Certainly, I have not done my homework on the financial aspects of when to retire, but honestly the social/personal aspects are probably more confusing to me.
Related to both aspects, I worry that I shouldn't retire because I'm by far the main income earner in the family. I feel like I'm letting everyone down if I stop my income stream - especially before full retirement.
What you do for a living is so much of your identity. When you meet new people one of the first questions is "so what do you do?". To me "I'm retired" sounds like "I'm old". Saying "I'm a pharmacist" sounds more like "I'm still young enough to work and contribute to society". Maybe that's just my own hangup.
I'm always wishing I had time to organize my world and I never have the time (or the energy with only one day off) to do things. I'm not sure how long I'd be retired before I'd be bored (or kill someone, see next).
I really love my alone time. I do not like sharing the house with my spouse and daughter (29 and working). He does nothing all day when he's off work while home chores languish. I just paid someone to put down a kitchen floor that's been waiting a year and a half to be done (materials sitting in the house). Mind you, he is a teacher and has 2 months off every summer. Now he is threatening to retire in 3 years. He's 6 years younger than me and I'm not old enough to retire until about then. Gah.
For myself, my identity has never been tied up with my job. Partly, I think this is a gender thing. In my observation, fewer women than men tie a great deal of their identities up in their careers or jobs. Partly, I think that various life circumstances worked out so that my own personal career ambitions were ...sacrificed seems too harsh:set aside more times than I had wished in service of my husband's career and raising children. We made large geographic moves in service of my husband’s career that really did make my own career ambitions impossible. Children did not arrive on a conveniently well mapped time schedule, and that, coupled with my husband’s career demands, especially the last move, put me in a position I had never expected to be in: long term stay at home mother with few job prospects. After my children were old enough to put together a meal for themselves and do basics such as their own laundry, I returned to school in a program I loved but the reality was that my choice was grad school or my marriage as my husband’s job in academia is less portable than say, being a physician or a pharmacist. And he had tenure which is rarely portable. In a practical sense, my job was the best option I had open to me, given the constraints of geography and the desire to preserve my marriage. I can’t complain about my employer or my compensation, but the actual work was boring, repetitive, and stifling in terms of any semblance of creativity or even flexibility. It was too rigid and too noisy a work environment and there was a long commute in harsh driving conditions 4-6 months of the year. I don’t miss the job and I feel rather bad that I don’t miss my coworkers—and will probably be faced with having to spend some time with one of my favorites and my least favorite coworker in the near future.
I always knew that I wanted to have children AND a career but saw no models for that in my life and did not anticipate the practical difficulties. I also over estimated my husband’s willingness and ability to set aside his own needs in order to give me the time and flexibility (while juggling 5 pregnancies resulting in 4 children) to follow the educational and professional path I had dreamed of. I don’t mean to sound harsh re: husband. I’m well aware (now that I’m no longer in the thick of it) that as a man, he had many cultural and societal forces weighing on him to be ‘the provider.’ We also did not live near either family, which seemed like not such a big deal at the time, but looking at women who achieved much, career wise, most had the support of extended family to fill in with child rearing. This, I think, is actually the way forward as a society. Rather than force people to work until they are nearly 70 (generally at a higher repay rate than newer younger employees) locking out younger people seeking to establish their own families and futures and trapping them longer in low paying jobs ( that will make it harder for them to retire), we need to make it easier to maintain multigenerational family units, if not under one roof, then nearby. It allows younger people to move forward in their careers without having to deal with extremely expensive and often difficult day care arrangements—or sacrifice the career of one parent. And it allows older adults to retire while they are still young enough to enjoy retirement, enjoy any grandchildren that might come along and still be well connected socially—and still work if desired.
Speaking for myself, so far retirement hasn’t been exactly as I had hoped. I had not as fully anticipated that our aging dog would struggle so much this past winter. That was short sighted if not downright stupid of me not to have really considered how much she was aging and how that timeline would go. I don't regret quitting my job. We got to spend a few good months together followed by some time of decline we finally could not slow, much less stop. But I had much more quality time with her than earlier and my continued working would have only made things for her and for us much harder. We'd been down this path before, a few times, so it wasn't a surprise. It just wasn't quite what I had expected or somehow forgot to think about. I just thought: it will make it easier when hubby needs to go out of town for meetings. And it did. When I quit my job, she was doing well for her age but her age was really old for her breed. We had to put her to sleep a month ago and so, for the first time in 40 years we have neither child nor dog to care for—and can be more spontaneous. In theory.
In reality, my father in law just received a terminal diagnosis and instead of traveling for recreation, I anticipate that most of our free time will be spent traveling to spend what time we can with this wonderful man. Don’t get me wrong: I am not complaining I at all. I am grateful that I got to spend more time with our dog in her final months. I am beyond grateful that without work demands, we can travel the 8 hrs. or so to spend time with my FIL and help out there without me trying to fit in aging dog care with my work schedule while sending hubby to deal with medical stuff on his own. Husband is still working but academia has the advantages of prolonged breaks which really helps.
So, in these unexpected ways and perhaps not so happy ways, my leaving my job has been a huge blessing. I'm very, very grateful.
Socially it was a bit of an adjustment to quit work. At my job, I typically had zero time to myself. And I mean zero. While I liked most of my co-workers, they are not people I would spend time with socially given a choice. Which I now have. However, I am fairly extroverted and married to someone who is fairly introverted living in a region known for being filled with introverts who mostly socialize with their biological family and friends from elementary school(with plenty of overlap). I’m something of a fish out of water, given that I have no family here, I’m neither church nor bar oriented so I’m kind of SOL. In my early years, I did tons of volunteer work and assumed I would again. I find myself a little perplexed at myself for not diving in again now. The reality is that I want different relationships than those and have come to the conclusion I’m going to have to work harder and differently to find what I want and need. When we first moved her, a large part of the reason I dove so hard into volunteer work was to find friends. This had worked very well for me before—genuine friendships grew out of shared volunteer work and similar life circumstances. But this state is a whole different introverted ball game. Here: volunteer relationships ended when the volunteer jobs were completed. It turns out they were more work friends than friend-friends. And former neighbors whose children played with mine and whose kids I looked after when they went to the ER or when I took them to the ER, holiday meals and baked goods and garden plants and coffee shared: Turns out we were neighbors and not friends. No more contact. I've accepted that. It broke my heart for a while but....I'm not blood and so..... So there is that. It’s disappointing to me and disappointing that it took so long for me to finally accept what I figured out my first month here 30 years ago: I’m a fish out of water here. I need to make my own pond and see what grows there. But I want to make it clear: I wasn’t getting my social or creative or intellectual needs met at work, so that’s not a loss. But I do have to invent my own way forward while at the same time providing the support and help my husband and his family need and deserve now.
On the other hand, I've had the chance to do more social things that have arisen spontaneously--I've attended some events and social gatherings and a wedding that I would have missed due to work. That's been really great.
I also am looking forward to being able to indulge in some of my hobbies and to attend to long deferred projects, etc. I have STACKS of books to read (and organize and donate--I've already donated or discarded 99% of my work wardrobe).
I will say that I wrestled hard and long with retiring a few years earlier than usual. It meant locking my husband into working for a few more years (although that’s what he had planned to do anyway) and will cost me some SS money. But I did the math and decided what would and would not make the difference to out long term financial health if I stayed or quit. In terms of my own health and well being, it was a no brainer. Quitting was the right thing to do. In terms of things like health insurance? We have good coverage through hubby’s employer. When I was working we had great coverage, as we covered each other with very good coverage. Seriously: after multiple surgeries, we were left with very little to pay. As it should be for EVERYONE.
I felt terribly guilty quitting but my husband did not and does not mind at all. Our marriage is less stressful, although my husband did have to learn to cope with me being around more on his 'days off.' We both like our separate interests and like to do some things together so that works.
