Congrats on your retirement. Great times ahead.
My retirement started a few years back, although some side-hustles put a few bucks in my pocket.
Kept busy with home remodeling, cycling, traveling, and lounging. :50:

Mark,
Don't be like myself and friend Frank who both "Failed Retirement" and went back to work in the same field. Frank left law school recruitment and was back in six weeks. And I left golf coaching and was back in two years thanks to a covid break. Frank has finally broken free, but I am still coaching, but it is fun and luckily on my terms. Glad you are on the right track to finally reach the goal! Smiles, MH

Congrats. I found quickly that working full time is very over-rated. I had lunch today with my old boss and one of the guys I trained. After hearing about the BS that's still happening, I don't miss it at all.

Congratulations, Mark! :thumb:

Congratulations! Looking forwards to more beautiful metal work and ride reports to be jealous of.

I read a book Personal MBA.

In it the author stated some study about how many man hours management spends in meetings in large corporations. It was a lot.

Congratulations! I retired last year after 32 years in the nuclear industry, the last 20 as a licensed reactor operator in the control room. I was working 12 hour rotating shifts with a lot of overtime and no end in sight. As soon as the bills were paid off and we had put some money away, I said enough is enough. I don't have as much free time as I thought I would, but it is nice to be able to put something on the calendar and know I will actually be able to do it.

Looking forward to seeing you hanging out in the fastener aisle at Ace, on a Tuesday morning, browsing through the metric section.
Auguri a te!

Fantastic man! Welcome to the club. That said, I must report that retirement sucks because there are way too many things to do. Over the past year since I've retired I've sailed the South Seas, ridden countless miles on various ridiculous bike tours, skied the Matterhorn, and completed innumerable home repair and vintage car restoration projects. I long for the days of staring into the computer screen and calculating meaningless numbers with which to assess my progress towards nebulous goals, all while kowtowing to completely underqualifiied supervisors. I urge you to stop while you still have a chance and rejoin the rat race lest you become a listless and lost retiree like me.

I feel you.

I've met them both; ridden with them both on multiple occasions. And yeah, I hate 'em too. And love them like brothers.

Ditto. :(

Ahhh. ummm... gonna need you to come in Saturday morning and catch up on your TPS reports, Gugie. Yeh, ummm, that'd be great. OK.

congratulations:thumb:

Welcome to the club gugie...

Pre retirement leave starts this coming Wednesday. Actual will be March hopefully.

Congratulations! I've been retired for almost 3 years after a career in the industrial control systems industry. Now I wonder where I found the time to run a business for 35 years. You won't be lacking for things to do.

A good chunk of what I did at work over the past decade or so was to mentor young engineers. I always started with asking the question "why are you here?" They'd blab on with corporate correct statements, I'd stop them and ask, "so if I stopped paying you, you'd still come to work because of the things you just told me?" Of course they wouldn't, so I'd remind them that the biggest reason they come to work is to get paid. If you had enough money that you could afford not to get paid, what would you do?

At some time most everyone wants to retire. The people who want to keep working because they like their job so much even though they have enough to retire are in a small minority. Most of the people I know want to retire sooner than later.

I give young people 2 simple things to focus on:
1. Get outta debt ASAP. Live cheaply. After graduating and starting my career, I bought a used car, which I had for 12 years. I always had roomates.
2. Spend less than you make. So many people get hung up on what to invest in, the best strategy to buy and sell, when the simple thing is to just save part of your paycheck. For the first 8 years of my semiconductor career I lived off of the same amount of money. I maxed out on my 401(k) from the beginning. On top of that, every raise and bonus went into paying off debt (first), then saving and investing until I had enough money for a good down payment on a house. Buying the house got me on a boat that kept rising with real estate inflation in the Bay Area. First house begat a bigger, nicer house in a better neighborhood, which begat a windfall that I used to move to Portland on a property that still makes me feel good when I snake down through our driveway.

And he did retire early. Too bad as I like Spaceman Spiff

Warning: Doom-scrolling cuts down on the enjoyment of doing nothing!

No doubt that he would be great at the bike operator /TA thing. But you’re missing one thing…doing something full time means you have a job. That defeats the whole point of retirement.

Congrats.

You know, my fantasy for if I ever win the lottery involves me keeping working, but just with a lot less stress (as university faculty always scrambling for grants, I could just self-fund research into what I really find interesting and not worry about the next funding cycle or having enough money to pay publication costs), but I don't know if I would really do that if I had the money. Good thing I don't have to worry about it because I don't play the lotto. On the other hand, I can totally see myself retiring as soon as I'm eligible and have enough saved up if I don't have "eff you" lotto money that would bring the freedom to ignore my bosses or tell them exactly what I think of their "brilliant" ideas to reinvigorate the university.

I’m happy for you. I can’t retire, but I’m in a pretty good situation in other ways.

Congratulations Gugie! But I caution you to be considerate of your family members and/or co-habitants. Mrs. Daka's observation on (my) retirement is this: "... there's half as much money and twice as much husband".

Happy Retirement!!!

Happy retirement and sage words you have given the newbs. Rarely will the young ‘uns get it but it may sink in with a few. Fingers crossed.

Hopefully I’ll see you this weekend at Made. First round is on me!