I'm 72. I retired when I was 55. After 31 years with the same company, they bribed me with over a years pay to do what I always planned to do.
I have never regretted retiring for a single moment. I don't see how I lasted as long as I did. I had significant health issues at age 66. I am so glad I didn't wait until I was 65 to retire. The health issues would have been so much harder to face if I had just retired.
I do sit too much, have put on significant weight, and can't exercise like I need to in order to lose weight. I'm still working on it though.
I'm the last one in my family. My parents and siblings are all gone. I was the baby of the family. Everyone in my family smoked but me. Both of my parents and one of my sisters died of lung cancer. My father was 73, my age now, and my mother and sister were both 69. My only brother died of a heart attack at the age of 51, and my oldest sister died of a stroke at the age of 74. I know I'm living on borrowed time.
Like you I feel fortunate that I was able to retire at 56, and been retired for 16 years. Many of the people I worked with...most all of them younger than me, died while working for NY State, and never got the chance to retire. Seven years after I retired I ended up having to have emergency surgery for a perforated bowel. I had to have a temporary colostomy, and they did the reversal 3 months later. About a year and a half later, I had to have surgery to repair an incisional hernia. Then in 2015, I had to have my gall bladder out, and of course they couldn't do it laparoscopically. Two years ago, the surgeon told me I have another good-sized hernia, but because it wasn't bothering me, I decided not to do anything about it. Now though, I'm having some new discomfort in another part of my abdomen, and have an appointment to see the surgeon in two weeks. I'm hoping that it won't be anything that will make me have to go under the knife again.