How to reflect on one's ER experiences (OK, an "annual review"?

[ugeauxgirl]

I love this thread- I've been here long enough to have read several of you talking about last days at work and now having been retired a while. Very inspiring to me. 9 months to go for me!

 

[DayDreaming]

I recently passed my 10 year anniversary. I didn't celebrate or even think about it too much, but it did occur to me how quickly those 10 years passed, and that it has all been good, very good.

 

[Brdofpray]

I recently passed my 10 year anniversary. I didn't celebrate or even think about it too much, but it did occur to me how quickly those 10 years passed, and that it has all been good, very good.

+1

 

[Spock]

Since my ER was involuntary, the anniversary is etched in my brain.
The day of, I rode my motorcycle to work, signed the legalese to get my final paycheck (no severance pay), and "took the long way" to the bank to cash it covering just under 300 miles.
So every year on the anniversary date, I take a "Don't let the door hit you in the a** run Sponsored by <MegaCorp>" on the bike and post a GPS track of the route taken.

Investments and burn rate are reviewed daily... making the savings last for 30ish years is now my day job.

I have determined that I do need to make some activity changes going forward. Social life was entirely through work so the "friends" are all still working. I got shelves full of stuff I was going to read/do when retired but haven't yet. The big thing is forcing exercise into a routine. I routinely worked 11-12 hour days so changing habits is taking a long time.

 

[W2R]

When I first retired (11/9/2009), I wanted to post here on my retirement anniversary. In my post, I wanted to explain what the first year of retirement was like to those who were just behind me, those planning to retire in, say, 2011 or 2012 for example.

When retiring, it's like stepping out into the unknown and some approach it with trepidation. At least I did - - to me it felt very similar to what I imagine skydiving must feel like (although I have never done any skydiving). At some point you have to just step out of that airplane and trust/hope that all your planning and preparation pays off. Maybe that aspect of retiring is sometimes the reason behind OMY syndrome.

Anyway, for me retirement turned out to be great. I wanted to calm any possible fears that the next batch of retirees might be feeling, by telling them what it was like in my post.

Despite my good intentions, on the week prior to each retirement anniversary, either someone else made a post just exactly like that, or else I forgot that it was my retirement anniversary until later in November.

So to tell you the truth, I haven't ever done anything about my retirement anniversary. And in real life? Every day has been a day for Frank and me to celebrate retirement together. I don't recall us celebrating our retirement anniversaries specifically. We have both enjoyed retired life so much.

 

[RAE]

I recently passed my 10 year anniversary. I didn't celebrate or even think about it too much, but it did occur to me how quickly those 10 years passed, and that it has all been good, very good.

+1, same here. Been retired 9 1/2 years now, and it has gone by so quickly, wow. DW and I sometimes look at our photos from the past year (or past several years), and reflect on all the things we have done, and changes in our lives since I retired. At this point, though, I probably think more about what I'd like to do in the upcoming year/years, than what has gone on in the past. We just bought a house (at our winter snowbird destination), so that will occupy a lot of our time this coming fall/winter........it will actually be fun spending more time down there and making some new friends, etc..

 

[brett]

Eight years and it has passed quickly.

My review? Ten-fifteen minutes between Christmastime and New Years. I spend five minutes adding up our December spend and comparing it to budget. Spend five minutes looking at that number for the past year and deciding whether to increase/decrease for the next year. Plus we look at any capital items projected for the year.

Then we decide how much money has to come out of our investment income to supplement our other income items to meet our cash requirements and when it needs to come out.

No more than 10-15 minutes.

We spend far more time discussing the our travel plans, our travel bucket lists, etc. We are on the other side of the curve, looking forward is far more fruitful for us than looking back. And it takes less time.

 

[misshathaway]

It's been 3 1/2 years for me. Around the first anniversary I was relieved that I was still OK financially. Of course I was scrutinizing everything every month, but that milestone was important for feeling more secure about it working.

I didn't take stock of retirement life after that and maybe I should have. So many habits have lasted from pre-retirement that are no longer necessary. I could have started jettisoning all of the unnecessary household stuff earlier and planning a retirement move earlier. As others have said, it goes really quickly. A little annual review could be helpful.

 

[rk911]

I recently passed my 10 year anniversary. I didn't celebrate or even think about it too much, but it did occur to me how quickly those 10 years passed, and that it has all been good, very good.

that’s so true. nearly 14-yrs for me and it has gone by so very fast. by contrast the 14-yrs preceding retirement seemed to crawl by.

 

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by Gumby View Post
...I see retirement predominantly as a chance to live in the moment. Like Aerides, I see no need for retrospective evaluation.

+1 on this. ....

I mostly 'live in the moment', but I can also see the benefit of some structuring, and that may suit the OP as well.

I think I find that sometimes in the 'live in the moment' mode, I might miss the big picture, and later realize that rather on focusing on some of those little things as they caught my attention, there was a bigger project that I should have put some time into instead, but just sort of lost focus.

Whatever works for you.

-ERD50

 

[FI_RElater]

nope, wouldn't be prudent

I don't
we evaluate financial items monthly, or as needed, and plan trips, etc as we think about them (and then consider when it's best to be there)
...but in the year after I retired, the old super sent a (lighthearted) request for my accomplishment report for the year. I responded with pictures of some of the trips, shots of the mountains from the deck, etc. He then requested some samples of work products.. I sent back pictures of the ribs I pulled off the pellet grill and the growler of local brew. He sent back a smiling emoji and said well done.
[In my last review, as I knew I was already going I sent something crazy (HR had previously sent some email about helping some kids do basket weaving )... so I included requests for underwater basket weaving, etc (along with a copy of the HR email) ] That's the last "formal" review that I've done...and last I'm gonna do.

 

[sturbridge]

My main concern is to make sure I don’t waste a great opportunity that I’ve been blessed with - retirement.

Me too. I'm still in the infancy of my retirement (this is my first month) but I'm determined not to waste it. I have picked a few areas to get outside of my comfort zone and have a weekly planning session (like 10 minutes) where I think about I have extended myself and what I want to do next. I'm also keeping a log of "adventures" and new things I've tried so I can reflect in a year.

I'm sure my approach will change with time, but having so recently been in the workforce, this kind of business transition is working for me now.

 

[marko]

I can’t remember my exact date (sometime in August 2002) but the hubs is 08/08/08—pretty easy to remember

Mine was 12/5/05 which coincidentally made it my 12,505th day with the company.

 

[joeea]

Investments and burn rate are reviewed daily... making the savings last for 30ish years is now my day job.

Yikes, daily? Do you really find value in doing that every day?

 

[Dtail]

I accepted a package in Jan 2016, but since I searched for work (unsuccessfully) until 2017 and then decided to retire to Florida, I didn't consider myself to be retired until Aug 1, 2017.

 

[Dtail]

Yikes, daily? Do you really find value in doing that every day?

I update my expenses daily unless on vacation, but don't analyze it until the end of the month.

 

[Bir48die]

I only have one anniversary I have to remember.

 

[Spock]

Yikes, daily? Do you really find value in doing that every day?

#1 value is reviewing all transactions for fraud. I use an aggregator to collect all accounts in 1 login, so this part is painless.

Health Insurance would be 50% of our spending, so monitoring for ACA limits is critical. To little income and we get dumped into Medicaid, too much and subsidy loss is equivalent to about an additional 14% tax rate.

One of the loose assumptions for retirement assets/spending took a projected 50% hit when Dear Old Dad started donating 40% of his income to "charities", but he doesn't remember who he gave it to... since his Dr claims "he's still making decisions, they're just bad decisions" I can not intervene.

During the work years, success was more $ in than out. Now that we're burning cash with little chance for backfill, I watch it like a hawk.

Besides.... playing with big azz spreadsheets is about the only tech thing I get to do these days.

 

[karen1972]

When it pops up on facebook memories, I tend to write a post of what I am grateful for and that makes me reflect. Upon reflecting I tend to have a few things I identify I'd like to do more/less of and then take action. I found if I had nothing planned, I did nothing. I would say I am no longer Type A, that was one thing to adjust to but I'm someone who once made a SMART goal for an office plant, just to show that you could.

We review finances every month together. I update Quicken at least once a week to reflect spending, tax planning is always done when I do previous year taxes, budgets are done in December and that's when I double check W/R and re-run FireCalc. My personal situation is more complicated than most on this forum so I do spend more time monitoring my finances than most which is a small inconvenience in exchange for freedom.

 

[brett]

We watch our finances, investments and spending, and we check our current accounts and credit card accounts for fraud on a regular basis.

The one thing that we do not do in retirement is spend hours, days managing our money, analyzing our spending down to the last can of peas.

We set up our investment strategy, we review quickly each quarter and more in depth every year. Same for taxes.

There is only so much time that one can spend on these before it moves from useful oversight and management to sheer drudgery. I did not give up one job to take on another.

I reviewed our June spending yesterday. Took about three minutes to run a tape from our current account to determine if our spending and YTD was in line with our rough estimates. In a few weeks we will look at the quarterly investment numbers and decide if we need to do some slight re-balancing. That should take all of fifteen minutes. Planning our upcoming fall trip, thinking about where to travel this winter, or deciding when to take a short road trip to the coast to visit friends and relatives takes up far more or our time.

 

[kcowan]

We used to do a Christmas letter extolling all the wonderful things from the last year but then that started to feel like work so we quit it 5 years ago. Hey we do very little that we don't enjoy. We even have a housekeeper. Living in condos make life much easier.

 

[HI Bill]

Great discussion. My greatest fear, not having started RE, is that I waste time in the early years of RE, not accomplishing what I set out to do. I want to travel, read, write, publish articles...and enjoy life! Minimize drudgery. But my RE will be a joint RE.

I plan to review the prior year's trips/accomplishments/bucket list items with my wife, and to discuss the following year's plans. I want to ensure that we don't just ride the train to the end of the track as I've been doing the past four years, mostly, but that we actually pull the right switches in the right order. Carpe diem!

 

[Scuba]

We do something similar with pictures. We don't take a lot of them, but we will take some when something is more interesting than normal. At the end of the year, we pick 12 of the best and use them for a Cafe Press type calendar. It's fun to do a review the next year and on occasion, we will look at older calendars and have been doing this since 2007.

Love this idea!

 

[DrRoy]

I make no special effort to note the anniversary. I do track total spending at the end of the month, and keep general track of how much is travel.

 

[joeea]

#1 value is reviewing all transactions for fraud. I use an aggregator to collect all accounts in 1 login, so this part is painless.

Health Insurance would be 50% of our spending, so monitoring for ACA limits is critical. To little income and we get dumped into Medicaid, too much and subsidy loss is equivalent to about an additional 14% tax rate.

One of the loose assumptions for retirement assets/spending took a projected 50% hit when Dear Old Dad started donating 40% of his income to "charities", but he doesn't remember who he gave it to... since his Dr claims "he's still making decisions, they're just bad decisions" I can not intervene.

During the work years, success was more $ in than out. Now that we're burning cash with little chance for backfill, I watch it like a hawk.

Besides.... playing with big azz spreadsheets is about the only tech thing I get to do these days.

If you do it for fun, that's one thing.

But reviewing every day? I don't see much fun in that. I'm glad I have things set up such that I don't have to be worried.

Whatever works for you, I guess.