What will retirement (ideally) look like for you?

[thebulldog]

Dh and I are in our 40s - we have 30 more years of working, saving and living life before trying to plan out too much. One idea we do have is to buy a house somewhere we would like to live later in life in the next 10 years and rent it out so it would be close to being paid off when we would need it. We could either sell it or just keep it and live there. Our house has lost significant value since we bought in 2007 so I am still not quite sure how to factor this into everything.

[brooke77]

Retirement seems so far away, but I think about it a fair amount. We would love to move somewhere warmer and with a lower cost of living. I would still like to be in an area that is accessible to good healthcare and doesn’t require a lot of driving. I want to be as close to DS (our only) as possible so I can be an active grandparent if he has children.

My parents both retired to small, rural areas and it has been a bad decision when they needed elder services/resources/had health issues.

[Gato]

I love where I am and will stay right here as long as possible.  I guess there are alternate scenarios where we somehow make a lot of money in these last 20 years and end up living half the year in NYC or a foreign country, and July-December in Maine (where we are now).

I'm totally not opposed to having a small apartment in a retirement community or assisted living center if mobility becomes an issue.

If H were to die early, I might consider moving in a with a close friend or two, Golden Girls style.

It's funny: just a few days ago I saw a post from an old grad school friend saying she's actively doing all the things she can to live to 100+.  She wants to have two more careers lasting through her 80s.  She chastised people who just hang it up and relax in their elder years.  I totally disagreed with her.  I love my life exactly as it is, realize I'm super lucky to be where I am, and have zero future desires.  Wherever the wind blows me, I will make the best of it.  I'm going to eat all the chocolate and drink all the fancy drinks I want.

[notsopicky]

I honestly hadn't given one single thought to this question until right.this.minute.

I know that I want a place, even just a small condo, at a lake, sooner rather than later. We've put the brakes on it in the immediate future b/c H just started a in new (to him) (mgmt) role and it's taking up all of his mental energy right now. Perhaps this summer we'll put it back on the table.

Could we retire there? Maybe. Ideally I'd like to keep a place in the area I live in now, b/c I like it. It will also depend on where my (one) kid ends up. I don't want to be far away from him--I'm far away from every single member of my family now and it sucks.

I need to go to one of the retirement seminars to find out exactly what my #s look like and what the timeline is. I know that I'll have 30 years of service in 5 more years, but I didn't go back to grad school (again!) to only work for 7 years in the field. I don't see myself retiring at 51. Maybe 61?

[heliocentric]

Feb 19, 2020 9:43:08 GMT -5 ohgillian said:

I don't know and I get nervous thinking about it. I'm worried I'm going to be bored and at a loss. I know that this makes me sound like a boring person, lol.

I feel the same. And it makes waffle between feeling like I'm lacking the passion & imagination others seems to have and feeling like maybe I'm just content with the status quo.

Having said that, this is DH's first full year being self-employed and we're planning to start another, unrelated business later this year. So even though we're 48 & 50 there's so much thought to how to make these businesses successful that we don't spend much time thinking about when we won't be working.

[bronxgirl]

DH said something the pother day about us leaving NY when we retire and I freaked out. I have no desire to leave and there's no other place I would prefer to live. If we could spend some time in the winter in a warmer climate that might be nice, but a limited amount of time and I wouldn't want to actually own anything. The only reason I could see myself moving is if my daughter settled somewhere else and we moved to be near her. My ideal would be for her to settle somewhere near me and have kids around the time I retire. After I'm done working I could help her with the kids.

[lindyanne]

I love our home in central PA and ideally I do not want to move. We would like to have a condo in Dallas to snowbird there. We are Cowboys fans and it would be great to be in warmer weather and be able to see more games than we are able to having to travel from here (and not being able to go to the closest stadium in Philly because well Eagles fans...)

[winnied]

We'll likely keep our current home as our forever home. It's great for aging as the master suite is on the main floor. Then we'll travel for extended periods during January/February because winter can be a bit rough here.

We might downsize to a smaller home in our neighborhood, but if the house is paid off I don't see a need to go through all that hassle if we can use our current home w/o mobility challenges.

We've talked about downsizing to a condo in a nearby resort town and renting it out in the summers if/when we travel during that time but housing is very limited and it'll always be expensive.

[jlt19]

I have absolutely no clue what retirement is going to be like because I can't get a consensus on if we're saving enough! It's really hard b/c of our pension that we'll get as it's a set monthly amount once we turn 65. So I sometimes put it in the SS option b/c I never put anything in there (ingrained on me since I was a kid). I guess it must have something to do with assumptions but those are just that!

NerdWallet says we're great, as does AARP, Vanguard and Personal Capital say we're screwed. Bankrate isn't accurate b/c I can't figure out the pension portion. I mean, yes, it'd be best to just save more and hope to never need it, but I want to live NOW as well. 


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