jollystomper
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2012
- Messages
- 6,705
With my target retirement at June 2017, I decided to implement an OMY "glide path" to RE (I am already FI ). I enjoy most aspects of my job - in fact parts of it are more like a hobby - and I get along fine with my co-workers, so my OMY is not that stressful. Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men can go astray
. I seem to have escaped the MegaCorp January round of layoffs but more may be coming and I take nothing for granted.
The steps I have taken so far:
- Megacorp closed our office location in December. I could have transferred to another Megacorp office, with a 100+ mile round trip commute around the wonderful DC beltway. Or I could work from home. Guess which one I chose? Giving up a little space in the house towards a home office was definitely a better option.
- Moving into more Megacorp projects that emphasize the mentoring/educating/advising of others, instead of direct hands-on traveling/doing/fixing. Of course I do so as much as possible without impacting others. This enables me to train others and improve their skills, and choose the hands-on projects I want to participate on From a "visibility for promotion, raises, and accolades" standpoint it does not work as well as being a full time "hands-on-ready-to-travel-at-the-drop-of-a-hat" person, but at this stage those things do not matter to me.
- Planning my business trips so that DW can come along and transform it into a "business vacation". That makes business travel MUCH more bearable.
- Living on our target "extravagant" retirement budget for the year. We have done this several times over the last 5 years but only two or three months of of the year. We have given ourselves a generous budget that FIRECALC gives a 100% success rate over 40 years.
- Using some of the gap between our current budget and retirement budget, for large, hopefully one time expenses that we want to deal with before we retire (long term home renovation projects, final year of college expenses for the last kid, maybe a third car, etc).
So far the results have been very good:
- I have not impacted my Megacorp co-workers, and in fact have gotten recognition for a couple of technical mentoring projects already this year.
-While I do feel a little more isolated from my former office workers (the vast majority of which also chose to work from home), we are improving our efforts to reduce that.
- Working from home full time gives me much more flexibility, and I have actually lost weight (less snacks temptation and easier to get out to the gym or walk around the neighborhood/park at any time).
- I have been able to take DW on the only 2 business trips I have so far far this year. She enjoys it, and has no problem keeping herself busy while I work. Every evening becomes a "date night", and one of the trips was extended into a real vacation.
The plan is not perfect, but I are having fun seeing how close I can follow it. Of course, Megacorp can lay me off tomorrow and all this goes at the window, but having established FI already that would not be the worst thing in the world
. Any other thoughts or ideas on what I should be doing during this "glide path" time are welcome.
The steps I have taken so far:
- Megacorp closed our office location in December. I could have transferred to another Megacorp office, with a 100+ mile round trip commute around the wonderful DC beltway. Or I could work from home. Guess which one I chose? Giving up a little space in the house towards a home office was definitely a better option.
- Moving into more Megacorp projects that emphasize the mentoring/educating/advising of others, instead of direct hands-on traveling/doing/fixing. Of course I do so as much as possible without impacting others. This enables me to train others and improve their skills, and choose the hands-on projects I want to participate on From a "visibility for promotion, raises, and accolades" standpoint it does not work as well as being a full time "hands-on-ready-to-travel-at-the-drop-of-a-hat" person, but at this stage those things do not matter to me.
- Planning my business trips so that DW can come along and transform it into a "business vacation". That makes business travel MUCH more bearable.
- Living on our target "extravagant" retirement budget for the year. We have done this several times over the last 5 years but only two or three months of of the year. We have given ourselves a generous budget that FIRECALC gives a 100% success rate over 40 years.
- Using some of the gap between our current budget and retirement budget, for large, hopefully one time expenses that we want to deal with before we retire (long term home renovation projects, final year of college expenses for the last kid, maybe a third car, etc).
So far the results have been very good:
- I have not impacted my Megacorp co-workers, and in fact have gotten recognition for a couple of technical mentoring projects already this year.
-While I do feel a little more isolated from my former office workers (the vast majority of which also chose to work from home), we are improving our efforts to reduce that.
- Working from home full time gives me much more flexibility, and I have actually lost weight (less snacks temptation and easier to get out to the gym or walk around the neighborhood/park at any time).
- I have been able to take DW on the only 2 business trips I have so far far this year. She enjoys it, and has no problem keeping herself busy while I work. Every evening becomes a "date night", and one of the trips was extended into a real vacation.
The plan is not perfect, but I are having fun seeing how close I can follow it. Of course, Megacorp can lay me off tomorrow and all this goes at the window, but having established FI already that would not be the worst thing in the world