Well, it's finally gonna happen

[MrBojangles]

Lots of early retirees on this forum. Moreso than the general population.

In fact, one of you on this forum suggested to me an early retirement forum that I joined which made me realize I may actually be able to pull the plug sooner than expected.

My sticking point is drawing down savings in my late 50s before a pension or social security kicks in. Federal employees used to retire at age 55 until they sadly did away with the CSRS and I thought getting to 55 was a long time.

FWIW, I was permanently banned from the Early Retirement forum without warning (not even a time out). Let’s just say they aren’t exactly pro 2 A over there.

[Bill Murphy]

I might add that "Do I have enough?" was never a part of my decision to quit my job at 53. I didn't care whether I had enough income, I just wanted more time to myself and was willing to live on whatever I had. Not having to pay into Social Security or my retirement fund, lower tax bracket, etc., meant that my retirement income was not much less than my working income. That is the situation for many people in defined benefit programs. Sometimes, working to full retirement age is counterproductive in the long run. You are going to work every day for five bucks an hour, with two day weekends instead of seven.

[Larry the Gun Guy]

A GIANT consideration in all of this retirement talk is high cost of health insurance. If you're not able to access the social security system insurance it's a huge consideration. Working for a NYSE corporation over the last 35 years of my career I've been spoiled with, what my doctors called, a Cadillac health plan. If you have to go into the market and purchase a reasonable health plan the cost is very high. That's the one glitch in telling everybody to go pound sand. Make sure you know what you're getting into there. Not sure how Murphy filled that gap for 12 years. We may be healthy, but often times our spouses are not.

[Bill Murphy]

Larry, I continued my former health plan, and for another reason, Linda continued with her late husband's Federal survivors plan, so we paid double. She was not allowed into my plan because we were not married when I retired. Because of a decision I made at retirement, my plan will escalate to 500%, its real cost, when I am retired as long as I worked, 29 1/2 years. I don't have a choice, I will just pay it. All those years of paying 20% of real cost made my decision worthwhile. Yes, health insurance is a bitch, but we have to have it. I don't want to know how much it costs.