Retirement is a purely personal choice. It seems to me that one of its purposes is to disengage from the commercial, institutional, corporate,or professional life in order to live a different way. As these posts show, this is not for everyone. If you want to be free of all except a few personal, family, and civic responsibilities and live each day as you choose, retirement is a great way to go. If you like the work environment, your particular line of work and/or the social networking that employment brings, then perhaps retirement is not such a good idea. I've always slightly resented having to give so much of my life to a profession. After all, it's only a profession, not a way of life. I was not a teacher, I only worked as one. As my previous posts in the other thread indicated, life is full of variety, but so few people can experience that variety because that have to put so much time into their jobs and/or careers. If you like what you do, keep doing it. It you imagine a different way of living, retirement is your golden opportunity. I believe a lot of ego is wrapped up in our work. Many of us feel important or crucial to the enterprises we are a part of and are reluctant to give up that feeling. But when you retire you will find that you're still you and that the world of work that you left gets on very well without you. It is great to wake up every morning with the realization that there are any number of things you can do with your day. How dismal to think that you have to spend it like the other days of the week because of your job. As for money, if you have enough to live as you like, there you go. Most of us have more than we need. Money comes and goes, but time just goes. As one of my favorite writers said, a person is rich in proportion to the number of things he/she can leave alone. One of the greatest elements of retirement is that you can afford to leave a hell of a lot alone. I have said all this after 20 plus years of teaching literature, something that I enjoyed very much, but that portion of my life is over and I wouldn't dream of going back.