Wow. Six months ago today was our first day of retirement. We spent that day driving (a 14 hour drive) from Oklahoma City, where we lived, to the beautiful white sand beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama where we had our wonderful 15th floor condo overlooking the Gulf of Mexico waiting for us. And we haven't looked back. We paid off the our condo as soon as we got here and burned our mortgage on the beach! :)
Our son is at the University of Oklahoma for the next couple of years but he loves it down here and we know he'll visit when he can. Our daughter, son-in-law and two grandbabies (including the newest who was just a week old when we left) were also in OKC where SIL is in the Air Force and stationed at Tinker AFB. We told them we knew they'd be transferred somewhere else eventually so staying in OK just to be close to them didn't make much sense. Sure enough, they got transferred the first of December to Biloxi, MS -- now they're only 2 hours away from us instead of 14! Awesome. :)
We miss our friends, of course, but it shouldn't be too much to ask them to come to the beach to visit us. :)
Being retired felt surreal for quite a while. The first couple of weeks, it really felt like we were just on vacation (except that neither of us was checking emails or working remotely). We loved not having to wake up to an alarm (although we're morning people so we still get up in time to watch the sunrise most mornings). We loved having the freedom to choose whatever we wanted to do - every single day. And, since we were at the beach, just spending time on the beach relaxing was something we did pretty often. It was wonderful. And it still is.
We still thought about work way too often. DH and I both had stressful jobs and were responsible for a lot. Having that taking up so much of our thoughts for so many years, it didn't just disappear overnight. We gave ourselves to the end of the year to decompress -- and now, I think we're pretty much there. Every so often, we'll mention something about work and how grateful we are NOT to have to think about it anymore.
We've made a lot of new friends here. Quite a few of them are retired and older than we are (51 and 52), but we've always had friends in a wide range of ages. We've made friends who are our age who are not retired but own in our building and just come down as often as they can (like we used to). Because we're in a vacation location, having fun is what everyone here wants to do so that's great.
We've played lots of golf and lots of tennis since getting here. Any day of the week, any time of the day we feel like it. That's been awesome. We have loads of wonderful bike trails here and we've spent hours and hours just riding our really cool, fat tire bikes on all the trails. We joked when we first got here that we weren't going to get a boat, we were going to get friends with boats instead -- but just recently, DH stole a boat (well, got such a good deal it felt like stealing it) and will work on fixing that up. He loves having projects like that so that's good. By the time spring is here, we'll be able to boat anywhere we want to go so I'm sure that will take up a lot of our time, too.
DH loves to work on things around the condo and didn't take him much time to get everything as perfect as it can be. He's gone on to do things for others in our building... Fixing their toilets, changing faucets, changing ceiling fans... Fun stuff like that (which he is great at and loves doing). Although he won't take money for helping them, we've gotten lots of gift cards as thank yous. :)
I've been catching up on my reading... Something I love but just didn't have time for while I was working. I read 21 books from the end of July, when we retired, until the end of the year and I've read 6 books in January so I think I've just about caught up. It's so amazing to spend hours reading and not feel guilty for not doing chores or running errands. :)
I used to grocery shop every Saturday morning and the do laundry on Sundays. Now I go grocery shopping whenever I need to and do laundry the same way. I couldn't tell you what day I did them last... I'm not usually even sure what day it is. :) I heard on GMA this morning they've discovered Sunday is such a stressful day for most people because they dread going back to work on Monday. It's awesome to never have to feel that way.
DH starting volunteering a couple of weeks ago at the big Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, which is right up his alley (he's a retired flight engineer from the AF). He gets to work restoration on old WWII airplanes that have been pulled up from the bottom of Lake Michigan. We both signed up to volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters and are waiting for those matches to come through. We volunteered at the big Gulf Shores Shrimp Festival for the Chamber of Commerce back in October and we're planning to volunteer at the big Hot Air Balloon Festival coming up in May. Neither of us have been tempted to get part time jobs... We haven't had any problems finding things to do.
While I told myself I'd work out every single day when we retired, I admit I've fallen way short on that one. I am better when it's warmer but it's been really cold here this month... Some days only reach the low 50s! LOL. Okay.. So that's not nearly as cold as winter in Oklahoma but that's still my excuse. I hate the treadmill but have used it a few times. As soon as it consistently warms up into the 70s (it's goiing to be that temp the next 3 days here), I promise I'll get better. At least it's not like we're couch potatoes.. Between golf, tennis and the bikes, we are at least staying pretty active. :)
As for the budget, we are fortunate that DH has his AF retirement and gets a monthly pension. We also have health insurance from his service, so not having to pay a lot for that definitely helped us retire early. We had some money set aside to spend on things that weren't going to be monthly expenses - like some of the things he wanted to do to the condo, some fun stuff like our golf membership, etc. For the most part, we've kept our actual expenses below our pension income. Enough so that we're happy with where we are there and don't need to supplement our income with work. We don't plan on touching our 401Ks for at least 8 years and we think we'll be fine with that.
It was only 3 1/2 years ago that we first came up with the idea of retiring early (we were planning to retire then when we were 58 and 59 -- that would have been full retirement age for me at my job). At the time we came up with the plan, we thought it would take us 6 years -- June 2018 was our target date and that was almost 5 years early. Once we found MMM and made a few, simple changes that saved us a ton of money, we started moving the target date earlier and earlier. It helped us realize that all we needed was enough and once we had that, we'd be okay. We didn't have to keep working just to accumulate more and more. The date changed to January 2016, then December 2015, November 2015 and then finally, July 2015. The six year plan turned into a 3 year plan. It was awesome.
We wake up every day just amazed that we never have to go back to work again. It's a wonderful feeling. I know a lot of people here on the MMM forum will get to this point way sooner than most people ever dream to. It's not always easy but I have to tell you it is SO worth it.
I can't wait to see what the 2nd 6 months are like. I have a feeling they're going to be even better than the first because we're already in the groove. :) If you're ever in Gulf Shores... Look us up!