Great thread you started and the responses are very personal and helpful for me as I just quit working three weeks ago. I turn 66 in just over two weeks. I had planned to go another year, but I wound up with a boss AND a boss’ boss that I could not stand. I would honestly have to go back to my Junior summer of high school to find a boss that bad. Fortunately, we had decided a few months ago to start SS payments at age 66 and that begins in August. We’ve been mapping out retirement for a long time and things should be in good shape with SS, savings, and my wife’s modest pension.
Having lived in Silicon Valley the last 40 years, we have this interesting situation where our residence is a gold mine, but there’s no easy way to tap the gold without us sending taxes equal to the GDP of a banana republic to FedZilla. If one of us passes in the house, the basis is stepped up to market and all that appreciation is tax free. But that means we have to continue living here and the entire area is getting rebuilt with Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon (big presence here), LinkedIn, et al money. The millennials like high density urban areas and our cute little mid-century little towns and villages are all getting rapidly urbanized. So it isn’t the pleasant place it used to be.
The complexities of converting a primary residence to a rental, then having to live in it two years of every five to preserve it as primary residence are not very appealing.
Three weeks into this and I feel the weight of the world is off my shoulders. Far less stress aches in many muscles.
I’m throwing myself at many deferred and partly done projects around the house from mundane to complex. After those are done, I expect to be volunteering or maybe picking up some consulting gigs. My wife is going to work another couple years which will provide full health care for us which is a huge benefit.
There was an excellent comment up thread about retirement not being running away from something but TO a new goal. We do need to figure that part out.
I spent my career in computers, and computers were my hobby and passion too... I was living and breathing the stuff 24X7.
When I quit, I finally had enough and dropped it entirely... and don't miss it one bit. My retirement passion is photography. I spent a year building an addition on the house which serves as a studio, and I can make a little money shooting headshots, boudoir and things like that. I also shoot models and sell online photo books via Kindle and Nook. My wife likes it because travel photography is fun too and she's happy to travel anywhere. I also make a little income selling stock photos from travel... Costa Rica, Argentina, etc. Most importantly, its fun!