When I retired at 54, I thought of it as buying a life extension - in other words an increase of the years between when I was totally free and my death. It is pretty hard to put a dollar figure on that, but the opportunity to buy those years is now, not when you are older.
+1, +lots.
A couple of years ago I read a discussion about this or that health thing, eating more fibre or grapefruit or less starch or butter, don't remember. Anyway, the conclusion, by proper scientists, was that pretty much the only things you can do healthwise to significantly increase your life expectancy are /1/ stop smoking and /2/ get your BMI under 32 or so. Once you've done those things, everything else is a month extra, tops. And - this was the killer - that month - or even the two or three years you get from stopping smoking and losing the spare tyre - is at the back end. It's another month in the old folks' home.
Now, compare that with ER. You get to have that time
now, when you're 50 (me; disclosure: not ER yet) or 54 or 58 or 62. When you can still get up in the morning and it only hurts your ankles a little to walk as far as the bathroom, not when you have to worry if you'll get there in time. When you can get home from a jog and nudge your spouse and wink and go and do what comes naturally. When you can put on loud rock music and play air guitar. (Oh? Just me then?)
How much more is an extra year at 55 worth, compared to an extra year at 85? 10, 20, 50 times? When we're gone, we're gone, and everyone but our kids will have forgotten about us six months later. We should spend less time thinking about our egos - to be satisfied by the scale of our funeral? - and more time thinking about our real selves.
As I said above, I'm not quite ER-ready yet, but I'm more than 50% likely to be going back to college in the fall of this year to study something called Positive Psychology. After 30 years of w*rk of which 20 in MegaOrg, it's time to clear out the BS. When my studies are over, I can go back for a couple more years at MegaOrg, or maybe do something to help other people with their life choices. I kissed my last @$$ some time ago.
I make a good salary, and this course will theoretically cost me in excess of 100K. But since there was No. Freaking. Way that I was ever going to stay until the statutory requirement age, all I'm doing is deferring ER by a calendar year and having my first w*rk-free year a few years early.