I’m in my late 50’s and have worked my whole life starting with summer jobs when I was in high school. Raised kids in a town where most of the other moms were SAHM when their kids were young, while I worked continuously although I was extremely fortunate to have a job where I was able to work from home for most of the time starting when my kids were pretty young.
I am so ready to retire, but can’t decide if it is the smart thing to do. I’m pretty sure we would be fine from a financial perspective (and our financial advisor agrees). Younger kid is a junior in college so just one more year of tuition and older kid is launched and self-supporting.
The problem is that I retired from my corporate job about 4 years ago because I was burned out, but found another job pretty quickly that was close to home and is a pretty ideal ‘bridge to retirement’ job. I had intended to take a longer break before looking for another job (because I didn’t think I was ready to stop working back then) but couldn’t turn this opportunity down, so I ended up with only a month’s break before starting at the new place.
So the pros: It’s a very short commute, reasonable hours, and I like the people I work with. I’m just tired from the years of working and don’t want to work 40 hours a week anymore. If I could reduce my hours, I would be happy to stay, but that isn’t an option for my job. I really also want to do more traveling which is hard to do if I am still working full-time.
Advice I’ve received from my friends: 1) Absolutely stop working if it’s financially feasible. YOLO! 2) Why stop working when you have such a cushy, ideal, pre-retirement job? 3) Why stop working if there isn’t anything else you want to do with your time? If your only answer is to travel, you can’t travel non-stop, so there should be other things you are interested in pursuing. Unfortunately, I really can’t come up with anything when asked this question. 4) DH says I can do what I want, but he isn’t ready to retire, and thinks my brain will atrophy if I’m not working. OK, kind of kidding on that, but I might be the kind of person who would end up sleeping in late all the time if I didn’t have a reason to get up.
HELP! Does anyone have any advice for me? I mostly feel that we all don’t know how much time we have left and I don’t want to waste it.