Would You Retire Two Years From Now If You Could?
If you could work reasonably hard for 2 more years and then retire with very little in retirement savings, would you?
I asked this question on my Facebook fan page recently and got some interesting responses. The responses seemed to vary depending on what the definition of retirement was for the person answering.
What would your answer be?
That question came up because I realized that if we do meet our goal of having our house paid off in two more years, then our expenses would be so low that we probably could technically retire at that time. (Or at least one of us could.) But…we’d have very little in retirement savings, so it would have to be a non-traditional retirement.
By “retire” I mean that we wouldn’t both have to work our full time jobs in order to pay our minimum monthly expenses. We could probably get by with a part time job, if it provided health insurance.
If we did “retire”, my intention would be to keep working on my business (because I love it) and to begin volunteering a good deal of hours each work. For me, retirement would mean the freedom to just work on the things I wanted to work on, when I wanted to work on them. (While traveling around and seeing random things, of course — which might require some creativity.)
So I suspect my answer to that question would be yes, IF we could get health insurance. What about you? How do you see retirement?
I’m just too worried about the “what ifs” to retire without a decent retirement savings, but I desperately want to retire early. So, I’m on a mission to get those monthly expenses down and build up savings. I don’t see it happening anytime soon, no matter how I crunch the numbers.
I will probably still do freelance work in retirement, and I probably wouldn’t be so keen on retiring early if I didn’t have the commute from hell. It’s kind of sad actually; my primary desire to retire revolves around not wanting to commute anymore. Ah, Los Angeles. How your freeways and public transport sucks!
CF, yeah LA is the land of the parking lots that stretch for miles during the constant rush hour, that’s for sure. Could you move closer to work or work from home in the meantime maybe?
I could, but I’m choosing not to. I have a super cheap apartment on the waterfront (ocean in my backyard for a crazy ridiculous price) and can walk to multiple grocery stores, theaters, and restaurants. I even have a park and a wetlands area near me! It’s glorious. Long Beach doesn’t have bad traffic like LA does. Although the commute sucks, I think my quality of life would decrease even more if I left the LBC in favor of LA.
Um, ya think it might be obvious that I hate LA? ha!
CF, oh, I’m jealous of the water! (Not the traffic though, so I guess there are some trade-offs.)
If in terms you mean retirement from out 9-5s, then yes. Although, health Insurance is a big one to pursuade such decisions.
I would, of course, continue to work on a business and pursue self interest that could bring in income. And if I could wake up Wednesday morning to explore the Getty Museum, yes. :)
After reading the 4-hour work week, I can see the correlation between this top and the book. In essence you are ‘retiring’ you corporate job to live the life you want. And I think it is definitely doable. Just as this year, I plan to experiment with different income ideas that could make it happen in my life.
I don’t blame you, I travel the 60, 71, 57, 210 freeways everyday. I understand your pain and I am just as sick of it. ;)
Money Funk, health insurance is often the stickler. It’s sad. If you qualify for private that might be an option. And going to the Getty midweek (or any cool place midweek) sounds like my kind of week :)
Yes.
Diarc, it’s nice to see a definitive answer. Wish I were better at those!
No. If I have “very little” in retirement savings then I would not be able to reitre in the way that I want to. I would like to travel abroad a lot in retirement and that takes money.
Jane, it does take money, especially if you want to do it in style.