I was in that situation - although my numbers/medical weren't so generous. Oddly enough, when everything vested, I had found an assignment I enjoyed and stayed on for several years. Who would have thought it?
There is a formula for our pension. For me to get a full pension i have to work 25 years. Anything less than that the 3 multiplier will now be 2.5, also for every year less than 25, 5% reduction of pension for each year. Medical is all or nothing.
Sounds like you have the best of all worlds there!
Yup - Tech is a brutal business with extreme ageism. Its just luck that I never got laid off in the thirty years I worked in software although I did come very close in 2009. From what my friends who are still working tell me, the current employment environment in software is the worst since the 2000 dot com crash.
Absolutely. Although maybe some will feel the opposite. I remember some of the old-timers where I worked in the late 90's. They often talked about which plane they were going to buy, which condo and where. After the dot com bust, they talked about 5 more years of work.
I took this lesson heart, and when I felt I had a reasonable chance of success, I pulled the plug at 52. Now I'm 64, sipping my first coffee, and pondering our next move - figuratively, financially, and emotionally
we ate a lot on our cruise last week, so just enjoying not eating for a while. I may go back to work just to cover some pain. I went back for two, four-month contract jobs, several years back. To be honest, I don't think I'm capable of doing the 40 - 50 hour engineering gig anymore. I'm thinking a starter at a golf course or teaming up with my wife for a Rover job. We just picked up our PITA dog, and I handed her sitter $450 cash. Wow!
Right, and it's not a pretty sight!
Eh, I'm on 6 1/2 acres, pretty secluded, so I'll confess sometimes a swim suit has been optional!
I can relate, though I've been on a work-less-play-more glidepath for maybe 10 years. I joined ER a year ago to learn how to finally transition into full retirement. The "fiasco and uncertainty" motivates me to continue working my present number of hours for the foreseeable future.
. I will admit to using some of that"excess" cash to add a little bit to my equity holdings, could not help it 
.
I w*rked in R&D fro a tech company, and for the first fifteen years or so, we were “layoff proof”. Until we weren’t.
Nah. He probably didn't take you seriously. He just found a good way to needle you. Heh, heh, friends are like that (sometimes.)Eh, I'm on 6 1/2 acres, pretty secluded, so I'll confess sometimes a swim suit has been optional!
As for sequence of returns, every time my birthday came up, one of my friends would say "Welp, you're not retired yet!!" (except for this most recent one, when I did announce my retirement). The reason my friend would do this is because he was under the impression that I once said I was going to retire on my 40th birthday.
What I actually said, early in 2000, was "if the stock market keeps up like this, I'll be able to retire when I'm 40!" Somehow I managed a 40% return in 1999. If, by some miracle, I kept up a 40% rate of return consistently every year, I probably WOULD have been able to retire in 2010, when I turned 40.
Well, as it turned out, I was down about 5% or so in 2000. Maybe another 30% in 2001 and perhaps 25% in 2002. 2003-07 was a good time, but then 2008 wiped that out and then some. I had recovered pretty nicely by the time I turned 40 in 2010, but nowhere NEAR ready to retire! Still, I said it as a joke, even though my friend took me seriously.
^ I was something like this - DW needed to work until 57 or so to get her full pension and retiree health insurance for both of us. So I worked a couple of years part time in order to retire only a few months before her.
