<p>Ya’ know . . . .I’m 58 years old, I’ve been working since I was 21, I’ve had two, maybe three, different careers in that time, and I hate my current job. I’d love to do something completely different for the next six or eight years, not worry about the money . . . Who else feels like this? And what can we do about it?</p>
<p>I say I’d love to “not worry about the money,” but, truth be told, that’s just not possible.</p>
<p>Ideas?</p>
<p>I know if I wanted a new career, I could start a college counseling business.</p>
<p>I’ve become addicted to “Flip This House”. In today’s market with lots of foreclosures in the future it is pretty tempting.</p>
<p>5 years ago I switched jobs from a physcian to real estate agent. So anything is possible.</p>
<p>If you like working with kids, some states have training programs for people from other professions who want to teach.</p>
<p>^ Out of curiosity, and with all due respect, was this due to the legal environment in your state or personal reasons? </p>
<p>The reason I ask is that in Florida MDs many times leave due to the legal risk of being in practice under Florida law. So it can be the attorney lobby vs. the medical doctor lobby, at least in Florida. It’s not yet resolved.</p>
<p>Similar age, similar thoughts. I have accounts with Fidelity and they have an online Retirement Income Planner:
<a href=“http://■■■■■■■.com/yxzy2e[/url]”>http://■■■■■■■.com/yxzy2e</a>
but you have to be a client to access it. I am sure other brokers may have similar software that you might want to look at. The planner is fairly detailed and it took nearly an hour to dig out the information about income/expenses, assets/liabilities and fill it out. Once you have done that you can start to play “what if” games, checking out various scenarios to see if some will result in a comfortable stream of income indefinitely and if some will result in a zero balance in your account in the not too distant future. You can compare retirement at 65 v. 55. Continuing with the same job/income v. a new job with a cut in pay. What if your spouse works or stops working. </p>
<p>It isn’t perfect, I’m sure. It is only as good as the assumptions underlying the model and the information you put into it. But in our case it did indicate that we are better off than I thought and have some flexibility if we choose to exercise it. It has given us a lot of food for thought. Going through an exercise like that might help support a career change like you are contemplating.</p>
<p>A little bit of both, to be honest. With HMO’s being installed and higher insurance cost and more litigation against doctors there was just an uncomfortable envioronment to practice in, especially for PCP’s who had to often times deal with the HMO’s who tell you what to do with YOUR patient, even though they are often not doctors and have never dealt with your patients.</p>
<p>Then there were personal reasons as well. I was interested in business, but since it was difficult for doctor to operate his own practice with all of thre intrusion so I left that to do real estate, which was a sort of business that was not to difficult toget my foot into. Perhaps at one point I might return to medicine though. Who knows.</p>
<p>Similar thoughts here. At least I enjoy my current job, but I would like to be doing something different in 5 years. “And what can we do about it?” In my case, gotta find my wife a job so I can retire!!! :D</p>
<p>I love my job also but plan to hang up the spurs May, 2008 as will my wife, the month that our son will be graduating. A coincidence? I think not. </p>
<p>2dsdad, I agree that Fidelity’s Retirement Income Planner is probably as good as it gets. It uses a Monte Carlo simulation using 250 investing senarios. Here is a redacted copy of our results when I am aged 90+. Use the link in Post #7 to check it out.</p>
<p>Print Close </p>
<p>Results From Different Performance Assumptions </p>
<p>Higher confidence levels assume more conservative estimates of market performance while lower confidence levels assume more optimistic levels of market performance. For example, the default historical likelihood figure (confidence level) is 90%, which we consider “Very Conservative” market performance. This means that in 90% of the historical market scenario run, an asset allocation similar to yours performed at least as well as the results shown. Conversely, in only 10% of the historical market scenarios run an asset allocation similar to yours failed to reach the results shown. </p>
<p>Market Performance
Assumptions Results
Fail Shortfall
at Age Assets at End of Plan </p>
<p>If markets perform
significantly lower
than historical average,
you will receive a very conservative analysis.
(90% confidence level) 1 outof 10 times<br>
Shortfall-None Assets at end of plan-$xxxxxxxx </p>
<p>If markets perform
lower than historical
average, you will receive a conservative analysis.
(75% confidence level) 1 out of 4 times<br>
Shortfall-None Assets at end of plan-$xxxxxxxx </p>
<p>If market averages
continue, you will receive
an average analysis.
(50% confidence level) 1 out of 2 times<br>
Shortfall-None Assets at end of plan-$xxxxxxxx </p>
<hr>
<p>? Copyright 1998-2006 FMR Corp.
All rights reserved.
Terms of Use Privacy Security Site Map </p>
<p>ServerName: incomeplanner.fidelity.com Slice</p>
<p>Being the child of Depression-era parents, who always counseled me to save, save, save, I’m terrified to stop working now, only to run out of money when I’m 95. (And I do plan on living until I’m 100.) So Yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve done a retirement planning thingie, through Charles Schwab, and it also told me that at least we won’t be eating catfood when we retire. But I saw my father, who worked hard and saved hard, go from a comfortable income of $60,000 when he retired in 1971, to a not-so-comfortable although livable income of $40,000 in 1991. Mainly due to lower interest rates. </p>
<p>I figure that, to avoid such a situation, I should just keep on chugging as long as I can, at as high an income level as I can. So that means NOT becoming a teacher, or a real estate agent, or anything else that might be more satisfying but far less lucrative.</p>
<p>I think that maybe what I’m really struggling with (or, ALSO struggling with), is that our expenses in our current house and current town are very high. I’d love to cash it all in and live in a two-bedroom condo.</p>
<p>I’m really just whining. But if anyone has any other thoughts, I’m all ears. This is interesting.</p>
<p>i am not ready to retire just yet. i am lucky enough to be working full time–but it does only require 2 days a week. how lucky is that? i am, however, really trying to find something different to do on the other days of the week.</p>
<p>we did recently sell a rather large home. we moved down the street just a few houses, but we now have a modest (by some standards) ranch home with a full basement for plenty of storage and “play” area. funny how the play area has changed–pool table, dart board, and bar…guess the kids are getting older!</p>
<p>anyway, do the math on moving to a less expensive home. taxes, utilities, quicker principal reduction, reduced interest expenses–the savings really added up for us.</p>
<p>plus, i was glad to move away from the home where i had so many memories. i know that might be hard for some, but for me, it was easier to leave it behind. the kids love the new house even if they are rarely here.</p>
<p>Very happy, I have seen people work until they die, b/c of fear of running out of money. I worked with a woman who was in her early 70s. She owned a 2 family home (no mortgage, she inherited the home from her parents). She lived with a boyfriend (yes, at her age) who was paying something towards monthly expenses and the other apartment in the home was rented (this covered most of the property taxes). She was also collecting social security. She also had 3 grown children. 2 of them needed financial help and she helped where she could (one was widowed years earlier and putting one kid through school with a civil service job, the other was an immature and irresponsible man who never “found himself”, and the last child was very successful in business). She never retired and died within months of being diagnosed with cancer. I have seen other people do this too. The lady that I was speaking about had such a fear of being 90 y/o and not being able to work. She always said that while she can still be employed she would take advantage of that. She really had little enjoyment in her golden years. There was a lot of family heartache, no real vacation, and the daily grind. Other coworkers watched this, and said that they did not want to end up this way. Frankly, the one successful son, IMO, should have been big enough to pitch in financially, even though his siblings could not do that. He had enough money to give his mother that gift.</p>
<p>BTW, I also know someone who did “cash it in” for a 2 bedroom condo, and he still ended up still needing to work until he passed away in his late 70s. He earned less money in those years, but was still working hard. Living in a 2 bedroom condo was still not cheap enough.</p>
<p>Didn’t retire, too young yet (40+), but we as a family did make the move 3 years ago from one side of the country to another. Northern Cali (bay area) was cost-prohibitive on all fronts and with 5 teenagers as a single mom we wanted to change our futures. So we moved somewhere (NC) with a very low cost of living, affordable state universities for undergrad/grad (UNC-CH, NCSU, UNC-Asheville, +13 other campuses) and many jobs.</p>
<p>So far it has been great. And the retirement issue or job-search wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought. My folks ended up doing the same thing, as did my sis and bro-in-law. HUGE difference in their lives. All positive.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>As a single mother whose only child is going off to college next fall and who would love a career change or early retirement, I have a question: Don’t those Fidelity and Charles Schwab thingies ask for a lot of money up front in order to invest? How does one start investing when you don’t have a huge lump sum?</p>
<p>Schwab did it for me free because I do have a lot of $$ invested with them. However, I believe Fidelity does it even if you just have a piddly little 401(k) with them. </p>
<p>Wbow: How the hell did you get so lucky as to get a full-time job that takes up two days a week??!! Now THAT’s something I could go for . . . As for what to do on the other days: Go to school. Mentor kids. Garden. Paint. Take a course to become an EMT. Volunteer in your town with the historical society, or at the hospital. Take up a musical instrument. I could go on . . .</p>
<p>Well, now I only have 50 weeks to become a bum.</p>
<p>How I ddecided? I started thinking about it several years ago and used MS money to track all my expenses. Was happy to find that what I ‘need’ in retirement is not the same as what I ‘make’. Then used many of the retirement planners mentioned.</p>
<p>Also, I have that old fashioned pension plan. I don’t think the plan would ever go bankrupt - the way we are addicted to energy, my company can’t go broke.</p>
<p>yes, i am indeed so very lucky. it was a wonderful job to have the last few years that my son was in high school! i am taking some time trying to think about what i want to do. </p>
<p>i will probably contact the local school and try to do some sort of volunteer work for them. </p>
<p>right now i am trying to focus on getting myself back in shape and my weight under control…now there’s a constant battle!</p>
<p>“I have a question: Don’t those Fidelity and Charles Schwab thingies ask for a lot of money up front in order to invest?”</p>
<p>If you have a retirement account with Fidelity you have access to the program. I don’t think that the dollar amount invested is an issue.</p>
<p>H could retire tomorrow if our plans didn’t include full freight private U’s for the kids. (2) ugh.</p>