I am amazed

[Out_the_Door]

I'm planning to give notice on Dec 27th...I've told a few people and when they ask how can I do that...My response: "The company did me a favor by underpaying me as I learned to live on less"

 

[rothlev]

Yes teachers have the option of a 403B that they can contribute to on their own I started mine 31 years ago. 2 of my friends started theirs last year and they are 3 years older than I am.

I thought that since Indiana has a lower multiplier pension compared to most, that I read that they kick in to your 403b plan on your behalf, like the federal government kicks in to the TSP.

I retired from Florida, we have a lower multiplier than most, (1.6%) plan, but it is even worse now as they took the COLA out. Now the teachers not only lost the COLA, but have to pay into the pension plan. I retired before that happened. But Indiana is even worse than ours. Do you at least get an annual COLA?

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

Part of the reason people do not save money or worry about the future is because I think they believe they can do it later. They can put it off and have time to take care of it later while they live their life free from worry about the future. The truth is, it is later than they think. Much later.

 

[Winemaker]

DW was a teacher for 35 years; her pension is with a school district for 20 years. It is 45% of her salary when she retired at 59, and is discounted because she took it 6 years. We contributed the max to her 403b since day 1, no match. She did pay into her pension. She also received no health care insurance, as her contract required 30 years with her school district. We never noticed that provision when she was hired on initially.

Working, saving, living and loving each other like we did, allowed us to retire 9 and 6 years early. It was the best gift we ever gave each other.

 

[rothlev]

DW was a teacher for 35 years; her pension is with a school district for 20 years. It is 45% of her salary when she retired at 59, and is discounted because she took it 6 years. We contributed the max to her 403b since day 1, no match. She did pay into her pension. She also received no health care insurance, as her contract required 30 years with her school district. We never noticed that provision when she was hired on initially.

Working, saving, living and loving each other like we did, allowed us to retire 9 and 6 years early. It was the best gift we ever gave each other.

Do you mean that she gets 45%, after only 20 years? Does she get social security for those years also.? That is a great pension. I think ours paid out at less than 50%, but only after 30 years. So, I got significantly less, as I put in 22 years, and left early.

I contributed to my 403 b, not since day 1, thou, wish, that I had. Took a hit on the pension for retiring early. I did pay into social security, so the combination is probably close to 75% of what I earned working.

 

[Winemaker]

She had 25 years within the state, which is responsible for her pension. She was a sub for five years, not in that district. We purchased her 5 years of service for about $5000 IIRC, as she had the time but as a sub she made no contributions, and neither did the school districts.
She ended up with 45% of her salary, which was ~$50,000 at the time. Had she worked another 6 years, her salary would have possibly reached $70,000, depending on 2 contract negotiations.
She is eligible for SS, and plans on taking it just before she turns 65.

 

[makingaplan]

Indiana teachers would have to save on their own to be able to retire on their full pension it is so low is my point. Couple of my friends have said what will you do about health insurance and so on. My answer is always I am willing to pay! HA

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

I am amazed that my friends at work are amazed when I tell them I am planning to retire next year. The amazing part is they have the same job and income I do and most say they are in not financial position to retire. These are people that are pension and Social Security qualified. How can you be stressed out at your job for at least the last 10 years and have not planned for retirement?

I was in the same type of position when I was approaching mandatory retirement.

My wife and I had known my retirement date for 15 years in advance, so we planned for it. We built-up our portfolio, anticipating that it was going to be needed to balance my pension.

Being career military, everyone I worked with was under the same program.

But, ... as my forced retirement got near, I heard from many others that they were NOT planning on it at all. They made no investments, nothing.

 

[yakers]

LBYM, save simply/smartly, work a job you like and retire when you want/can. But it is good to understand the numbers involved.

 

[Oakster]

Part of the reason people do not save money or worry about the future is because I think they believe they can do it later. They can put it off and have time to take care of it later while they live their life free from worry about the future. The truth is, it is later than they think. Much later.

I think it is because people want the easy way and the fun way, which is to spend the money now. They want to find a reason to buy a new car and go on vacation. When their friends do it on credit and keep upgrading cars, then they follow along, its justified. It is easy to believe the slang phrases about always having a car payment, the little guy cant win etc. Its just easier to keep enjoying life and being a victim of the rich. If retirement and money planning was talked about more amongst friends and co-workers, it would help a lot of people out. If people that know better and understand the economy do not sit by idle while people think the system is rigged, and the little guy cant win etc, it could help people change the thought process.

Its just not easy to talk about for some reason and the population spreads out into those that know and understand vs those that spend it all.

 

[HI Bill]

Its just not easy to talk about for some reason and the population spreads out into those that know and understand vs those that spend it all.

Maybe it's a conspiracy, LOL! It sure seems like it! From advertisements to movies, we've created unrealistic lifestyle expectations. It's more fun, and easier to spend and have it now, than to wait! Oh, wait...I just did my travel schedule for the next two years, and it's going to be much more fun than I could have had if I had gone into debt and overspent on vacations early on!

 

[camfused]

Some people may simply not know they can retire. They may not know how to do the math...

Yup. Before I retired I tried to help a colleague / old friend realize this. She has lots of money saved, and I showed via FireCalc and some of my spreadsheets that she could retire even right now at her current age, about 59, if she wanted to. She was too scared to jump, plus she is single and worries she would not have anything to do (which I sort of get, since on weekends she never leaves her house).

She has like $250K in her checking account, earning .00000001% or something like that. I tried for years to get her to put it in a MM account, but nope. Whatever.

 

[Gadabout]

It's later than you think

When I retired @60, I often heard, "you're too young to retire." My response: "that's the idea." I had a great, but time intensive career and wanted to be unleased early enough to roam the world freely with my husband while we both have health, energy and each other. We love having time for more than rushed visits with distant family and friends and for extended trips. People think retirement is for old people and they don't realize how late in life they already are.

 

[armor99]

Sadly... it is not too surprising. In my experience, most people lack in the planning department. Why save for a while to purchase something outright, when I can just have “fun” today, and put it on a credit card... that sort of thinking...

Many of us here in this forum are engineers ( I am) or at least think as engineers do. We do not think about days into the future, we think about years into the future, and what can we do today to help that future reality happen?

When the market tanked in 2009 I did not sell everything I had, I bought more.... and I think I read somewhere that 2009 to 2019, is on track to be one of the best bull market decades ever. Looking for small advantages, compounding over time = retire early!!!

 

[travelover]

Sadly... it is not too surprising. In my experience, most people lack in the planning department......

Sadly, yes, I think this is just the way we evolved - to react to the present with little long term strategy. For the same reason, like the frog in the boiling water, we'll do nothing meaningful collectively about climate change.

 

[bencasey]

Retiring with a pension is no great accomplishment. I mostly retired at 57 with no pension. Its called never getting married and not having kids. When people ask me, I tell them it probably costs at least $500,000 to raise a kid and times that by two and I saved that money.

 

[pb4uski]

Retiring with a pension is no great accomplishment. I mostly retired at 57 with no pension. Its called never getting married and not having kids. When people ask me, I tell them it probably costs at least $500,000 to raise a kid and times that by two and I saved that money.

So say you... I retired at 56 with a small pension from a former employer I spent 12 years with from 1986 to 1998... 18% of our spending... but we have two kids.

IME, your at least $500k number each is a crock though I didn't track how much we spent on them.

 

[Hosmer]

I've stopped telling people about my impending plans. When I did, they usually give me a blank, uncomprehending stare, then ask..how can you afford to do that? Others become jealous...

yes this has been our experience for the most part..with some friends we have told. I have 5 siblings and have only told the one I knew would be happy about it and understanding. I am not planning on telling the other 4 until after DW and I retire in April/May. Will probably tell them the same thing we plan to tell our respective coworkers, that we are taking a couple years off to do some traveling while we are relatively young and healthy.

 

[LRDave]

My experience with my former work contemporaries was quite the opposite in some ways.

This was mostly the old white guys at the top of the company and they probably made good $ for a long time and were probably reasonably savvy with their $. No one said: "Man, how can you afford to retire?"

The incredulous looks I got were around questions like: "What are you going to do with yourself and your time?". Through discussion through the years with many of these folks, they see work as such a big component of self-worth as to be unfathomable that they could exist and not work.

 

[Mdlerth]

No point in pouring gasoline on coals

I have 5 siblings and have only told the one I knew would be happy about it and understanding. I am not planning on telling the other 4 until after DW and I retire in April/May.

Similar story here. 4 siblings, none would be supportive. They'll find out by osmosis; my children know of my pending retirement and they're regular contributors to Facebook. But I won't bring it up in conversation.

 

[dixonge]

I 'retired' twice, kinda. The first time we got out of debt, downsized and saved up a lot. Not enough, in retrospect, but a lot. When I quit that job, I wasn't even vested in the pension plan. So it was kinda crazy, even to a FIRE person. I interacted with hundreds of my fellow employees while traveling around fixing their computing issues. In 6.5 years, only one ever showed interest in saving back and thinking about retiring early.

When we ran out of money and I had to go back to work for two years I did finally get vested, but in those two years none of my 120+ co-workers ever expressed interest in retiring early. Some had been there 30+ years, others had vested twice in different state entities, and still kept working in spite of talking about maybe retiring.

Some old friends got inspired by us and actually downsized, saved up and bought a bus-sized RV and have been living in it and traveling a lot. He is still at work, I think approaching his 40th year. Bad case of OMY.

Sometimes I feel like I have been initiated into some sort of worldwide secret club. And the crazy part is that there is no official organization that hands out invitations or handles initiation. Everyone just shows up at the door, which isn't particularly hidden in this internet age, and walks in. There isn't even a back room or secret code to get into the club, you just have to find out about it, do the work, then you're in! Maximize your income, minimize your spending, maximize your saving/investing. Done.

It is as if there is a veil over the eyes of much of the population. Or a drug that dulls the ability to comprehend. There is probably some Huxley/Orwell analogy that would be appropriate here, but I'll leave that to others. The main reaction from others is either complete lack of comprehension, or instant suspicion/jealousy.

 

[jollystomper]

I am amazed that my friends at work are amazed when I tell them I am planning to retire next year. The amazing part is they have the same job and income I do and most say they are in not financial position to retire. These are people that are pension and Social Security qualified. How can you be stressed out at your job for at least the last 10 years and have not planned for retirement?

I feel empathy towards those that are amazed I retired. Not all of the time is it their fault. Sometimes the stress they face outside of work can be greater than the stress inside of work. Some have older parents they are taking care of (and it is not necessarily the fault of the parents that they need taking care of). Some have children that they are taking care of, who may have conditions that prevent them from being independent, and feel the obligation to continue to work as long as they can for them. Some are in difficult personal relationships. Sometimes, as bad as you may perceive their stress at work, it is still an escape from the stress they face in everyday life.

I have evolved from being amazed at their reaction, to being humbled by and thankful for what I have been able to accomplish.

 

[MultiEventer]

I am amazed that my friends at work are amazed when I tell them I am planning to retire next year. The amazing part is they have the same job and income I do and most say they are in not financial position to retire. These are people that are pension and Social Security qualified. How can you be stressed out at your job for at least the last 10 years and have not planned for retirement?

It is an amazing feat and should astound people, especially to those whom have spent their lives spending all their surplus income, plus some. I did not tell anyone I was going to FIRE as I approached that magic day, which was age 52 for me but I decided to hold on until age 54 for a little more security. I did it via the textbook FIRE strategy for the most part. LBYM and saving the excess. No pensions. Just SS when I become eligible in 4 more years. However, on the day I gave my 2 week notice and announced my retirement (software engineer) I become somewhat of a celebrity at work for that 2 weeks. It was hard to get any work done because I had close to 100 people come up to my office asking me how I did it. It was a fun time and I met new friends during those 2 weeks. I even did a short seminar at a few lunch hours for those interested in the nuts and bolts. It's been almost 4 years since my ER and I have about 25 former co-workers that keep in touch about my retirement traveling. Occasionally, I get questions and I love sharing my FIRE knowledge and travelling experiences.

 

[ckelly78z]

To those of us on these forums, it isn't rocket science on how to F.I.R.E, but to many folks, they just can't resist that new house in the best subdivision, along with sharing pictures on Facebook of their latest exotic trip, or wearing the latest designer clothes, and remodeling the house seasonally.

I have been very lucky to have the parents I have (married for 60 years, healthy, and financially fit,), and my wife of 31 years who is on board also. Without this support, and good example, I may have fallen into the clutches of consumerism just like most of my friends/co-workers who are amazed.

No doubt, there has been sacrifice, and some heartache along the way, but well worth it.

 

[scrabbler1]

Retiring with a pension is no great accomplishment. I mostly retired at 57 with no pension. Its called never getting married and not having kids. When people ask me, I tell them it probably costs at least $500,000 to raise a kid and times that by two and I saved that money.

Your $500k per kid may be rather high, compared to the ~$220k figure I have seen over the years. Not sure getting married improves or diminishes one's chance of retiring early. (From what I have seen in this forum and elsewhere, it's getting divorced which can wreck one's finances.)

I do agree with the no-kids aspect, for sure. Anyone who has kids and retired early could have done it had they been childfree. But not every early retiree who was childfree could have retired early had they had kids. I am surely in that group.

As my signature line suggests, "No kids, no debts" has been my short answer to how I was able to retire at 45, 11 years ago.