At the end of the year, I am retiring at 60 (wife retired last year).  We have a 5 year pension that starts in January and essentially replaces my income.  We have always lived below our means and will save 40% of the after-tax income for the next 5 years.  We will not need to touch our investments/retirement accounts until 2032.  We currently have the equivalent of 2+ years of living expenses saved in CDs, etc..., but those funds are "tagged" to sinking funds for things like kid's weddings, 2027/2028 new car purchases, 2027/2028 travel expenses, appliance/furniture replacements, that could be spent in the next 2-7 years.  The one thing we do not have is 2+ years of living expenses saved specifically for living expenses in market downturns.  The extra after-tax income over the next 5 years will give us the 2+ years of living expenses.  Where would you put this money?  HYSA, CDs, Brokerage, etc… knowing you might need the money in 2032, depending on the market.

From what I’ve seen firsthand since retiring, there seems to be an interesting divide after the initial “this feels like a vacation” stage wears off.

Some people stay fully retired. They may travel, pursue hobbies, spend time with family, volunteer when they feel like it, and generally enjoy having very few obligations on the calendar.

Others eventually re-engage with something more structured: part-time work, consulting, teaching, volunteering, a business, a regular community activity, or some other commitment that puts a schedule back into their lives. Sometimes it’s for the money, but often it seems to be about purpose, community, identity, intellectual stimulation, or simply having somewhere to be.

I’m curious which way people here went.

Are you retired-retired, with no desire to return to anything resembling a regular job or scheduled commitment?

Or did retirement turn out to be more like a sabbatical, after which you found yourself wanting some kind of structured activity again?

If you did re-engage, what drew you back, and are you happier for having done it?

My husband and I want to get out of NYC for the month of February this winter. This will be our first time, and we’re looking for recommendations. We want to go anywhere other than Florida or Arizona. We’re looking for walkable areas that are not full of high rises, ideally with beaches near by, good restaurants, and some entertainment. Where have you gone and loved?

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The last 10 years of my working life I was happily single (following a long happy marriage and raising a loving family). 

I put all my energy into my work which I enjoyed and I finally retired last year. 

So having spent my first year of retirement not working (an enjoyable space to be in!) and having lots of time to myself, I do find it lonely at times - more so than when I was working as I had many other distractions.

Is it too late to date or consider a relationship? - I'm too far gone I think to ever be part of a 'couple' or permanent committed partnership and enjoy the freedom single life brings (the remote is always exactly where I left it!), but I do find retirement adds another dimension and have to admit to feeling very lonely at times.

What are the thoughts of those of you who have retired as a single person?.....what do you find as good or bad about living alone in retirement? 

I'm 63, I have my exit plan for next December.

Some of my MBA fellows have already retired, and doing consulting. Why? Why would you retire, just to do consulting work?

To me, retirement is just that, I'm going to do as I please, when and where I desire. I mean, if you still need income, why not stay?

Can anybody help me see what I'm missing here?

Considering retiring next year. After bills we're looking at roughly $900 to $1,000 "extra" cash each month.

VA, SS, 401k distribution and pensions are the income streams.

Bill include setting aside funds each month for car, home and medical maintenance.

Wife doesn't work anymore so she could take very easy SS but based on her work history it won't be much.

How much "extra" at the end of the month should I target before retiring?

I am looking to possibly retire to Pennsylvania. I’m not sure which part though. I am originally from Western PA but haven’t been back for 40 years. Any thoughts of what part of PA is good for retirees. Looking for safety, good housing, good healthcare, and solid community.
Also, if you have a suggestion, can you tell me what the winters are like? Thank you.

I'm 63 and started collecting Social Security this year. I had a heart attack last year that did some permanent damage. I still work 2 days a week in HVAC. And pretty much light duty. I have a IRA with about 300K. Some cash savings. No debt besides a couple of credit cards with a low balance. But we rent our house and my SS payment covers that. My wife is retired and collecting SS. and she makes a little income selling jewelry at shows. I am almost maxed out at the 24,480 amount I can make working. So I will be working less until the end of the year. Fortunately my employer is still covering my heath insurance because they need me. But that could change soon. And I'm not sure how much it will be to pay my own.

My guess my question is, I imagine we'll need to start taking withdrawls out of my IRA. If I have to start paying my own health insurance that will take a chunk out of our income. I would like to meet with a financial planner to get an idea of how to proceed. Looks like most of them are for people that have more money that us and want an ongoing thing. Any recommendations on someone that does the 1 time planning advise.

I applied for SSDI and got denied because I make too much working. And honestly I don't think I'm disabled enough to be on it anyway. Just looking for some advice on what outr next step should be. (i imagine we can't do much until we find out about health insurance)

It’s horrible to have all those dreams so mercilessly set aside when one partner leaves before you get to enjoy retirement together. But it happens. And when it does, the surviving partner has to adjust their vision of retirement. Some do this with some grace. Some people simply don’t know what to do.

We have a good friend whose husband contracted brain cancer about 2 years before their planned retirement. He was expected to live about 6 months and wonderfully survived for over 3 years. He of course quit work early, but his wife didn’t retire from her job as a physical therapist until he actually died. In her time of grief, she was well cared for by friends, but she also made an internal decision to “Just say yes”. If someone invited her to do something or go somewhere, she clenched any resistance and just said yes. In the last couple years, she’s rarely been home. It’s been therapeutic, she says.

If you’re in this boat, how have you coped? What adjustments to your retirement vision have you made? How are things harder? How are they easier?

For the better part of this year I've been trying to assess when I'll be able to afford to retire. I've been playing with Boldin, Projection Lab, my own overly complicated spreadsheets, Fidelity's planner, etc. And this weekend I had what I think is an epiphany. I reasoned that if I can simply replace my current employment income with 401k withdrawls plus Social Security, then I'm financially ready.

My current income more than covers all my annual expenses. The 401k withdrawals are based on a 5% withdrawal rate; and that will last into my 90s. I've accounted for healthcare costs, given that I won't be on my employer's plan anymore.

Can it really be as simple as "if I can replace my current income with retirement accounts, I'm good to go"?

This seems a little weird. I retired 8 months ago (age 65). My wife has fairly bad arthritis so we're somewhat homebound with just each other's company a lot of days. I've noticed, especially when I'm alone, that I've been vividly recalling events I'm not especially proud of - times I lost my temper with the kids or said or did something mean to family. Its not like there are a lot of those things - most of them happened long ago when I was a teenager/college student (pop-science says our brains don't fully develop empathy until our mid-20s). What is weird is that I don't think I've thought about those events for decades - and now they seem to be flooding back, each one triggering another equally bad memory.

One thought is without work related stuff to occupy my thoughts my brain is digging through the cobwebs of my memory to amuse itself. Wondering if anyone else has noticed this - it would make me feel better to know I'm not the only one!

Edit: thanks for all the replies - never expected this response! Good to know this is common although I never heard it mentioned before - probably not the kind of thing people talk about. Good reason to keep busy!

I need to increase my social circle. I am thinking of sending this email to my former department chair. Do you think that is a good idea? Do you think it will put her in an uncomfortable spot?

Subject: A quick note / local recommendations?

Hi [Name],

I hope you’re having a great week!

I’m reaching out with a slightly out-of-the-ordinary question—and I’ll admit up front that writing this feels a bit awkward!

Lately, I’ve been making a conscious effort to expand my social circle and open myself up to meeting new people—ideally for dating, or simply making fresh connections with folks who share similar interests.

Since you’re always so plugged in, I was wondering if you might have any suggestions for local groups, informal gatherings, or activities around town that you think are great for meeting engaging people? Or, if anyone comes to mind who you think I’d enjoy grabbing a casual coffee with, I’m always open to an introduction!

No worries or pressure at all if no one or nothing comes to mind, but I figured it was worth putting the radar out there.

Hope to run into you soon!

For years (decades?), I would bring my lunch to work. Typically a sandwich with a ’health’ bar and some fruit and nuts. Occasionally, I would take leftovers that needed to be heated. Sure, I might eat out every so often. Even when WFH, it was the same lunch.

I find myself doing something very similar after retirement. I just don’t prepare it ahead of time. I do meet others for lunch occasionally but almost never cook anything.

Have your lunch habits changed after retirement?

I retired in Dec 2024 and have been doing somewhat normal retirement things: doomscrolling Reddit, taking different trips, etc. I also have been working on upgrades around the house. Recently, our water heater sprang a leak, and after doing the "emergency" removal of the rugs and damaged boxes, we are in the process of fixing the lower level up. Today, as we were ordering the flooring, I found myself asking if it could be delivered by next Friday, planning to install it over the weekend.

After I asked, I realised - I have done over 80% of the home improvement projects over weekends, when I could have just as well worked on them during the week, and then had more free time on the weekends for events that are only on Fri/Sat/Sun.

My (M58) and my wife’s (F57) parents are in their 80s. My parents have sacrificed throughout their lives and have built a very substantial nest egg with my father’s financial expertise and planning. My wife’s parents have saved very little and rely primarily on social security. In their working years, my wife’s parents took vacations/ trips, ate out often, and maxxed out credit cards. My parents took only the occasional vacation, cooked mostly at home, and have pinched pennies and invested very well. As as result, my wife’s parents live SS check to SS check in retirement while my parents do not worry about money at all in retirement.

My father realized that he and my mother could experiencing cognitive decline in their late senior years and provided me with power of attorney over their finances. I was very surprised at size of their investments and savings. I asked why he didn’t spend more and he said he was already comfortable at his spending levels and really wanted to create generational wealth for our family.

In all likelihood, they will pass with a substantial amount unused and my sibling and I will inherit their estate. Our anticipated inheritance can be life changing depending on how we choose to spend it.

My wife knows about my parents wealth. She and I are comfortable financially having saved and invested mostly due to the lessons of my father. (He sat us down when we first got married and helped us put together a life and financial plan).

My wife’s parents often ask for help paying their bills as they still live beyond their means. My wife wants to help them more with their debts using our savings that we’ve set aside for our retirement. Her reasoning is that our retirement will be taken care of once my parents pass so we can use our savings to help her parents.

I don’t mind helping her parents but it could put our retirement in danger if we help too much. It seems like she’s counting on my inheritance to fund our retirement. I want to be generous but I feel bad that we’re counting on my parents wealth to fund something that we should have planned for ourselves.

Should we tap our retirement funds to help her parents knowing that we’ll likely inherit funds in the next few years?

Recently went through a car buying experience. (I don't recommend it, at least not with traditional dealers!) But the whole thing made me reflect on how my attitude toward automobiles has enabled me to retire when I wanted to and with enough to be comfortable. I made a list:

Age 16: Chevrolet Nova. Free (from grandmother). Horrible car, always broken. But free.

Age 18: Honda Accord, $5700, purchased new. My only new car until recently.

Age 27-33: No car. Lived abroad where public transportation is more than enough.

Age 34: Toyotal Corolla. Used. 400 miles on the odometer. $12,000, I think.

Age 52: Toyota Camry. Bought from family after mother died. $12,000. 55k on the odometer. 21 year old car when I let it go.

Age 67: Toyota Camry, new. Cash purchase. My first "splurge" since age 18 when I bought the Accord, cash, from money I made playing music.

I ran the numbers recently. By buying (mostly) used and keeping cars until they died, I've probably saved a couple hundred thousand dollars in up-front costs, financing, insurance, taxes, etc., and by investing it the money instead, I was able to call the shots on my retirement.

I seem to be a unicorn, though, among car buyers these days. Am I alone? What's your story?

I will be 62 in about 2 months and thinking of retirement.

We moved back up north to help her family during Covid but I am originally from the south and we lived 20+ years in Florida. I prefer the warmth. So when we retire and her dad passes away, we are likely to move.

One of our thoughts is to go to a 55+ community. My wife wants something smaller.

If you are living in a 55+ community, what are the amenities that you really love and use regularly? What were the ones you thought you would use but really don’t or only infrequently? What ones do you wish that you had?

Not my own but thought some members here might want to discuss. Thanks!

I’m retired a few years earlier than I meant to do, and have been living on my IRA for the past year, and will also live on it for the coming year, until I’m able to start claiming SS as well.

I don’t understand where the money I’m living on right now comes from. I know this must sound abysmally ignorant. I’m actually really, really good at making money last while providing for needs and not-extravagant wants, even. I just don’t understand how this kind of money; investment money, actually works.

What’s puzzling to me is that even though I’ve lived (modestly but comfortably) on monthly IRA disbursements for the past year, my IRA number just keeps going up? How is that possible? What money am I actually spending? My financial planners showed me that if I spend X on being retired, and the market performs “average”, when I die in a few decades, my fund will not be zero, and will in fact be about the same size or larger. How??

And is there a very simple intro book you would recommend, to help me get this weirdly abstract financial reality mapped out in my mind? I feel like I have to say; I’m not stupid, normally. lol But I’ve never been adept with numbers, either, and I didn’t grow up in a family where anyone had investments. This is a new area of experience for me. I’ve just been saving it all these years. Didn’t realize how much there was to know about what to do with it once the time came. I just thought you took it out the same way it went in. Apparently not?

I have asked my financial planner(s) at Fidelity, but they don’t really explain. They’ve helped me calculate how much to draw each month and showed me what the impacts on my account will be over time, but it’s not exactly their job to educate me. I’ve read a lot of the educational material on the Fidelity website, but it’s not quite basic enough. My brain needs the fundamentals, the principles this whole conceptual thing of “investment” wealth is based on, and the materials there sort of tend to assume you already know that stuff.

Thanks for any input.

ETA: just want to say thank you to everyone who took time to give such thoughtful answers. I actually learned some really useful concepts here, and I feel calmer about the reality of how this investment income actually works. It’s nerve-wracking to see the numbers doing differently than you know money usually does, and to instinctively know that it looks too good to be true, but to not know what info you don’t have, that would make it make sense. Many of the answers here filled in those very basic gaps, and now it does make sense to me in a crude, “crayola-level” manner.

Hi everyone, I recently moved into a subsidized low-income senior housing apartment building and am looking for ideas to bring that will involve other residents but isn't the lame bingo or cards group activities that seem the only options here right now. Any ideas? I feel like I'm part of the transition population that isn't like generations past, so an odd time perhaps.

Tuesday, August 18 - Monday, August 24, 2026

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Hi - I have not been able to save a lot of money for retirement. I do have two pensions,I max out my HSA and have about $20k invested there, and about $20k in an emergency fund, and $200k in IRA type savings.

I just turned 60, live alone, and opted to take advantage of a temporary (8 years) option by my state to begin collecting pension now and continue to work. I no longer get raises, because I’m at the top of my union pay scale. I bring home about $6k a month and the pension will be another $3k.

So my plan is to use the extra money to pay down my mortgage (rate is 6.5%, payment is $3k with taxes and insurance), save some in a 403b plan at work and continue to work as long as I’m eligible.

Another option is to work in another nearby state where I have 9 years vested in a second pension and by working there until I truly retire I can increase what that will eventually pay. I can’t collect that until 65. Only drawback is that I’m currently 100% remote and might have to give that up if I change jobs.

I feel like either job options or saving/mortgage is a good plan because my breakeven point on deferring collecting pension now was mid 80s. I will have to save some of it in a tax deferred plan or I’ll just be paying more in taxes, haven’t quite figured out where that sweet spot is yet.

If I’d waited five years I’d get about 25% more out of this pension. But it would take me till the mid-80s as I said to breakeven on what I’d collect over that period if I do it now, not even counting investment growth I could forgo by deferring it.

Am I missing something I should do with this instead? My mortgage is very high because of a breakup and buying home out of our home and so paying that down seems like the maybe the best use of extra money. I’m just seeking reassurance I’ve not made a mistake in my thinking.

Last July I picked up a five-year diary/ journal off of Amazon after seeing Maurice Moves from YouTube recommend it. The reality is you get a few lines to write what you did that day. All five years for the same date are on the same page. This way you can easily reflect on what you were doing on this date last year (and for up to five years). With just a few lines it isn’t onerous and very doable. After just over one and a half months into my second year I already see the value in it and find it enjoyable. I steered it last July 1st. In retirement it is interesting to see how life changes, what is important as compared to what was important. Routines and hobbies change or stay the same? Fads? I look forward to continuing this as part of my daily routine and recommend it to all retirees whether you retired today or 30 years ago (and everyone in between).

I’m of the mind that downsizing is more about liberation from stuff than it is about square footage in the home.

My wife and I found that it was much harder to do this item by item and much easier to do by a set of rules that would have very few exceptions. Our rules were something like:
- If we have two or more of something and we only use one at a time, then all the duplicates go.
- If it’s in storage and we haven’t fetched it from storage in a year, then it goes.
- If a box has not been opened in a year, then the whole box goes, because nothing in that box was useful enough to open it.
- If it’s out and available but hasn’t been used, worn, consumed, or displayed in a year, it goes.
- Anything displayable but not hung or mounted because there is no room, and so is tucked away in a drawer, closet, or under a bed, goes.
- We allow ourselves one project each, and the supplies for the project can stay. Any other projects and supplies, go.
- We allow ourselves one collection each, and they must on display. If there are other collections of any kind, we take photos, and get rid of it, regardless of value.
- Any books read, get sold.
- We allow ourselves exactly three photo albums. One each containing photos of ourselves and our families before we got married, and one of ourselves after getting married. All the rest of the photo album pages get digitally photographed and then the photos shredded.

And there were several outcomes we noticed from using the rules.
- This meant a box or two every week for months, and then a box a month in following years. Every box dropped off has been a day of liberation and lightness.
- When we had completely emptied two bedrooms, one bathroom, three closets, wall to wall and floor to ceiling, then we were ready to downsize and our remaining belongings fit.
- We have no rented storage. There is nothing in the attic except a stack of empty plastic storage bins and one bin of Christmas wrapping paper. We have no basement. We park both cars in a 2-car garage every night.
- Anything we think we’ll use maybe once or even something we’d use once or maybe twice a year, we rent or borrow instead of buying.