[quote=scaredyclassic]I find myself in a position today where I could never work again and enjoy the same lifestyle even accounting for high medical insurance with no worries, even for scaredycat.

The problem for me is I could not afford large future expenses I might want to make. I couldn’t afford to pay cash for a kids medical school. I couldn’t give large cash down payments for houses. I couldn’t help out with free cars and stuff. I also need to send money to the Escondido Buddhists…

I’d like to be able to do all those things. If I kept working, I could, and not feel impact about future anxiety. Also, I sometimes like work and don’t want to be a useless old man who no one listens to. Worse, I could turn into an old guy who talks about prior work days. Ugh. I hate old guys like that

Therefore although I do not feel like working on Tuesday, or this weekend, I’ll be heading in later today.

Even if I were to die tomorrow, I would feel about this life direction it is correct[/quote]

Sounds like you are in a similar boat as I am, scaredy. Have hit my goals early but not sure I am ready to retire.

My original goal was to retire at 65, but I’m beginning to question whether I want to stay in that long. My wife and I have been talking about that.

The house is close to being paid off. We could live better than anyone in either of our families – ever! – even if I retired now.

The problem is – once I exit the workplace, if I decide a year or two down the road I shouldn’t have it would probably be hard to reenter. It is probably a one-way door.

So for now, I decided to stay. It will afford us more $$ to do with what we want in retirement – in reality it will be more money to pass on to our kids. My wife’s still working anyway, so even if I retired it would not mean more travel right now. Inflation has kicked up and if that continues, it could be that we’ll need that extra few years on income to keep pace with inflation. I’ll probably be re-evaulating every six months or so.

I’ve also been returning to genealogy and recently updated the family tree with the ages they all died. It’s all over the board as one might expect, but out of the 28 ancestors nearest us in the family tree (through great-grandparents):

– 4 passed in their 90s (93, 93, 90, 90)
– 5 passed in their 80s (89, 83, 82, 82, 81)
– 12 passed in their 70s
– 2 passed in their 60s
The other 5 passed before that.

How much time do we have left? How much of it do we want to spend in retirement? The answers are unclear at this point.