Your plan is solid and makes sense.
-You are financially prepared for retirement
-You have no issue with remaining on the job for a finite period to determine if some form of severance package is available
-Your plan is to take the first offer that comes along....after all for someone who plans to retire this is just icing on the cake
-You are considering the tax implications.
You will be successful. Just cast your mind to those in middle management who are not financially prepared or who labor under some ill conceived notion that they work for an employer who values service and seniority. Not many of those left.
Trust me, we think about employees who cannot retire all the time. The current pension plan is less than stellar. DH will receive between 25-30% of his current gross (after over 30 years of service) and a pretty penny of that will go to our share of retiree medical premiums. The ONLY REASON he is able to retire is that he maxed out his 401k for decades - not necessarily for retirement, but because the match made it a good investment.
I assume that many older, retirement eligible employees did not realize that they would need a healthy 401k for retirement until a decade or two after it had been offered (after on-line sites were developed by the company so that you could do pension estimates). Couple that with the higher cost of health care and the fact that home values have been decimated and it does not make for a very pretty picture.