Funniest Comment Someone Has Said About Your FIRE?

[Kickernick]

Today I was picking up a friend at my former MegaCorp for lunch (retired 2 yrs ago) and pulled up in front of the building in my sports car with the top down.

I must have looked pretty relaxed sitting in my convertible when a woman who looked like she worked there walked over and joked, "Just curious - could I have your job description? Because I want that job!!”

I simply said I used to work at MegaCorp but now I'm a goof-off.

It was probably the funniest reaction I've ever had to my early retirement! What is the funniest thing someone has said in reaction to your FIRE?

 

[pb4uski]

Somehow my DSIL had not heard that I was retiring and it came up while we were seated together as a family at a banquet type event.... she exclaimed "But you're too young to retire"... which was fine... but she exclaimed it rather loudly... so a number of heads from adjacent tables turned to our table. A somewhat embarassing moment for both of us but she realized what she did and we had a good laugh over it.

 

[brett]

After retiring we downsized. We placed what we wanted to keep in storage and travelled for 7 months. Then we came home and decide to rent for a while instead of buy. We wanted to take our time, understand what we wanted and where in the city we wanted to live.

The three strangest comments (to us anyway)

....why would you want to travel to all of those places ?

and

....are you renting because you spent all of your house money?

and

......will you be going back to work?

 

[Kickernick]

I get the 'are you going to go back to work?' question all the time!

 

[Sunset]

I get the 'are you going to go back to work?' question all the time!

Just today, neighbor said to my wife: " haven't seen your husband around, is he working?"

She said: "He's worked 1 day I think this year, but he's off shopping right now"

 

[DrRoy]

After retiring we travelled for 7 months.

Strange comment (to us anyway)

....why would you want to travel to all of those places ?

Because they are awesome?

 

[Amethyst]

Not exactly funny, but ironic - my niece, commenting on my 2-day-a-week gig, demanded, "So, why don't you go ahead and really retire!" Then again, I don't think she's ever had a job she enjoyed.

 

[Bryan Barnfellow]

Regarding travel: Mark Twain's famous quotation, taken from his book, Innocents Abroad:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”

I would add "and women" to update of course.

-BB

 

[Dtail]

DGF is 57, but looks much younger, so she gets lots of "can't believe you are retired, how old are you"?
Unfortunately, I can get the robbing the cradle look sometimes. lol

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I got “But you’re not 62 yet!” not so long ago, but so far my favorite was “You’ve lost weight!”

 

[Sue J]

DH told his brother he lost his job and was taking his reduced pension and retiring at 55. His brother lives in a high cost of living area of NJ while we are in a low cost of living area of Ohio. His brother asked if we were going to get a reverse mortgage! What?

He just couldn’t grasp that at 55 we knew what we needed to live every month and that we had a pension and MONEY.

 

[Chuckanut]

A

....are you renting because you spent all of your house money?

and

......will you be going back to work?

To many people, the only thing they can understand is that you must have spent all your money and probably borrowed more. So their questions are completely logical given their paradigm. LBYM for decades isn't a paradigm they can relate to.

 

[ERD50]

Does "Stunned Silence" count as a "comment"?

I got some of that, it spoke volumes to me!

-ERD50

 

[brett]

...and then there is the proverbial .....you are so lucky to be able to retire.

To which my spouse often replies, yes he was lucky to be able to work 10 and 12 hour day, to be able to spend so much time away from home on business, and take to be able to take calls and con calls at unsocial hours because his responsibility covered multiple time zones.

 

[athena53]

...and then there is the proverbial .....you are so lucky to be able to retire.

I heard a similar comment from a cousin when I told him my brother had ERd at age 60- "How can Tommy retire so young?" My brother, who asked us to call him Tom years ago, got a degree in Mechanical Engineering and in his last years traveled for his company to the backwaters of India and other Asian countries (and he is not an adventurous traveler and is a strictly meat-and-potatoes guy) and fought ugly corporate politics. He was the only exec left from his company a few years after his company was sold to another Megacorp. He and DSIL were LBYM, DIY types. Brother did 90% of the car repairs, SIL made his suits and they were darn nice suits. They both know their way through Home Depot better than most of the population.

An old boss used to say, "Luck is the distillation of effort".

 

[Ed B]

Not too many funny ones but maybe the most common one is, after initial greetings and small talk, they pause, look at me and say in a surprised tone, "You look like you are really losing weight."

And they are correct. Not sitting behind a desk for 9 hours a day and eating much better food at home pays off.

 

[RunningBum]

More odd than funny, I had people telling me about all of the different jobs I could get. Working on ski or courtesy patrol on the slopes was the most mentioned. They couldn't grasp that I neither needed nor wanted a job. I'd just ask them which was better: skiing when, where, and with whom I wanted? Or having to finish out a shift no matter how bad the weather, being told where I had to be, often in a shack at the top waiting for a call of an injury, and dealing with hurt, lost, or belligerent skiers? The funny part, I guess, was seeing the recognition of my situation finally set it with them.

 

[NYEXPAT]

When I lived in the "States" the most common question from friends was "From what?"
In the 15 years I have been in Peru, I have never been asked "from what" but I have been accused of being everything from the CIA to a Doctor!

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

I retired from serving in the US Navy. To process a retirement, you need to start the process a year in advance. Of course having served a long time, I knew exactly when my time was going to be up. So I had all of the specific dates on my calendar of when I needed to submit each different form. The required that I had to attend a certain school, to learn how to be a retiree.

My mother was very upset. It was not time for me to retire [still a year away] and I was her youngest child. My siblings are all older than I am, and none of them had retired. She was upset that her youngest was retiring first.

My investments were in order and the pension was going to be more than enough, so I did not see any reason to do otherwise. But she was very upset about it.

 

[audreyh1]

...and then there is the proverbial .....you are so lucky to be able to retire.

To which my spouse often replies, yes he was lucky to be able to work 10 and 12 hour day, to be able to spend so much time away from home on business, and take to be able to take calls and con calls at unsocial hours because his responsibility covered multiple time zones.

Yeah, you were so lucky to have a job! LOL!

 

[COcheesehead]

Not funny, but just a few “you’re too young” to retire comments.

 

[Nemo2]

For me it's mainly "Retired? Who the **** would have hired you in the first place?"

 

[Kickernick]

For me it's mainly "Retired? Who the **** would have hired you in the first place?"

That's funny!!

 

[Ed B]

For me it's mainly "Retired? Who the **** would have hired you in the first place?"

Haha! You win the thread. [emoji38]

 

[Scuba]

We got the “you’re too young to retire” a lot. We heard that an acquaintance we used to be in a wine group yet was saying to people that it was obvious we’d gotten a big inheritance. Not so, but whatever. *