I discovered this website at least 15 years ago and have lurked on and off ever since. Although, being able to retire early sounded nice, I enjoyed my career and I never did any calculations to determine how much I would need to save to retire at any particular age.
Fast forward a bunch of years. 3 years ago, I was laid off from a job that became quite unpleasant and overly stressful during my last few months there. I spent my time while unemployed reviewing our finances, trying to understand what’s needed to retire, I made appropriate changes to our asset allocation (we were far too conservative), etc. At that time, we had 20X expenses saved - certainly not enough to retire on.
I was able to find a new job quickly with the same title and responsibilities as my past positions, but the overall workload of my team was a tiny fraction of what I have managed in the past. Compared to my previous positions, this was going to be an easy job. For the next 2 years, I kept plenty busy with some large projects and implementing the process improvements that were needed. When this work was done, the days started getting boring. Really, really boring. For me, I would rather have a stressful job that keeps me challenged than a boring job – I now have a lot of time to think about the other things that I would rather be doing.
In the early part of 2021 I initially considered finding another job, but by this time I made it to 30X expenses, and all of the retirement calculators were saying I am good to go. I set a OMY timer and today there is not much more time to go. I am planning on wrapping up a 35 year career at the end of March at and age of 55 along with my wife (57). Thanks to a cooperative market, I have pushed my savings to 34X expenses.
As of today, I have 47 more days to work and it is starting to feel real. My emotions are a mix of being excited about making it to this point and feeling like an idiot for even considering voluntarily walking away from the highest paying position I have ever had.
Thanks to everybody who posted in the countless threads that I learned from over the years. Hopefully I will be able to give something back going forward.
Fast forward a bunch of years. 3 years ago, I was laid off from a job that became quite unpleasant and overly stressful during my last few months there. I spent my time while unemployed reviewing our finances, trying to understand what’s needed to retire, I made appropriate changes to our asset allocation (we were far too conservative), etc. At that time, we had 20X expenses saved - certainly not enough to retire on.
I was able to find a new job quickly with the same title and responsibilities as my past positions, but the overall workload of my team was a tiny fraction of what I have managed in the past. Compared to my previous positions, this was going to be an easy job. For the next 2 years, I kept plenty busy with some large projects and implementing the process improvements that were needed. When this work was done, the days started getting boring. Really, really boring. For me, I would rather have a stressful job that keeps me challenged than a boring job – I now have a lot of time to think about the other things that I would rather be doing.
In the early part of 2021 I initially considered finding another job, but by this time I made it to 30X expenses, and all of the retirement calculators were saying I am good to go. I set a OMY timer and today there is not much more time to go. I am planning on wrapping up a 35 year career at the end of March at and age of 55 along with my wife (57). Thanks to a cooperative market, I have pushed my savings to 34X expenses.
As of today, I have 47 more days to work and it is starting to feel real. My emotions are a mix of being excited about making it to this point and feeling like an idiot for even considering voluntarily walking away from the highest paying position I have ever had.
Thanks to everybody who posted in the countless threads that I learned from over the years. Hopefully I will be able to give something back going forward.
enjoy!
