That's been my plan for going on 31 years. Now that I'm close I admit I'm getting nervous with everything that's happening with the economy, dollar devaluation, fuel prices, inflation, etc. but I hope I find the nerve to go for it.
One thing I've kept over the years is a 2003 article on an actuarial life span study on Boeing Aerospace retirees done by Dr. Ephrem Cheng. His results showed that the earlier the employee retired, the longer the average life span, with those retiring at 50 living an average 86 years, those retiring at 55 living an average of 83.2 years, to those retiring at 65.2 years living to an average age of only 66.8.....only 1.6 years beyond retirement.
He concluded that for every one year one works beyond age 55, one loses an average two years of life span due to the increasing stress and strain on the aging body and mind that leads to development of stress induced illnesses which end up forcing retirement anyway.
I have seen that study and it has a lot of critics.
Here’s one with the exact opposite conclusion:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/rapidpdf/bmj.38586.448704.E0v1.pdf
I’m not sure what the “right” answer is
More likely it is the strain of watching their pensions and 401 (k)' turning into petty cash. I saw news stories last week, of places where "They were dropping like flies" from heart attacks. Consider the Bear-Stearns people who had most of their net worth in company stock.
I was at one place where someone's cousin was running their Balanced Fund. At the time, we could only change the mix two weeks after each end of quarter, so could do nothing but watch as it unravelled. I was lucky-I only lost $36,000. A million was lost just in my building.