What prompted you to pull the trigger...

[eytonxav]

Long commute with highway construction.

[broadway]

I haven't retired per se.
But 3.5 years ago I walked away from my job at megacorp without another job in hand.
The numbers in Firecalc suggested I would be okay if I lived on 3% withdrawal rate.
I had a 9/80 work schedule which would seem to be great since I got every other Friday off, but it wasn't. I was tired all the time. It was a 50-minute one-way commute. I hated my job. I was not doing what I was best at.

The final straw was when management put me on a project with an impossible schedule. I knew I would have to go in on Saturdays and work 10 hour days to have any hope of meeting the schedule. All no-pay since I was salary. No f***ing way!

Fortunately, my 1 year with the company was approaching, so I gave my notice and got the 25% vesting of the 401k.

[Dcharles]

I was turning 60, just paid off our home and the job was becoming very stressful with a huge project coming up. My boss was becoming weirder each day, over looked me on a promotion to lead the project so decided it was time. I guess the bottom line was my boss was becoming a narcistist and only cared about protecting himself and taking all the credit and never any blame. I could have sucked it up but when I saw others suffering I felt life was too short to be working for a demanding jerk. that was three years ago and I have never regretted my decision. My wife is happier and we are doing very well. I miss som elf the people at work but we have moved on.




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[Luck_Club]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SomedaySoon Somewhat similar. I got the phone call from HR the day I returned from a vacation. (I was a telecommuter). I kind of guessed something was wrong when I found myself shut out of email and the network drives, and tech support just responded with..."Well lets see, it looks like your access was changed because.......aaah someone will get back to you soon...."

Spineless pond scum.

[Scuba]

We had planned our retirement date based on when a substantial bonus would pay out. A year before, I still wasn't 100% sure. That changed due to these factors:
1. New boss who was very laid back the first 9 months became a micro-managing control freak. I think he always was but just restrained himself at first. When I gave notice he said "But I thought everything was going so well" ... so I guess I did a great job pretending it was all good to make sure I got my big bonus.
2. Horrible commute that was getting worse and worse
3. Long list of other interests I wanted to pursue
4. Serious illnesses or sudden death impacted 6 different friends within about 6 months, ages 47-72 with most in their 50's. DH & I are in our mid-50's, very healthy, but this was a reminder that life as we know it could end quickly.
RE 4 months ago and have loved every day! Exploring new interests, spending more time on fitness, seeing family, and planning a big trip are WAY more fun than work! Don't miss it at all!!

[audreyh1]

I think I always knew that if I reached FI I would retire.

But what brought it into very sharp focus was losing my mother when she was only 63. Right as my Dad finally retired.

[Eagle43]

I am nearly 7 years older than my father lived. He got less than 36 retirement checks before death, after working 40+ years. I hope to keep on getting checks, from pensions and investments. Plus, all that corporate work was meaningless. Where are all those files I Produced? Trashcan, I presume. Retirement is great.

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[Scuba]

One thing people on this forum helped me recognize was that despite how valuable you may be or think you are to your company, they will pretty easily adapt once you are no longer there. I wish I wouldn't have wasted so much energy agonizing over when I should resign and how much notice I should give. Clearly I did the right think sticking with the 30-day notice period required by my employment contract, despite initial pleading and pressure that I stay longer. My team was able to cover key responsibilities just fine after I left, and my replacement was on board less than 3 months later. I've only been contacted once for a minor question. Meanwhile I have also moved on and am loving retirement! If you aren't ready to retire, then by all means don't rush it, but don't stay longer than you want to out of guilt or concern about how they'll survive without you.

[brucethebroker]

One important issue was the desire to spend winters in a warm place.

Now w*rk part time (some would argue not REALLY retired...) on my own schedule. Extra money is nice, but the flexibility of working/not working is what really "floats my boat".....

[iloveyoga]

Good point above, they will not miss you when you are gone.

[Chuckanut]

Quote:

Originally Posted by audreyh1 But what brought it into very sharp focus was losing my mother when she was only 63. Right as my Dad finally retired.

+1

Lost a younger relative when she was only 56 and a very good friend just after he retired at 65.

I saw this cartoon in the ER forums. The truth of it struck me like a ton of bricks.

[Koolau]

Relayed elsewhere in these pages, within a few years of joining Megacorp, I formed a mental picture of the perfect (call it a) j*b, w*rk assignment, "duty." By my late 40's, I had created just such a reality. It doesn't seem possible in this day that someone buried in a Megacorp could do such a thing, but I did.

I became FI at age 51 (company subsidized retirement medical and modest pension plus a very nice stash which would carry me to SS.) But I still "loved" the position I had been able to crate for myself. There wasn't a huge future in it (not likely to get that final promotion) and there are always Corp. politics and BS to deal with. But I was still enjoying what I was doing.

At age 58, I got called into the boss' office on a Friday afternoon and was informed that my assignment was changing to one I had been stuck in many years before. I thought about it over the Labor Day weekend and on Tues., I informed the boss that my last w*rking day would be that Friday (though I would be empl*yed through the end of the month due to vacation saved, etc.)

I guess you could say I had my finger on the trigger for 7 years and pulled it the second I no longer wanted to stay. It was kind of a nice feeling, though I suppose I would have preferred somewhat different circumstances.

[HFWR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scuba One thing people on this forum helped me recognize was that despite how valuable you may be or think you are to your company, they will pretty easily adapt once you are no longer there.

Granted, I wasn't all that invaluable to Megaconglomocorp, but let me digress to a bemusing anecdote...

My first RIF, in the late 90s, occurred when I was a staff flunky, having sneaked out of the tech side under the mistaken impression I might be able to climb the corporate ladder a rung or two. One of my tasks was to coordinate sending important "stuff" to corporate archives. Being a R&D group, it was deemed important to save prototypes, lab notebooks, etc., for patent issues, tracking corporate "history", and to help all the engineering staff clear all the crap out of their offices. [emoji12]

Anywho, about half the department, including me, was summarily dismissed, to reduce costs, i.e. get rid of older w*rkers, and their high salaries and retiree benefits. But, as it turned out, they had to staff up again to meet milestones, and I sneaked back in as a technogeek within a few months, most fortunately soon enough that I retained seniority, preserving my retiree health insurance benefit, without which I'd still be w*rking.

Fast forward several years, and Megaconglomocorp decided that the foundries in Asia could do much of their process development, so, again, a big chunk of the department, including me, were canned.

Amusingly, one of the branch managers in my group called me shortly after the announcement, inquiring about getting his stuff back from corporate archives. I did some checking, and no one seemed to know anything about it, and a web search produced nothing. Apparently, the corporate archive was moved, then forgotten... Never found it...

When I was laid off, twice, and then when I retired, no one wanted my files, notebooks, etc., so they were all trashed.

[edsahara]

I'd saved and invested my entire working life and planned to work until 57-58. My job was eliminated at the age of 55 and though I'd reached FI, I wasn't psychologically ready to retire at the time. This was in 2009 and there were no jobs in my field for someone my age. I finally gave up the job search and made the adjustment to the non-working life.

[wmc1000]

My reason was much simpler . . . just because I could! I cut my schedule from 40 hrs to 30 hours per week for 2-1/2 yrs - my j*b was not stressful and it didn't require me to work very hard. I just decided I didn't want to w*rk based on a schedule so I told them I was done. They call me from time to time and ask if I am available for a day or so and if I am I agree to go in. If not, I say no. What could be better!!!!

[NoOneGetsIt]

I set the date of age 50 to retire when I was 40. I was on track. I had a big job at a multi-billion dollar company and I was playing it right. Drove a Honda when every one one of my peers was driving a BMW. When I got the golden parachute at age 48 I was a little unsure what to do...it was 2 years earlier than I had thought...I had a job drop in my lap where I could work from home and do some exotic travel....so I went back to work. Then working nearly part time from home ....it is so hard to cut the umbilical cord .... to rely on your own money rather than the money someone else gives you. I kept running calculators and ALL said 100% that I had enough. I prayed for them to let me go...finally they did. I smiled and said 'thank you'---not sure I could have said 'stop giving me money' so they helped make it happen and it was the happiest day of my life. I woke my husband up and said 'guess what? I just got canned!' he high fived me and we celebrated for a week!

[braumeister]

My goal, set when I was still a teenager, was to retire at 55.

So when I actually reached that age (and was FI beyond a doubt), I started planning my exit. As it happened, the small company was bought out by a megacorp at about that time and rumors began to circulate about a big layoff.

As an older, more highly paid employee, I assumed I'd be included in the layoff and given some sort of package. That's exactly what happened when I reached 55 ⅓ so I was absolutely thrilled. The only hard part was that on layoff day when I was called in to be "given the news", my boss seemed to be devastated. No amount of reassurance on my part that I was happy about it could get a smile on her face. Of course, she got the axe herself a year or so later.

[imoldernu]

Cancer... 28 years ago.

[HFWR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by imoldernu Cancer... 28 years ago.

You couldn't have just been sick of work, like the rest of us? [emoji6]

Glad you're still among us...

[RobLJ]

1. Qualified two years prior for retirement/health care benefits by meeting "rule of 80" (age plus job tenure).
2. Job stress was becoming increasingly difficult to shed over the weekends. (I'm still working about 40% online with virtually no stress. Maybe I'm not retired according to the purists--but I feel retired.) And we successfully finished a major project.
3. Oldest and his wife were in California and planning on a baby.
4. Not much trout fishing or skiing in Texas.
5. DW was ready to go to the West Coast and was about to be laid off (she worked online 6 months after the move to Reno before the hammer came down). So we did it on our own terms.