Still Working (and winning) at Age 82

[bbellie]

Wow.... definitely impressive....

[YANDINA]

I have no plans to retire, just ordered a 5 year supply of moldings out of China. Doubled the number of employees this year and still can't keep up. Turned 81 in May but its just a meaningless number.

[ak08820]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

I retired at 35. So I no longer have this problem.


The only problem I seem to have is how to fund my lifestyle.


As people say: do what you love, then there is no work-life dychotomy.


Too bad many people can't afford this. I think the world would be a much nicer place then.


b.

So, how do you deal with the problem - "how to fund my lifestyle"? I guess everyone has that problem and prevent them from retiring. How did you retire at 35?

In my case, I first became unemployed at 54 in 2009 but soon found work and again became unemployed after 5 years and have not found any work yet. I am not sure if I should consider myself unemployed or retired. (I applied to 1-10 places every day for the first couple of years and never even got an interview. It was that bad in IT.)Now, people say that the economy is better but not having worked for almost 6 years makes me more unemployable than before. I have fallen in to a minimized lifestyle and survive on a single income of my wife which is barely above the poverty level so it disqualifies us for food stamps/low income housing, etc. Will qualify for social security in a little over a year.

[fatherchronica]

There was a one page day in the life article a few years back in maybe Cruising World about a couple sailing up to a dock in Scandinavia above the Arctic Circle and a woman who was tied up there ran to grab their lines. She and her husband were in their nineties. They were still sailing and were praised for their sharp minds and physical abilities by the writer. Anomalies maybe, but something to shoot for. I read yesterday about some foreign devil who lived through Covid 19 at age 114.

[Bill_Giles]

At 76 perhaps I have some experience which I can contribute.

Nobody guarantees you retirement, you might die before you get the chance, or the World may be turned upside down as it just has.

You might retire but not be fit enough to enjoy it.

As a sailor I have noticed that I am not as strong as I was and do not have the stamina.

I have seen too many people looking forward to retiring and going from full time work to virtually nothing but a bit of pottering around the garden. And not last long after that.

My rules are:

Don’t stick to a job you don’t like
Retire as early as you can
Retire to do something you like - not just idleness
Ease out of work by going part time for a while
Stay active, mix with younger people and don’t take no **** from nobody!

[lituya1617]

To work and to love, that is the essence of a balanced life. Freud was right for once. But work is not defined as things done to earn money. It is work to sail a boat, for example, but it is an expense not an income type of work. Americans have a warped concept of how important money is in a full life. I do very well on very little income and do all my own boat work. If you get into the rat race of chasing the almighty dollar, it helps to be a rat.

[captwylie]

I am 70 years old and will retire in a month. I like my job but my sailboat is setting at the marina and my son and my grandson keep it pumped out and clean while I am working 7 days a week hundreds of miles away. My fishing boat has set up so long that nothing works anymore. My financial planer says my wife and I have enough put back for a modest income until age 90. I am replacing the motor on my fishing boat, my crew at work bought me a new kicker motor for my Catalina 25, and my son has my sailboat scheduled for a haul out and a bottom job. Now it is time to enjoy what I have worked for all my life.
Life is an adventure. Enjoy every minute of it. Of course you guys know that That's why you are cruisers. Make room room for one more.

[houseofcharm]

My folks retired at 85 and 83 from a 7 day a week biz only because we moved to FL. My grandmother retired at 97 only because she wasn't up to the 7 days any longer and was frustrated she was house ridden until 100.

[houseofcharm]

Originally Posted by captwylie

I am 70 years old and will retire in a month. I like my job but my sailboat is setting at the marina and my son and my grandson keep it pumped out and clean while I am working 7 days a week hundreds of miles away. My fishing boat has set up so long that nothing works anymore. My financial planer says my wife and I have enough put back for a modest income until age 90. I am replacing the motor on my fishing boat, my crew at work bought me a new kicker motor for my Catalina 25, and my son has my sailboat scheduled for a haul out and a bottom job. Now it is time to enjoy what I have worked for all my life.
Life is an adventure. Enjoy every minute of it. Of course you guys know that That's why you are cruisers. Make room room for one more.

If you don't retire, your boat will set sail on its own without you.

[thomm225]

So it's different for everyone.

If you like sailing and using the boats you own, it's nice to live on or near the Ocean/bay and have your boat between home and work.

If you enjoy mountain climbing, it would be near some nice peaks to climb. Or if you like snow skiing etc

Just outside my office door is an anchorage. Looks like one big cat (40'+) and a couple mono's there this am.

As I have mentioned before, it sure was nice to be able to move back to the coast when I was late 30's.

That made thinking about when to retire not as important since I could sail etc anytime I wanted and work also.

This past weekend I got to watch the young patrol boat Skippers escorting lots of boats away from an inbound sub.

These kids take that job seriously and were using the Patrol Boats hard making wild turns at high speed and running any boat away not paying attention

Notice Patrol Boat wake between me and the Sub. One just passed by at high speed.......

Sometimes I think I should have joined the Navy and been a Patrol Boat Skipper, but there's lots of slow time in a job like that also.

[Pegu Club]

In The America I see, a good deal of the population has willingly fallen prey to consumerism, and a life of debt payment, what most folk don’t understand is that all debt is bad, you become beholding to the corporate rich, the less debt one has the more control over your life you have. The more money citizens have the more political power citizens have. I have said this many times, people spend themselves out of their potential wealth, not thinking at all about how badly they are screwing themselves. I /we fell into that trap for a while but luckily saw the light, and were diligent in getting rid of all of our debt. Now we can actually do the things we want to do. Its nice not having monthly bills outside of food, meds, and the ever coveted internet service...

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Pegu Club

In The America I see, a good deal of the population has willingly fallen prey to consumerism, and a life of debt payment, what most folk don’t understand is that all debt is bad, you become beholding to the corporate rich, the less debt one has the more control over your life you have. ...

This, to me, is the single most important part of financial planning. Stay out of debt. Without debt you are beholden to no one. You are free(er) to live a life of your own choosing.

My view is slavery has never ended. It's just morphed over the centuries in form. The rich and powerful have always found ways to shackle the poor and powerless. Not everyone has the same ability to resist this enslavement, but some of us are lucky and skillful enough to be able to do so.

[Mook1e]

When I first started planning for retirement after High School, I planned to work until 37 and take my first (military) retirement, but I enjoyed my work so much (more the people I was working with) that I continued until 44. Now I feel like I'll be retiring 'for good' too soon at 49.
I guess it depends on your definition of retirement, though. Similar to the post above, retirement and unemployment are different things.
When I retired at 44, I could have easily just stopped working and lived happily never working from necessity again. I still could, but also similar to posts above, there are 'things' I want (liveaboard cat) and I won't take on massive debt (slavery) to get them!

[dwightsusan]

Retired from my primary career of 50+ years at 77, not because I was ready to retire, but because my employers and prospective employers thought 77 was a tad too old. Found a little part time professional work consulting with a local USCG approved "Sailing Academy" at 78 while studying and testing for my USCG 50 ton and auxiliary sail endorsements, and now have added a bit of inshore and nearshore professional sailing in a late second career as Captain Dwight, running "six-pack" day charters on my family 47 foot custom high performance cruising catamaran. At 80 in a few months, I have been blessed, with a 50 year career that seemed like a "working vacation", allowed me to sail far and wide offshore, and led right into more sailing. My father who retired at 67 for "health reasons" lived to 96, regretted retiring every day of his late life, and always pleaded with me to never "retire". I am doing my best to follow his sage advice.

[loneshark64]

I retired a couple years ago at 53. I always wanted to retire early but not that early and it has been a mixed bag.

The good: I'm on my boats whenever I want, no time pressure, no more corporate bull****, no business travel, I'm 100% available for my family.

The bad: I miss people I used to work with, I constantly think back on what I could have done differently, it feels like the end came too soon.

On balance I am glad I retired because the corporate bull**** factor is sky high these days and I have zero interest in ever being a part of that again.

Backstory: I had a good career in tech at fairly senior levels in a number of different companies. But the business changed, and I had a couple job transitions, and knew I wasn't going to be able to keep making the money I used to make. The thing you don't realize is that you might be a hero in your 40's but they don't want you as much in your 50s. I had seen this in the past with guys older than me who got stuck on the downside with not enough money saved, too much spending, and they had to keep grinding in worse and worse jobs. This also happened to my Dad, he ended up busted because he always assumed he could maintain the same level of earnings he had at his peak. So I socked away money.

My advice to people is don't borrow money except for primary home and car. Not for a boat, kids college, second home, real estate gambits, trading on margin, or credit card balances. Buy Fords not BMWs. Don't buy crap you don't need. Because there is no guarantee you can work until you are 65, 75, or like this horse guy. Those people are freaks. Most people hit a wall temporarily or permanently or get sick. Or recession, COVID, or zombie apocalypse. Save and be ready to bail the F out.

Also we hit a point with the family where my wife had had enough of that grind and living in CA. I had a job transition, the kids were back east. I would have worked another 5 years but I bit the bullet. I am glad I did but it is hard to keep occupied. Working on boats is my salvation. I tried consulting but it was depressing. I don't want to dabble, I want to be in or out. So I am out. I do some volunteering, which frankly I don't like doing, and I am Treasurer for the yacht club.

One other thing: All those work friends? Your 3000 contacts on LinkedIn? Those lifelong relationships you had so many nice work dinners or trips with. When you retire 95% of them are freaking gone. The real core ones stay friends and the others fade away because you are not in their world anymore, or it turns out the basis of the relationship was what you could do for them careerwise or vice versa. And making new friends late in life is hard, So be prepared to put effort into that or be happy with your own self.

2 cents. Tomorrow I am sailing again :-)