Well, so that happened.

[Bob Schroeck]

My employer has been going through a couple rounds of staff reductions, and I was one of about twelve that were let go yesterday.

Unlike in the past, though, I am close enough to retirement age that I doubt my prospects for being hired anywhere else are very good, so after consulting with our investment team, I have decided to retire about a year earlier than I had originally planned.

So that makes two of us, now, Rob...

[robkelk]

A word of advice: Sort out your taxes and get any severance payments you might be owed right now, and don't assume that anybody whose job it is to get anything to you is actually going to do it without prodding. Becoming retired is your full-time job for the next month or two.

Then you can relax, and/or kick your writing into high gear.

[Bob Schroeck]

Severance is 12 weeks, starting pay period after this one (I get remaining pay plus accrued vacation next Thursday). Withholding is already worked in.

The big issue we have to deal with is healthcare for the 14 months until we qualify for Medicare. (Well, 14 for me, 12 for Peg.) Now that we've got the distributions from our investments set up, that's our priority.

[ckosacranoid]

So does this mean we get to see more Doug whowing up on here soon?
Congrats on retiring, even though it is a year early. Good luck getting everything worked out over the next month.

[Bob Schroeck]

We'll see. KanriKyara is taking a whole lot of my brainshare these days.

[Dartz]

Congratulations on the milestone. Enjoy it it good health.

[Bob Schroeck]

So... two weeks later. Severance agreement signed and submitted. Company property returned. Last formal pay received a week ago. Severance to start a week from today. Company 401K closed out and is currently in transfer to our primary investment account(s). Disbursements from those accounts to start in August, after the severance runs its course. We've elected to take COBRA coverage for our health insurance until we both reach Medicare age in June 2027; to our surprise, it's better coverage than anything we can get on the state marketplace, and in the bottom third or so of the price range. On top of that we've got an appointment a year from now to start working with our investment firm's Medicare team to figure out what we're doing with Medicare come next June.

The last two weeks have been complicated by a) quarterly property taxes, b) some very expensive auto maintenance, and c) my mother-in-law's 90th birthday, being organized by Peggy and celebrated twice on two successive weekends because the entire family couldn't gather on the same date. The last of those is the only thing still ongoing and once it's done with, Peg and I can start taking it slightly easier.

We've tentatively set up a plan to do weekly day trips to places around the NJ/NY/PA area that we've been wanting to visit or return to but haven't had the chance in recent years; not to mention a bit more beach time. We need to get our senior passes to the state park system, too.

Oh, and I suppose it's time to finally join AARP.

[classicdrogn]

Good to know you seem to be getting on well enough in making this transition,. Major life changes are always a pain, epecially when you weren't quite expecting them yet,

[Bob Schroeck]

Tell me about it. The post office lost my severance agreement, and I didn't find out about it until the beginning of last week. I sent a PDF copy of it by email to HR, but the HR person was on vacation; it didn't get accepted on their end until Monday of this week; we didn't get the first severance payment until yesterday as a result. But now that's all straightened out, the 401K disbursement reached the investment company and went into my account there, and this morning I did the last major juggling of money we'll need to do for the foreseeable future. The only duck I have left to put in the row is setting up automatic payment of our COBRA premiums on Monday. After that, it's just the usual bill pay schedule and figuring out what to do with eight more hours of free time every day.

[robkelk]

... and figuring out what to do with eight more hours of free time every day.

Doug Sangnoir's lonely...

(You knew somebody was going to say it. )

[classicdrogn]

I'll thrown in my unsolicited two cents and say to at least make a genuine effort to use one of those extra hours for some light physical activity - not necessarily exercise as such, but taking a walk or moving the furniture nominally to vacuum underneath, or taking down all your potted plants to check the soil and water or prune or whatever care for them and put them back, organise the bookshelves,  whatever. Not even the same thing every day, just something active enough to avoid becoming the stereotypical shuffling oldster who's lost all physical conditioning for longer.

teal deer

It sounds condescending and foolish to say explicitly like that, but not one intentionally lets themselves go to seed, it just kind of sneaks up on you while you're doing other things. Doesn't even necessarily involve age, just getting used to a more sedentary lifestyle and then finding it stuck - after foot surgery last June made me stay perched with my feet up perforce for a July and some of August to let it heal, and it just compounded until back during that January cold snap I could barely get up from a chair and the burns I went into the emergency room for ended up being a side issue to having put on so much weight in water that half my lung capacity had vanished along the way and the cardiologist was surprised I wasn't having constant chest pain from the amount of chest constriction.

Literally over sixty pounds worth peed off over about a month with the relevant medication, and still going down slowly, but the point is that it was never a choice to be a lump, just continuing to do the stationary things I'd always preferred but sometimes interrupted for other tasks until the habits changed. 

So I say, make time to do something that means you get up and move around,m even if only incidentally to whatever you're actually doing. Not having an enforced schedule is very nice, but does mean you have to impose something like that on yourself, in whatever form it might take.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well, I do have more than a few physically-active things planned. As I might have mentioned earlier, Peg and I will be taking a lot of day trips, at least through the summer and early fall, and many of them will involve a fair amount of walking. My office is a mess and needs a thorough cleaning and re-sorting of books and papers. We have a greenhouse we need to get a foundation poured for, and then we can assemble that ourselves. And Peg wants us to clean out the garage. At least in the short term that's all going to keep me active.