It's my first few hours of fire and it's a bit surreal. Dropped the 7&8 year olds off at school and came home with the younger two. Got myself a cup of coffee and thinking of the simple freedom to go to the grocery store at 11:00 am on a Monday. Can't believe I got here. Thanks for reading guys. It's nice to have someone to tell. I've been keeping it mostly to myself as I don't want to come off braggy to the real world. I'm 41. One year past my goal!!
Update: Thanks everyone for the well wishes! Since I had multiple questions on "my story" I'll leave it right here. I put myself through school, got an electrical engineering degree but decided I really did not like engineering in the process of getting the degree. After graduating found out about "technical sales" where companies want engineers to manage big accounts for them. Within 3 years I was making $100K as a sales engineer for a semiconductor company and by the time I retired last week I was around $220K. Super easy job. I also paid for my husband to get his degree right after we got married. He's a teacher and will teach a couple more years so he can get a reasonable pension. He could retire now with me but we would have to move back to the midwest, and we don't want to do that just yet.
Then, 5 years ago we bought a super cheap house a block from the beach in Orange County, California. (Cheap as is there was suicide in the house before we bought it, but don't tell my kids that!). We picked up a couple of rentals in the midwest for cheap along the way. So we have 4 back there that net an average of $1,000 rent a piece - all paid for. My house in California we paid $330K about 5 years ago and now it's worth $600K. Plus we bought my mom one here too for $315K and that's worth about $400K. To cut to the chase, our real estate, retirement accounts, etc. are now all worth about $1.635M if we were to liquidate everything. We also put $20K in to each of my kids 529 accounts before I quit. I had to do that in order to have a clear mind about quitting.
In short, I've been a saver my whole life. I opened an IRA when I was 16 and have been saving ever since. I had to teach my husband to do the same as he was spendy when we met. But the smell of retirement has him on board full force. Keep up the good fight everybody. Life is too short to spend our whole lives working. Now back to my cup of coffee and maybe a walk along the beach. :)