I'm a big believer in living for today. My husband and I have good jobs that give us plenty of vacation time that we work hard to use. We do save for the future, but we have no interest in pinching pennies at the risk of tomorrow. My husband also loves his job and will likely work well past traditional "retirement" age, although I'm sure he'll work less.
You bring up something our financial adviser talked to us about.
When do you want to retire, and do both spouses want to retire at the same time?
Our financial plan is set up so we both can retire in 3 years at age 62 1/2.
My wife would have retired decades ago if we could have afforded it. Her main reason, no woman in her family has ever lived past age 64.
I'm not so sure I will be ready to retire, and my financial adviser sensed that.
I may "retire" from my current job, but continue to work, maybe part time, in something fun.
My wife, despite her desire to retire has come around to that view point too. She worked in a movie theater in high school and college, and is now saying maybe she'll try and work a few hours a week in a movie theater.
Let's face it, work can be a whole lot more fun when you don't need the job.
I'm a big believer in living for today. My husband and I have good jobs that give us plenty of vacation time that we work hard to use. We do save for the future, but we have no interest in pinching pennies at the risk of tomorrow. My husband also loves his job and will likely work well past traditional "retirement" age, although I'm sure he'll work less.
I lived in a small town and worked for years for a small company that didn't have pension plans and couldn't pay high wages. All my/our income went to the basics of life, raising our daughters, getting them through with a good education, food, shelter and transportation. I was in my 50's before I was ever able to put money away for retirement. A good portion of it was an inheritance when my Mother passed away. Without that, I doubt I could have retired when I did. However, I did a lot of traveling including 44 trips to WDW, two trips to Europe (50 years apart), 38 of the 50 states, quick stops in Guam, a visit to Japan (Tokyo and Osaka) and my all time favorite year long tropical vacation in Vietnam. All the provinces of Canada from Ontario to the east coast, and The Bahamas. In Europe I have been to London, Lisbon, Rome (2), Barcelona (2), Madrid, Pompeii, Paris (2) and a number of small tourist towns in the Mediterranean. Pisa, Tuscany, Florence and Venice (2) and probably some others that I have forgotten. With the exception of the last trip to Europe, most all of the big stuff happened when in college and the service. Still managed to see a lot. Now, I have gotten older (70 in just 9 months and if you count from the point of conception, I'm 70 already.) my desire to travel has quickly diminished. The only thing that I would like to do is to take a cruise through the Panama Canal. Otherwise, what I can't get to with an easy road trip, I'm no longer interested in doing.
I do wish I had put more effort into putting money away. I now work part time to try and keep my balance up for as long as I am healthy enough to keep it supplemented, but, I think that I am going to stop that on or around my 70 birthday and just take a break from working for the last 54 years. I'm not working hard, but, just having to get ready to go to work is causing massive flashbacks to those work or starve years.
I was over 50 before I was able to start putting anything away for retirement. The year I turned 63 I went to an AARP convention and spoke with a number of representatives of financial retirement planners and retired shortly after that trip. My overall ability was, to some degree hampered by my divorce because I no longer had the double SS check to help support my lifestyle. I downsized, not to a refrigerator box and and evening dinner of Alpo, but, a much more modest situation. My SS covers my two bedroom apartment in a nice, comfortable apartment complex. No more paying for appliance breakdowns or building upkeep, I downsized on my automobile to a comfortable, but, economical mid-sized car, and I did many other things that helped spread my savings out. Although I have gone through a sizable chunk of my savings in the 7 years since I retired, I have yet to touch my 401's and I still have 30 to 40k of my standard savings available for use.I was in my 50's when all the retirement seminars, 401K, Roth -- all that great information started coming out to inform us that we need to save for retirement. It was too late for me -- one shouldn't start in their 50's LOL. We do have pensions and 401Ks, but I really wish I had also saved more over the 50 years I have worked. We will be "comfortable" in retirement, but I will probably get a part-time job to supplement. I hope we can still travel -- I'm not worried about the financial as much as the physical ability -- even small long-weekend trips would be fine with me.
I was over 50 before I was able to start putting anything away for retirement. The year I turned 63 I went to an AARP convention and spoke with a number of representatives of financial retirement planners and retired shortly after that trip. My overall ability was, to some degree hampered by my divorce because I no longer had the double SS check to help support my lifestyle. I downsized, not to a refrigerator box and and evening dinner of Alpo, but, a much more modest situation. My SS covers my two bedroom apartment in a nice, comfortable apartment complex. No more paying for appliance breakdowns or building upkeep, I downsized on my automobile to a comfortable, but, economical mid-sized car, and I did many other things that helped spread my savings out. Although I have gone through a sizable chunk of my savings in the 7 years since I retired, I have yet to touch my 401's and I still have 30 to 40k of my standard savings available for use.
To help the situation I took a part-time job, three nights a week that not only filled a lot of idol time (idol time where you have a lot of time to dwell on every little ache and pain) and have not touched any of my savings since then. One of my big advantages is that as a veteran I get extremely good health care from the VA Administration at a very low out of pocket cost.
That has enabled me to live, like I said, in a very comfortable apartment, have a new car and travel on occasion. The thing is that since I got older my desire to be a traveler has diminished with the biggest being a shared expense month in Europe with a trans-Atlantic cruise, 6 or 7 road trips to Florida visiting Disney and Universal, plus other exploring along the way, Trips to Dollywood, Augusta (the masters tournament), Atlanta (another AARP convention), Myrtle Beach, SC (next week actually) and a road trip back up home to Vermont once every two years. Believe me when I tell you, I am not rich by any stretch of the imagination. I just don't do everything 5 star. I do comfort, cleanliness and cautious spending. But, I still do stuff and enjoy it immensely.