What is retirement to you? When is retirement for you? Is it possible?
Here is my thought process over the years and my journey of going from "I will never retire" to "I am retiring in 1 year at age 59&1/2". Maybe I will inspire you to either plan earlier or to say "Oh, I can do this too!"
Here it goes,
When I was in my 20's I thought retirement was just for the old and I had all sorts of time to plan for it.
In my 30's I would occasionally think about planning for retirement but always seemed to think I needed the money now, that I did not have enough money to pay bills and save. That's OK, I still have time.
In my 40's I would again think about retirement planning but by this time I had racked up so much debt and lived paycheck to paycheck. I was sure I did not have enough money to have all the "Things" I wanted and save too.
Over these 20 years, I did put money way in a 401K sometimes but usually, I would have to pay some bill and stop the withdrawal because I had no budget and no real plan. Retirement planning was the least of my worries... right?
Then the 50's hit! "OH! *@!# !! I am only 15 years from when I am supposed to retire, well crap... I guess I will never retire. I guess I will be walking around the pharmacy at age 90 with a walker, and be working till I die." I was stuck in a job I didn't care for.
I began to rationalize, "Retirement is just sitting around waiting to die anyway?" "I'll just be bored in retirement, right?"
But I disliked my job just enough that I could not fathom having to do it for the rest of my life. So my next line of thinking was "Well I will just retire at 62 and live off of Social Security, even if I have to eat cat food." It will be ok, I like tuna so it should be fine.
Ok, I now have a plan! Hahaha! Sort of anyway. It will work, people do it... right?
I started researching "How to retire on only Social Security?" Turns out it's possible. Only, not an easy feat in the United States.
Thats ok! I love traveling. And sitting on a beach somewhere sounds like a good way to wait to die, aka, retire.
Through my research, I learned many things. And my mindset started to change in the following ways, in no particular order.
Retirement did not have to be boring and about just sitting around waiting to die.
I still had time to save and plan.
Retirement was not going to be about luxury and living better than I do now, and that's ok.
Life is not about things, it is about experiences
Life is short and I need to have many experiences and have them sooner than later.
Budgeting is not a bad thing.
I can live and travel abroad on a budget... What a life!
I am now at a point in life where I have set up a budget, have little debt, become very minimalistic, figured out how to save about 60% of my current wages, and know that I do not have to have a million dollars to retire.
Stay tuned to future posts where I will go into depth on the above mindset changes. I hope through my failures and changes you are inspired.
Please leave comments with questions and subjects you want to read about.
