Diamond lover Posted January 21, 2019 #151 Share Posted January 21, 2019 On 5/26/2018 at 10:54 AM, Sasksilver said: Congrats to all who have reached the retirement milestone. I'm still in the countdown mode but it won't be much longer. 187 days until my final day at the office is finished! Sasksilver my husband and I both retire January 31st as well! But I have had the big farewell (clean out the office hand in your key so to speak) and am on vacation until my first pension cheque!! Mike and I are leaving for Australia February 23 for a few days in Perth, AU. We are then boarding the celebrity solstice on February 28 for a 16 day cruise, followed by two more weeks land based in New Zealand before flying back. Business class of course because it is our retirement trip and we’re pensioners and we deserve it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Lois R Posted May 24, 2019 #152 Share Posted May 24, 2019 I want to retire next year. Reading all these posts? I really want to retire now....seriously though, I want to retire in the spring of 2020...…..I need to see about trip to do in order to celebrate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Clay Clayton Posted May 25, 2019 #153 Share Posted May 25, 2019 Do it, you won’t regret it. After a year and a half of retirement, we are loving it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Lois R Posted May 25, 2019 #154 Share Posted May 25, 2019 1 hour ago, Clay Clayton said: Do it, you won’t regret it. After a year and a half of retirement, we are loving it! Glad you are loving it. I have quite a bit of research to do...…..it is a process. Were you in a good position financially? I am trying to get all my ducks in a row...…..investments, etc.....SS and all that stuff. I don't want to be in the "omg" mode LOL......I have been saving for a lot of years. Hoping for the spring of 2020!!! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
telebax51 Posted May 25, 2019 #155 Share Posted May 25, 2019 I have been retired since 2014 and haven't look back my retirement cruise was Alaska 15 days then Hawaii 17 days then we did our first Mediterranean cruise Horizon BTB-T/A. 27 days now we are booked on the Mardi Gras European cruise 23+days BTB-T/A no more 7 day cruises love retirement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iancal Posted May 26, 2019 #156 Share Posted May 26, 2019 We did three as part of a seven month retirement/downsizing trip. Only one was planned, the other two were last minute bookings-Med and Caribbean- as part of our land travel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Clay Clayton Posted May 26, 2019 #157 Share Posted May 26, 2019 On 5/25/2019 at 12:58 PM, Lois R said: Glad you are loving it. I have quite a bit of research to do...…..it is a process. Were you in a good position financially? I am trying to get all my ducks in a row...…..investments, etc.....SS and all that stuff. I don't want to be in the "omg" mode LOL......I have been saving for a lot of years. Hoping for the spring of 2020!!! We hope we are in a good position financially but I think for most of us, it’s sorta like being financially prepared to have a baby. If you wait until you think you have enough, then you will be way too old! LOL I am still a couple of years away from SS and DH is closer to 10 years but if we stick to our budget and the stock market doesn’t completely crash, we have enough to live to a 100 for him and 105 for me. So far, even though our last earned income was for the first two months in 2018 and have really enjoyed ourselves, including two Viking Cruises and three on Norwegian we have more money in our accounts than we did on the day we stopped working. So far, so good! We did lots of research and read lots of websites and articles. Several years ago, We used a number of retirement calculators to get an idea of how much we needed to have socked away, took the median of four or five and when we had that much in our portfolio we kept adding to it for another year or so. Like all things in life, retirement is a gamble-we elected to retire while we were young enough to enjoy it. Mike’s Dad died at 53 and my father had a serious illness that caused him to never really enjoy his golden years the way he and mom planned. Thankfully, if something happens to either of us tomorrow, we have had a great year and a half. Something neither of our parents can say about their retirement. If you haven't discovered it yet, you might want to check out the website, CanIRetireYet. It has lots of information on not only the financial considerations but the personal and psychological ones too. Good Luck! (And as a friend’s mother said to us when we mentioned we were thinking about retiring, DO IT!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heidi13 Posted May 27, 2019 #158 Share Posted May 27, 2019 On 5/25/2019 at 9:58 AM, Lois R said: Glad you are loving it. I have quite a bit of research to do...…..it is a process. Were you in a good position financially? I am trying to get all my ducks in a row...…..investments, etc.....SS and all that stuff. I don't want to be in the "omg" mode LOL......I have been saving for a lot of years. Hoping for the spring of 2020!!! If you can make the numbers work, retire ASAP, it truly is the best job ever. I retired at 55, at the end of Dec 2012, and started planning a World Cruise, which we completed in 2015. Currently planning our 2nd WC, for 2020. Life is so busy, no idea how I had the time to work.🙂 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Lois R Posted May 28, 2019 #159 Share Posted May 28, 2019 On 5/26/2019 at 8:25 PM, Heidi13 said: If you can make the numbers work, retire ASAP, it truly is the best job ever. I retired at 55, at the end of Dec 2012, and started planning a World Cruise, which we completed in 2015. Currently planning our 2nd WC, for 2020. Life is so busy, no idea how I had the time to work.🙂 Hi, I am going to try, that is for sure. I don't mean to sound crass, but you must be doing quite well financially and that is part of the whole process. To retire at 55 and to be able to do 2 world cruises? Good for you...….I need to make sure the finances are in place to live accordingly and be able to travel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Lois R Posted May 28, 2019 #160 Share Posted May 28, 2019 On 5/26/2019 at 7:39 PM, Clay Clayton said: We hope we are in a good position financially but I think for most of us, it’s sorta like being financially prepared to have a baby. If you wait until you think you have enough, then you will be way too old! LOL I am still a couple of years away from SS and DH is closer to 10 years but if we stick to our budget and the stock market doesn’t completely crash, we have enough to live to a 100 for him and 105 for me. So far, even though our last earned income was for the first two months in 2018 and have really enjoyed ourselves, including two Viking Cruises and three on Norwegian we have more money in our accounts than we did on the day we stopped working. So far, so good! We did lots of research and read lots of websites and articles. Several years ago, We used a number of retirement calculators to get an idea of how much we needed to have socked away, took the median of four or five and when we had that much in our portfolio we kept adding to it for another year or so. Like all things in life, retirement is a gamble-we elected to retire while we were young enough to enjoy it. Mike’s Dad died at 53 and my father had a serious illness that caused him to never really enjoy his golden years the way he and mom planned. Thankfully, if something happens to either of us tomorrow, we have had a great year and a half. Something neither of our parents can say about their retirement. If you haven't discovered it yet, you might want to check out the website, CanIRetireYet. It has lots of information on not only the financial considerations but the personal and psychological ones too. Good Luck! (And as a friend’s mother said to us when we mentioned we were thinking about retiring, DO IT!) Thanks for the reply😁 I will look at that website for sure. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heidi13 Posted May 28, 2019 #161 Share Posted May 28, 2019 3 hours ago, Lois R said: Hi, I am going to try, that is for sure. I don't mean to sound crass, but you must be doing quite well financially and that is part of the whole process. To retire at 55 and to be able to do 2 world cruises? Good for you...….I need to make sure the finances are in place to live accordingly and be able to travel. In addition to investments, we also have excellent pensions, both work and government. In Canada, we also don't have the healthcare expense and insurance issues you have to deal with. We do have extended health costs for prescriptions, etc. but provided the work pension plan remains with a surplus we get those premiums highly subsidised.🙂 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Lois R Posted May 28, 2019 #162 Share Posted May 28, 2019 2 hours ago, Heidi13 said: In addition to investments, we also have excellent pensions, both work and government. In Canada, we also don't have the healthcare expense and insurance issues you have to deal with. We do have extended health costs for prescriptions, etc. but provided the work pension plan remains with a surplus we get those premiums highly subsidised.🙂 Ohhhhhhh..you are lucky with the insurance stuff! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crystalspin Posted May 29, 2019 #163 Share Posted May 29, 2019 Dr'spin is going to retire at the end of the year. We're doing a 28-night cruise to Hawaii and South Pacific on the Emerald Princess which takes the entire 29-day month of February 2020! So it looks like we are cruising to celebrate, but in fact I booked the cruise in early October 2018 and he didn't reach the conclusion that it was time to pull the plug until early this spring. Maybe it was the other way around?!! Whichever, we will certainly be celebrating! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ronpes Posted May 29, 2019 #164 Share Posted May 29, 2019 Well done. Great minds think alike. We are booked on Ovation ot Seas from Vancouver to Hawaii and then onto Sydney for Sept 2020 ie 29 nights. I finally plan to call it a day next year. I am now on a 4-day week (my choice) and from October this year will whittle it down to a 3-day week and we will take it from there. I actually booked a “retirement” cruise 18 months ago for Sydney – Fiji and then a week in Hong Kong for March this year which was a fantastic experience. However, by the time came round to do the trip I had decided to stay a wee bit longer at work but,.. what the heck went on the trip anyway ! So,…I had to go and book another one ! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fyree39 Posted June 9, 2019 Author #165 Share Posted June 9, 2019 I started this thread 3.5 years ago so I thought I'd update. 🙂 I've been retired since July 1, 2018. In the meantime, my husband changed positions and moved to a job that is a bit more restrictive with getting time off. It's not that they'll say no, it's that he has more responsibilities and doesn't like just packing up and going. So I stopped booking more cruises. Then a week ago he was asking what our future cruises were and I mentioned there were only 2 in the queue due to his work commitments. He said to heck with that so I booked 3 more cruises. Once he retires in 2023 we'll be able to book and take a cruise whenever we want to. We've talked about a European cruise, ocean or river, when the time comes. He's so ready to retire and I sure know how he feels! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fly2themoon Posted June 12, 2019 #166 Share Posted June 12, 2019 Finally retired! Thought about many destinations for celebrations. Far East - Thailand , South America- Galapagos, and Africa- Egypt aAll suggestions welcomed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crystalspin Posted June 12, 2019 #167 Share Posted June 12, 2019 Woohoo retired! Go you! I have been to Thailand-Cambodia and to Vietnam on land-based tours (Gate1) which were very interesting but very hard to duplicate from a ship. I have turned down trips to Egypt and Africa, just not my thing. So I vote for Galapagos! We did Around the Horn from Valparaiso Chile to Buenos Aires, and it was a very good cruise; you see many things you don't on a land tour (if there was one). And we did Galapagos by small plane and daily boats to different island. It was awesome but each day involved crossing the island from the town with habitation, to the port that could handle the daily boats, and then hours on the boat each way: those islands are FAR APART on a smallish boat! On the islands we saw all of the wildlife predicted (it was like they were planted by Nat'l Geo!), except for one place where penguins (really) are sometimes seen and we didn't (another kind of bird was having a feeding frenzy in the surf, to make up for it). Having done that, the wisdom of cruising between the islands at night, touring in the day, and having your own "floating hotel" stay with you -- really looked like the thing to do "next time"! I've recently looked into it and currently the size of cruise boats allowed to do this is limited to 100 passengers (!) and so will be more expensive, but you only retire once, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Lois R Posted June 12, 2019 #168 Share Posted June 12, 2019 7 hours ago, fly2themoon said: Finally retired! Thought about many destinations for celebrations. Far East - Thailand , South America- Galapagos, and Africa- Egypt aAll suggestions welcomed. Congratulations....I love Italy and there are so many cities to visit there...….I would recommend exploring the entire country but one place in particular...….Florence, absolutely fantastic...… And on my bucket list is Australia and New Zealand so those 2 countries would be getting my vote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heidi13 Posted June 15, 2019 #169 Share Posted June 15, 2019 On 6/11/2019 at 8:31 PM, fly2themoon said: Finally retired! Thought about many destinations for celebrations. Far East - Thailand , South America- Galapagos, and Africa- Egypt aAll suggestions welcomed. Congratulations on retirement - best job ever. Rather than having to pick a destination, suggest considering a World Cruise. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fly2themoon Posted June 15, 2019 #170 Share Posted June 15, 2019 On 6/9/2019 at 4:58 PM, fyree39 said: I started this thread 3.5 years ago so I thought I'd update. 🙂 I've been retired since July 1, 2018. In the meantime, my husband changed positions and moved to a job that is a bit more restrictive with getting time off. It's not that they'll say no, it's that he has more responsibilities and doesn't like just packing up and going. So I stopped booking more cruises. Then a week ago he was asking what our future cruises were and I mentioned there were only 2 in the queue due to his work commitments. He said to heck with that so I booked 3 more cruises. Once he retires in 2023 we'll be able to book and take a cruise whenever we want to. We've talked about a European cruise, ocean or river, when the time comes. He's so ready to retire and I sure know how he feels! Congratulations! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rrgator Posted June 20, 2019 #171 Share Posted June 20, 2019 Retiring Aug 2, 2019, and taking the Viking Ocean World Cruise leaving Miami in Dec 2020. Can't wait for both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bennniee Posted July 25, 2019 #172 Share Posted July 25, 2019 Retiring early November, 2019. World Cruise booked for Jan 4. Can't wait. I'm 58, widowed and traveling solo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Clay Clayton Posted July 25, 2019 #173 Share Posted July 25, 2019 On 6/20/2019 at 9:37 AM, rrgator said: Retiring Aug 2, 2019, and taking the Viking Ocean World Cruise leaving Miami in Dec 2020. Can't wait for both. 2 hours ago, Bennniee said: Retiring early November, 2019. World Cruise booked for Jan 4. Can't wait. I'm 58, widowed and traveling solo. I hate you both! 😂 I would love to be able to take a World Cruise but we are trying to be frugal the first couple of years of retirement. Hopefully, after we have five years under our belt we will be able to determine if it’s financially feasible for us. Congratulations and happy cruising to you both! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Go-Bucks! Posted July 25, 2019 #174 Share Posted July 25, 2019 1 hour ago, Clay Clayton said: I hate you both! 😂 I would love to be able to take a World Cruise but we are trying to be frugal the first couple of years of retirement. Hopefully, after we have five years under our belt we will be able to determine if it’s financially feasible for us. Congratulations and happy cruising to you both! I did the same thing...retired January 2 and left on Oceania's world cruise on January 30! I'm still onboard and loving this experience!! 😍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crystalspin Posted July 26, 2019 #175 Share Posted July 26, 2019 5 hours ago, Bennniee said: Retiring early November, 2019. World Cruise booked for Jan 4. Can't wait. I'm 58, widowed and traveling solo. Bennniee, I'm sure your late husband would be happy to see you enjoy the product of your lifetime of labors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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