You can always put yourself out of your misery. Barring religious beliefs

I am. I've already had the conversation. Unless I have an illness that I can recover from, I will not have anyone wiping my ass. I'll go out on my own terms.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I like the ability to pick and choose my work. If you are an asshole, I now won't work with you at any price. If I want to go to London in March, I know I have to work X hours between now and then to pay for it, and then decide if it's worth finding a client who needs my services for that long.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

My FIL is 75 and has cancer. He's still going to work. I think my dad was about 57 when he retired. I have no idea what my husband's plans are.

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My wife was 52 when she passed. She planned to retire early. We saved accordingly.

Nothing is promised. 'Man plans, God laughs.' Enjoy everyday. Don't spend like drunken sailors and don't sock it away like Scooge. Find a balance is the lesson for me.

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"I give you my word as a Biden"

Looking at finances right now, I should be in a position to retire around 55 in 20 years or so. Question is if I want to or not. I still enjoy work and think I'd rather keep working and growing the nest egg rather than retire then. Who knows though. It will be the 2040s by then so maybe I really will be sick of it all and want to retire, but I just can't imagine what I'd do with that time without growing bored.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

There's a middle ground. Doing whatever you want whenever you want isn't all that it's cracked up to be. The definition of boredom is, to me, not being useful. So doing whatever you want whenever you want, will get boring. Right now, you got work, kids, a marriage, it seems you don't have time to even take a shit and you go, "hell yeah, bring on the boredom". In reality, this is the best part of your life. I have more to say but no one wants to hear an old man pontificate to those that really matter. That's how life goes.

Speak, old man.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

if you give yourself a purpose, you'll thrive in "retirement". Retirement to me is I no longer require a paycheck to pay my bills. that's it. I can still earn money, thats no issue, its just not required. there is still work to do and I'll likely still be busier than ever before.

I’ll be 60 in five years and hope to retire then. I’ll probably still work, like at Home Depot to keep busy and get health care. My current position is very stressful, so I look forward to an easier lifestyle. I also plan to move out of this state for better weather and lower taxes/cost of living.

If you get a paycheck, you aren't retired. You are semi-retired.

bunch of old fucks on here

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Up close and personal, Al Capone's scar wasn't bad. It's the photography that accentuated it.

Tell me more about prohibition. Did the government intentionally kill any members of your family?

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I had to grease both sides of fence.#touchables

Well, it is a 1996- looking message board, so I don’t think the youngsters are leaving TikTok, Snapchat or Fortnite to post here.

That's a great plan. My dad retired at 60. I'll never forget- He was a union cement mason and called about some insurance question and the rep said "you know- you can retire now with your full pension." That night he asked me if I thought he should retire and I said YES without question. Put in your papers right now. 2 weeks later he retired and spent the majority of the rest of his life in Southern Illinois hunting and fishing. He still did some odd jobs while in his 60s to keep occupied, help out his former company, and for some extra spending money but he did everything on his own terms. He had a great retirement in his 60s till COPD kicked his ass in his 70s.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

I'm with you, Nardi. Work is work, play is play. If your play becomes your work, it takes much of the joy out of it. It doesn't mean work has to be miserable. This is something way lost on our young adult kids. They have some kind of false understanding that working a regular job is misery.

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Gen-X is going to have to keep working til they drop to support their unemployable Gen-Z childers. Especially in IT. More and more difficult to find new young hires with the requisite skills. Too much phone and tablet nowadays. No one uses real computers at home anymore. Unfortunately the world still runs on real, well, cloud facsimiles of real computers.

Oh good going. You'll be dead before he graduates college. LOL

just too many people who don't earn enough to put money away at a young age. pensions have mostly went the way of the model-t and today's conventional wisdom is that you yourself, have to fund your own pension. score a big win for corporate america. too many people earning $15-$22/hr for the first 5-10 years of their working lives and that isn't enough to put money aside. the gig workforce, i just don't see how they can put anything aside.

with health care costs averaging a 9% annual increase - every year; no way around this for most until medicare kicks in. then they don't understand that is only hospital and that supplemental will have to be purchased to pay for other medical costs.

I get what you're saying, but not sure I fully agree...

I see this with our kids, but most of them don't plan on having kids and are actually pretty modest in terms of spending and how they live. I see an awful lot of 2000 babies that are just clueless / directionless. The only issue I see is if we become grandparents. I'm pretty sure my wife is ready to just take any babies that come along...raise them and tell the kids to have a nice day.

I have hope with my youngest and his peers....I see a potential / hopeful rebound from the Y2k Idiocracy babies.

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there are a few people i know who are still trying to have their first child (not adopt one, mind you) into their early 40's. like, beyond natural conception and IVF, even to surrogacy. it's insane...because they just want to say they have a baby. like it's a PS5 they want to own.

I'd say it's more that many who long thought they never wanted to have kids realize at close to 40 that they are missing out on something pretty natural and amazing.

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This. Others caved to their spouse or found one that made them want kids.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Capitalism remains undefeated

Many people delayed important life events (purchase of first homes, getting married, having children, sending children to college, etc) following the economic collapse of 2008. The U.S. birth rate in particular fell off dramatically, so it makes sense that the same group of twenty-somethings who chose not to start families 10-15 years ago is now revisiting those decisions by having children in their late 30s or 40s, presumably under better individual economic circumstances. This is yet another consequence of failed neoliberal economics. Thanks Obama!

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Is there ever a perfect time to have a child?

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

Self importance had a brief moment there, but that window was shut.

In my industry, I saw a lot of colleagues leave for substantial pay raises. None of them were particularly remarkable so it may have been a short term trade for them.

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