Notes after Three Years of Retirement

[scrabbler1]

It hasn't happened in a while, but I had one of those college class bad dreams, too. It had to do with an end-of-term paper in a writing class. The weird thing was that in real life I dropped the class midway through, so I had no assignments to do in the last 7 weeks!

Count me in on the being lazy thing.

 

[ER Eddie]

Hello friends,
I'll be the big 60 in Oct. I work full time and have a wife and 20 year old at home. I rarely see how you early retirees handle healthcare. Isn't that the #1 blood sucker? Would love to hear how you all handle that. I've had Blue Cross/Blue Shield of MI for years where I work. I'm a little anxious at some of the responses I'm about to hear.

thanks
Tom

I have a high-deductible policy from UHC. It runs about $400/month. They jack it up every year, which is annoying, but I only need to hold out another 4 years. I keep it for bankruptcy protection -- the big stuff, not little stuff like prescriptions or office visits.

 

[ncbill]

I get similar university nightmares every 6 months or so. It's funny that so many people have such similar nightmares.

Work was also a constant source of anxiety and unfortunately I had the odd work nightmare too, on top of a lot of long sighs and mumbling. None since retirement tho!

Yeah, my post-graduation undergraduate nightmares were always about the final exam.

But I was always naked as well.

Also had some post-corporate world nightmares about not being prepared for something big at work.

Naked as a jaybird in those dreams too.

 

[Out of Steam]

I have a high-deductible policy from UHC. It runs about $400/month. They jack it up every year, which is annoying, but I only need to hold out another 4 years. I keep it for bankruptcy protection -- the big stuff, not little stuff like prescriptions or office visits.

I've warned my adult daughter that she is never to go without health insurance. If she is out of work, I'd much rather pay out of my own pocket for a high-deductible policy than have to figure out the financial consequences of massive bills.

 

[SecondCor521]

Hello friends,
I'll be the big 60 in Oct. I work full time and have a wife and 20 year old at home. I rarely see how you early retirees handle healthcare. Isn't that the #1 blood sucker? Would love to hear how you all handle that. I've had Blue Cross/Blue Shield of MI for years where I work. I'm a little anxious at some of the responses I'm about to hear.

thanks
Tom

I've been on an ACA plan since I retired in 2016. First it was a Silver plan with CSRs, lately it's been a Bronze HDHP with an HSA. Cost has been reasonable to cheap because my AGI is relatively low and I'm only 53. My AGI is relatively low because I have kids in college attending FAFSA schools and because I have taxable savings I can live on. And I'm pretty frugal and live in a MCOL area which is LCOL for me because I own my house.

ACA policies generally have subsidies up to an MAGI of 400% of FPL. FPL is based on family size, year, and where you live in the US. For a family of 3 in MI for 2022, FPL is $21,960, which means 400% of FPL is $87,840. (https://thefinancebuff.com/federal-poverty-levels-for-obamacare.html)

 

[umograd83]

I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one that went from bad college dreams to weird work dreams! Have them about once a week. Latest was being given a DOS based PC to get my work done haha.

I still have bad college dreams! The one where I am not prepared for an exam. I graduated the second time in 1983.

 

[lucky penny]

Good news is: the bad dreams of my college student days have mostly stopped; the ones where I sign up for a course and then can't remember what days or where the lectures are...

Oh I still have these dreams about high school!

 

[Jeffman52]

A friend of mine retired a couple of years ago. We were chatting it up at local bar a few months ago and I asked him what he has struggled with the most. He said it was figuring out that he didn't have to work his a$$ off to complete projects in a timely manner. He said he had been in that mode not just at w**k but also his home projects over the years(cause you know.. just the weekends) and he kept having to remind himself that it was OK to get some things done a little at a time rather than all in two days.

 

[Markola]

Welp, the evidence is that I’m not really FIREd after all. I quit my job in July 2020 at age 54 during the early pandemic depths and then took it pretty easy for a year.

In July 2021 I said “yes” to a consulting opportunity that fell out of the sky, and I formed an LLC (I chose an LLC because some of the work is not just on Zoom and brainwork but involves organizing other humans to be outside actively. Ok, Ok, I get paid to take people fly fishing sometimes for one of the clients).

Now it’s July 2022 and I have 5 clients. I’m feeling grateful and am enjoying having the work and the income, and it’s not full time, maybe 3 days/week lately.

I guess my insight to offer others is, there’s apparently more than one way to do this. [emoji848]

 

[Koolau]

In my tenth year of retirement, I still have dreams related to my engineering employment, not always too consternating.

Good news is: the bad dreams of my college student days have mostly stopped; the ones where I sign up for a course and then can't remember what days or where the lectures are...

Not sure what it means, but I still have more dreams of my university days than of my w*rk days. I do look back and realize I was blessed in my c@reer. But, even so, THIS (retirement) is so much better! YMMV

 

[Helen]

A friend of mine retired a couple of years ago. We were chatting it up at local bar a few months ago and I asked him what he has struggled with the most. He said it was figuring out that he didn't have to work his a$$ off to complete projects in a timely manner. He said he had been in that mode not just at w**k but also his home projects over the years(cause you know.. just the weekends) and he kept having to remind himself that it was OK to get some things done a little at a time rather than all in two days.

This is me too. It's been really hot in the PNW so I've used the time to clean and organize the basement. I've really been reminding myself lately that I don't have to rush to clean or do projects; I can take my time. I find I enjoy it so much more this way too.

We do have to stay on task though. We spend about 4 months out of the year in Palm Springs and we also did trips overseas pre-covid. We leave in four weeks to tour around New England for a month. When we return it will be mushroom hunting season and Halloween which are both big deals to me.

In between the traveling, we have household projects, cars to maintain and friends to stay in touch with. So even though we can slow down to do projects and tasks it does still feel pretty busy.

I guess my Dad summed it up perfectly when he said he didn't know how he had time to work in the past.

 

[pb4uski]

Yes, that is the beauty of retirement, whatever doesn't get done today can get done tomorrow... unless tomorow is a golf day.

 

[bltkmt]

Regarding #1, my wife is not happy with this trait in me!