my salary into the last year or two. It was a silly goal of mine to finish my credits and I do regret it. I have been enjoying my being completely retired again.

[yakers]

Loved my job but a night in the cardiac ward at 56 and decided to retire at 57 in 2008. Work was good but retirement is better.