The funny/sad thing is if H hadn’t retired when he did, and stayed at work longer, his pension and salary would start DECREASING. That helped solidify the decision as to the Goldilocks time to retire. Haha!
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H and I met in college. We’re retired now. He’s Medicare age and I hit it later this year.
We had dinner the other night with friends we’ve know since college, and were discussing how we spend money. On one hand we look at the weekly grocery mailers and plan meals around the sale items. Drive our cars for 10+ years. We shop for the best deal on everything, and pretty much live frugally day-to-day. BUT – we fly first class and take extravagant vacations. We help our adult children with down payments, and take them and their families on some of the vacations. We don’t blink twice at eating at Michelin star restaurants. (Okay maybe I do because it does no favors to my waistline.)
So in my mind, yes – I’ve made it. I treasure my husband and the friend group we’ve know for decades. We have the financial security to live the way we do. And that H and I are on the same page on how me spend our money and live our lives.
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We are some years away still. We could probably go today if we lived simply but our goal is to help our three kids - two early career kids and our soon-to-be college freshman - to get off on the right foot in the absence of some of the benefits that we enjoyed.
They are all in the fields they expected and happy enough not to work in corporate America, but none of them are particularly high paying fields, so they won’t have a pension and decent 401k like I did in Pharma, engineering, and data science. My wife has always had consistent jobs that paid decent but without great benefits. but that was a trade off we made so she could work P/T when the kids were small. we did manage to save plenty and kept student loans small or zero and are trying to be ready to help them with grad school, buying homes, etc. we are also thinking about getting them started with Roth IRAs first. Let that money compound in lieu of an old style pension. So, we are trying to let them have the career they want and some of the benefits we had.
As painful as Covid was (my wife lost her mom early, college was a mess), I think it did help us make an important and positive change in how we work and live. We also got a new dog during Covid and I don’t think he would recover if we went back to the office :)) Like other people above, we shifted to remote work and we have prioritized ourselves - we go to the gym more, we hike more, we walk the dog a lot, we go to the beach more often, and we’ve been traveling more. So I feel like this is the first step towards retirement when we eventually feel like we have enough money to do all the things we want to do. We also reorganized our investments and are getting off the ground with a financial planner.
Good luck to all
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It definitely needs to be an attitude adjustment for me. Logically, mathematically, we are fine. Emotionally, I am not sure if I will ever get there. I know we are better-positioned than many, but I always want there to be, “just a little bit more,” in the nest egg.
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Funny, I didn’t even think about money somehow in thinking “did we make it”.
I think money has always played a role in our lives (never thinking or taking for granted that we have “enough”) and I don’t think I could ever say “we’re totally good” - because no one know what life - even after retirement age - brings.
I think H and are both the type that “retiring” means not working full time or having to report to a job or working for someone else. But that doesn’t mean we won’t explore ways to make $$. H retired from full time work like 6 or 7 years ago but is doing a part time job on his own that he enjoys and makes good (to us) money from. I hope to stop working full time sometime later in the 2024 calendar year….but hope to work part time in some way. At this time I can’t imagine NOT working in some shape or form yet.
How HAVE we made it? Got through helping to fund college for 3 kids. Landed the house/property we hoped to get. Have good relations with our kids and while sure they have problems now and then, they have landed well. I think our marriage is in a little better place than some years in the past….we have interests and activities (mostly separate) that we are happy with and enjoy and are thrilled to have some time to pursue them.
For me, the paragraph above…. MAKING IT.
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I planned to work until the end of 2023. I enjoyed my job (i took 10+ years off to be home with the kids). We had always been savers. In 2017, something happened to me at work which showed me that work did not love me back and that at least in my situation (with the management I worked under at that time), I was not valued. My reviews were stellar, but I was a woman turning 60…I was gutted.
I changed work departments and while I enjoyed my new job, it was much less demanding and my new management was great, I could not get past it emotionally. When our FP told us in summer of 2019 that we were financially able to comfortably retire any time, I began to plan an early 2021 retirement. I think I hid it well but emotionally I was checked out at work.
I still sometimes miss the challenge of work.
So yes, I (we) have made it, but not in the way I would have chosen.
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As for the non-monetary aspect of “making it,” it’s a definite yes. We truly enjoyed raising our kids, and we like the adults they have become. We have a great SIL & a terrific GD, and we’re fortunate to spend a lot of time with her. H & I can’t help but marvel that while we have changed a lot over the years, we have changed together. We are far more open minded than we were when we were younger, and we got to this point together. We enjoy laughing, and we go to comedy shows regularly. We have a couple friends who divorced recently, after many years of marriage, and we’ve talked about how we’re so glad that we are happy together after almost 41 years of marriage. I couldn’t have asked for a better life!
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When I said “No,” I meant the non-monetary aspect. We both enjoy our work in our respective fields, and while neither of us is a workaholic, the idea of spending our days gardening and playing with grandkids etc. is not yet very appealing. Monetary we might be able to do it tomorrow. 
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For us it’s a percentage. Estimate retirement expenses, subtract what pensions (if any) and Social Security will supply, in homage to this board call the the number “unmet need”. Figure out what percentage of your retirement savings is require to fund this annually. You can find various safe rates of withdrawal online but a common value for retiring around age 65 is 4%. Smaller is of course better.
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Yeah, maybe ask me when we’re done paying our own student loans while also having a child in college 
.
Really, there’s very little left on the loan and we haven’t paid it off because it’s at 1% interest. But just 4 years ago we took money out of our 401k to pay off some of our much higher interest student loans because our income couldn’t keep up with our payments. And we didn’t even attend expensive schools!
When we had our eldest, we made $21K/yr, which was $1K above the federal poverty line, but we did qualify for WIC. $5K of that went to health insurance each year.
We have struggled under the crushing weight of student debt while raising children for so long that I don’t know what we’ll do when that’s no longer the case. That will happen about the time that our youngest graduates 2 years from now and we’ll also have enough equity in our house to downsize without getting a new mortgage.
We cannot wait to be free. We’ll no longer have any debt at all, and it will be such a far cry from 5-6 years ago when our debt-to-income ratio was well above the recommended max. We do at least have a decent 401K while some of our middle-aged professor coworkers have almost nothing saved for retirement.
Our income is still low enough to qualify for need-based college aid, but soon we’ll finally be able to get by without living paycheck to paycheck.
Just this week I was able to fund my 15 year old’s 2023 Roth IRA with the $3K minimum to buy into my favorite low-cost index fund. I think he might max out his contributions in 2024! My college kid’s Roth is also small since most of his wages go to college expenses. But it’s been earning like gangbusters. We may not be able to give them fancy vacations or a big college fund, but we can at least help them get out of college with no or mimimal debt and a good start on investments. Which is WAY more than we got from our parents. It’s frustrating that spouse’s parents are very well-off and didn’t do more to help. But it’s their money 
. As for my parents, I have to help them manage their precarious finances.
We are dreaming of retirement but we only have 1/3 of my desired nest egg saved. We’ll be able to save much more aggressively once we get rid of the mortgage. We both enjoy our jobs but spouse is concerned about security in the current job. We’re still in our 40s and I’m optimistic we can get our feet under well us by our early 50’s. I know it could be much worse. It’s been exhausting, though. And we are trying really hard to ensure that our kids don’t go through the same things we did.
On the other hand, we’ve been blissfully married for 25 years and are still going strong. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
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Yeah, I think so, but it’s taken me a long time to get to this point.
We both worked for that aerospace company, engineer and program finance. Fortunate enough to retire with pensions, 401k, and retiree medical. Being able to retire early from a job I’d grown to hate truly saved my life. I hate to think where I’d be if I had to keep working.
The last few years, post-retirement, have had their issues - parents passing away, covid, my double mastectomy, but that’s all behind us now.
Anyway, it hit me a couple of months ago that we can live for however much time is left, enjoy our grown daughters, travel or not and it will all be ok. I’m…happy? Huh.
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I will never feel “safe” but DH will work a few more years and then we hope to not spend the last healthy years of our lives with him working a job.
But I think we have made it because the kids are stable, the house is paid off, and I was able to quit my job about a year ago so I could take care of my mom and dad, and now just my mom. I know we are incredibly lucky, despite what life has thrown at us. We aren’t one disaster away from needing help. We aren’t one healthcare crisis away from losing a job. We don’t choose between food and child care. And we can afford to advocate for things using our privelage.
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I always say that retirement is an option, not a requirement. If you love what you do, by all means keep at it and continue to reap both the emotional satisfaction and financial reward. Why quit? I know some who love what they do and plan to die doing it. That’s marvelous, and I envy them.
Then there are those who define themselves by their work and have a hard time envisioning a life without the title/trappings even though they have “enough” and desperately want to cut the corporate tether. I saw this with my dad, my brother, and several of my colleagues who defined themselves by their work and had a tougher retirement transition due to identity loss. My dad was a big fish in a big pond for many years, and when he no longer had that office/title/respect, he was depressed by what he felt he had lost. It took him a while to embrace what he had gained and begin to re-identify himself. Similarly, for my brother, it took three tries before he could permanently cut the cord. The job was just too much a part of him though it was killing him in some ways. But, I’ll never forget him saying to me, “Sis, I don’t know how much time I have left, but I do know that these years are better than those years” (pointing ahead), and when that sunk in for him, he was able to move on and is now enjoying these years immensely.
For us, work was always just a means to an end. It didn’t matter what the content was, how much we were paid, or what our titles and responsibilities were. We viewed our jobs solely as a way to pay the bills and fund retirement. When our nut was met, we had no trouble turning off the spigot and embracing the end goal. DH and I retired about the same time in 2017. I haven’t looked back, but he continues to consult sporadically to fund things outside our retirement budget. The work is a just a means to an end, though, not something he does because of some inner need or financial necessity.
So, for those who do intend to retire, in addition to working your financial plan, I would add that starting early to separate your identity from your work is an important part of the attitude adjustment of “making it.”
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I feel like we have made it. Starting from no savings to where we are now gives me great satisfaction.
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If you maintain your financial discipline once the kids are launched (and it sounds like that won’t be an issue for you), you’ll be amazed at the amount you can put toward retirement savings. You are young enough to be able to build a good nest egg over the rest of your working years.
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I crack up sometimes at the fact that when we started out from college EVERYTHING we owned was in one small U-Haul trailer packed to the gills. Our dining table was a card table but we really felt rich! We both had new jobs, a new city and a lot to look forward to.
And now we are well off. I’m waiting for H to retire–but he likes the work he now gets more than ever. Hard to quit if the peak of your career is ahead of you. No matter your age.
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Each time a kid graduated my H would say “We got a raise!”
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I feel like this should be a reply to someone who said they enjoy working so they keep working, but there were several, so here goes…
I stopped “working” many years ago when the kids were in middle/high school.
I owned my business since 1985 and really loved what I did. Just got to be too much along with coordinating the kids, their sports, etc. H said to raise my rates. Sounded like a good plan. But then my favorite (nice) clients couldn’t afford me – and the difficult clients were, well, difficult. Meanwhile he was doing very well and we didn’t need my income.
My business translates well to nonprofits so we decided for me to stop working for pay and donate my work to charities. Actually, I had already been doing that already, but decided to do it 100%.
I still do that, and it makes me happy to keep my skills up and learn new things.
Edit to add that it’s another big way I feel I’ve made it!
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Yes, to a “raise” when kids no longer need tuition and other payments. Also nice raise after paying off mortgage!
We had two in private school and then 2 in college at the same time. Fortunately I was able to get grants so I could run the program I created in my nonprofit while helping fund my kids’ college education.
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Thank you, that’s really encouraging! If money is in the checking or savings accounts, my spouse has trouble seeing it as off-limits, even though I handle the finances. I can’t tell you the number of times our emergency fund has evaporated for non-emergencies. It’s not extravagant spending on anything I disagree with per se, but it’s not within our very tight budget. My spouse is very responsible in general but I’m much better at budgeting.
So I started channeling the emergency fund into my own Roth 
. Outta (spouse’s) sight, outta mind. But still readily accessible. And I put all the college money for the year in our son’s savings account, and any buffer lives in son’s Roth.
Once our expenses decrease, you better believe I’ll have that extra money coming right out of our paychecks or auto-withdrawn once it hits the bank. By my calculations, I think we can catch up nicely as long as we can curtail lifestyle creep (no, spouse, we’ll not be buying extra property just so you can have an outbuilding to fill up with your stuff 
).
My dad couldn’t retire until he was 70. He was diagnosed with alzheimer’s shortly after that. He only got a few years to live his life’s dream of having a season ski pass before he started getting lost on the mountain. I have no intention of waiting that long 
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