Main reason you selected your retirement date?

[Ladychips]

My first poll!

My husband and I are planning to retire July 1, 2021 (woot! woot!).  He could technically retire on March 1st.  All along I've insisted that he wait for me.  But I've been thinking that's hateful, and so I told him the other day, he could go March 1st if he wanted to.  He said no to March, but maybe April.  When I questioned him about that, he said he didn't want to retire when it was cold.  I told him I didn't want to retire when it was hot, but I was going July 1 anyway!

The conversation made me wonder how other people choose their retirement date. 

[Sandi_k]

Mine is based on two things: I hit the maximum multiplier of 2.5% of "three year high salary" average, AND then I wait three months, until DH turns 62.

Once he's 62, we can cover us both with COBRA health insurance, if needed. I am assuming the worst: that my company's retiree health coverage is revoked, and the ACA is brought down by SCOTUS.

COBRA then becomes our saving grace, since CA allows an 18 month extension to the Federal 18 months of coverage.

[Fomerly known as something]

I have a pension and health care when I reach 25 years as a FED special category employee, I’m 56 months away so I’m getting it out.

[ixtap]

We have gone back and forth over when bonuses and other benefits hit, what weather we want to be out and about in, how long between leaving work and being out and about in the weather full time on our boat, etc...

We achieved our minimum number as of a year ago, but weren't ready to walk away for a couple of reasons. It turns out it was a good thing: with the pandemic, we wouldn't be enjoying travel and we saved more this year than we have ever spent. We are both working on some personal goals that are slightly easier to address in our current living situation, so it is nice to have the extra cash.

The current plan is for DH to give notice after the bonus comes at the end of 2021 and work with the team on an actual end date. However, if anyone asks for a long term commitment between now and then, we won't be keeping any secrets. Even that is a change from six months ago when asked for a two year commitment, DH responded yes, but I can't promise any more than that. I, on the other hand, am usually asked for calendar year commitments, so have already been telling people that next year is my last year, even when we were considering the end of 2022, rather than the beginning.

[the_fixer]

I will be FI a year + before I add the RE part, but picked the date so I would retire before my 50th bday because retiring in your 40’s sounds cooler and I do not have a time machine to go back and do it in my 30’s :)


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[Jack0Life]

I picked OTHER because we were going to wait till out stash is $1.5 millions but I got laid-off this year and we are at $1.1 million so my wife will quit sometimes next year. We will take some times off and see where our stash fluctuate.
If it dips too low we can always some type of incomes.

[Much Fishing to Do]

I will be FI a year + before I add the RE part, but picked the date so I would retire before my 50th bday because retiring in your 40’s sounds cooler and I do not have a time machine to go back and do it in my 30’s :)


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Heh, I've often thought of doing it on my 50th birthday (instead of doing it at 49 when my other boxes will all be checked) just cause it doesn't sound crazy to retire in your 50s ;-)  Granted, I'm WFH and not full time anymore so that makes it a lot easier to wait...

[simonsez]

I won't vote as this doesn't pertain to me yet.  Right now, I could see a combination of all of those reasons being factors.  Not sure which one would be the main factor as my retirement is far off.  I have a job with a good ratio of pay:stress (and/or satisfaction:discontent).  Leisure-wise, I have a very flexible schedule and usually have more vacation time than I know what to do with.  I'm not certain this would be the job I retire from but I don't plan to leave it anytime soon.  It does have a pension that I'm vested in and can defer if I don't work until "full retirement age".  However, I think the status of my health, my wife, and wealth/stache are more important factors. 

If this is the job I retire from, it would likely be on Dec 31st or whatever the last pay period is of that particular year to maximize the vacation time payout just to have some extra fun money at the beginning of retirement.

[FIRE 20/20]

I waited until my 'stache hit 25x my planned spending and then I worked a little less than an extra year.  There are a lot of reasons I picked that approach, but mostly it was to reduce SORR.  I figured that instead of drawing down my 'stache, I would be able to add close to 1.5 years of planned expenses instead of taking out 1 year.  I figured that swing of 2.5 years of expenses would substantially reduce the chance that we would ever run out of money.  It also let me see what the markets did during what would have been my first year of FIRE.  If there was a crash during that last year I would have stayed on longer. 

The big thing for me was that I was able to change the role I was in to something much easier than I had been doing so I could use the time off I had stored up to take vacation and half-days.  I don't remember the numbers exactly, but I think I took something like 500 hours of PTO that year.  Some of that was on a couple of multi-week vacations and the rest was just used up leaving early whenever I finished my work and felt like leaving.  I was leading an R&D project at the time and my team did most of the real work anyway. 

[Steeze]

Will wait for 25x, then a few extra months to max retirement accounts, take paid vacation, and go to a bunch of doctors appointments.

[NotJen]

I wanted to retire from my career before I turned 40 (made it with 2 weeks to spare!), and I didn't want any income in 2020, so that's how I picked my actual last day of work.

I was uninterested in my work and looking for reasons to quit.  I announced it when I was asked to work on a new project that I didn't want to work on.  I tried to stay to see the end of one of my projects, but it kept dragging on, so I had to quit before it was finished.

I was not at 25x when I selected my retirement date (hit it with my last paycheck, but that was unplanned).  My plan was to just figure it out as I went along, earning money in the future as needed.  It's just me, so I have lots of freedom in my spending.

[HotTubes]

It's being selected for me - contract term end presents a logical stepping off point

[Bloop Bloop Reloaded]

I'm planning to retire at age 45 in twelve years. I picked the age because it will have meant i have worked "half" the usual working life (I started full-time work at age 23, and retirement age is 67).

I'm aiming for a stash at that time of 50x yearly spending. It's a pretty conservative approach.

If I wanted 25x yearly spending I could retire at age 39-ish but I'm content to keep working a few extra years - I don't dislike my job that much anyway and I feel there are milestones I'll not achieve till my mid-40s.

I also haven't factored in superannuation, inheritance, my partner's income or anything like that. I'd rather have more stash than less.

[Frankies Girl]

I originally was going to go in January, turning in my notice the week after my bonus and year previous 401k match hit my accounts. I didn't give a rat's ass what the actual date was, just making sure I got all the $/benefits I had coming to me on the way out.

Stache was solid 25x the year before.

Stuck around about 2 months longer due to a sudden panic that I was making a huge mistake (I was in a position that is impossible to go back to anything near the level I was. Exit was a permanent step for me).

I had a sick parent living out of state that I wanted to spend more time with also and decided it was better now than a year or more later. Helped to make me finally do it.

They were not a terrible company overall, but it wasn't a great place for me due to my department heads being total assholes that acted like mean high school girls and I was sooooooo relieved to be out of there.

[YK-Phil]

Although I loved my job and my career in general pretty much since the beginning forty years ago, the eight or nine months before I called it quits were untenable and extremely stressful due to irreconcilable differences with the chairman of my board who I suspect was having some mental health issues. So despite having the seven other members of my board on my side, I decided it was best to give my notice, with my last day of work on October 1, 2020. It felt so exhilarating! But I didn't want to leave this job knowing that person had won the fight so I called his superior -who incidentally was his older brother, and explained the issues the board and myself were having very calmly. We had never met but he knew my reputation, and he was quite sympathetic to the situation and apologized for his brother's behaviour. That same afternoon, the brother was removed from the Board. The new acting chair immediately asked me to rescind my resignation but I was too excited about this new chapter in my life that I politely refused.

Like we say in French, "tout est bien qui finit bien"...

[Dicey]

My answer is definitely "Other".

I was 54, single and approaching lean FI.

I unexpectedly started dating someone. When he proposed, we decided to elope. We got married on 10/11/12 and all of a sudden, I was fat-ass FI*.

A month or so before we eloped, my company passed out i-pads which tracked our every move 24/7. New DH said, "You've never really liked that job [especially since I got shuffled in a re-org the year before and had suffered through not one, but two new bosses in that time], why don't you just retire?"

He didn't have to ask me twice. Two days later, I gave three weeks notice. My last day was 12/5/12. Yup, my eight year FIREversary is in two days. Haven't had a moment of regret.

*We basically had about the same net worth, plus he likes his job and is still working. If I have my way, he'll be out as soon as his Defined Benefit Pension kicks in, later next year.

[terran]

We're still several years away, but generally speaking it will be stache based, but for exact timing of when during the year my wife wants it to be during the nice (warm) weather. Or maybe we'll just go somewhere where the weather is nice at whatever time of year the stache is ready.

[Metalcat]

I didn't have a say, I was medically retired in March when it became dangerous for me to continue working on patients.

[DeniseNJ]

I picked my date bc that is the first day my full retirement is available as a fed. I have already told everyone at work that my last day is August 4, 2028!  It could be on the 2nd, but since that's a wednesday and Firday is the end of the pay period, I figure I could work until Friday, eight years from now.

I love my job, but not enough to do it if I don't have to. By then my stache will be $1.5m, my kids will be launched, my retirement and health benefits will be available and I'll be 57. In the meantime every day is a blessing.

[Greystache]

I retired at age 55. In the span of about 6 weeks, I qualified for early pension payout, paid off my mortgage and my youngest kid graduated form college. I could have quit in November but I hung around until the end of the year to collect all the holiday paid time off. Also, I just liked the idea of starting off the new year retired.

[Omy]

Other. I waited until I was emotionally ready. We had been FI for several years, but I was concerned about every possible contingency. So we padded the stache until I felt comfortable. He waited for a specific vesting period and then gave 60 days notice to ease the transition. My specific date was after I closed a final transaction that took 2 months longer than it should have. I didn't want to abandon my client...and the transaction was a pain in the butt so I didn't want to take on any others. Perfect timing except that covid showed up 6 months later and has shelved our travel plans for awhile.

[Mr. Green]

I knew my career was sucking a little bit of my soul out each day. I figured there was an inflection point somewhere in my future where if I stayed past that day either some part of me would be dead, or it would change me, or I'd be defeated to the point where I'd just stay forever and be a sad human being. So I put a drop-dead date on my career a couple of years in advance. I'd already found MMM and knew that with a couple more years of savings we'd be close enough to our magic number, regardless of what the market did, that I could quit and even find some other line of work if necessary. Later, as my date was quickly approaching, some good friends of ours invited us to Jamaica for a vacation celebrating her Doctorate, and my wife and I were celebrating our 10 year anniversary. I thought, "Well I don't want to kill the afterglow of Jamaica by returning to a job I hate." So I made my last day the day before we left the country.

Ultimately this meant pulling the ripcord early. We wanted $1 million and a paid-off house. I quit when we had a little over 800k and still had a mortgage. But we weren't going to make the magic number by my drop-dead date and as Popeye would say, "That's all I can stands. I can't stands no more."

[Rhinodad]

Both my spouse and I enjoy and find our jobs to be fulfilling, not to mention we still have a kid in elementary school, and a community within that school that we absolutely love. We are more a race to a number, than a date, but don't find working to be a soul sucking endeavor at this point. We are seriously considering a Coast Fire type thing, in that we no longer need to accumulate, but can't necessarily draw down yet either. We may approach both of our jobs in the next year or two and see if we can't both go down to 4 days per week...or perhaps search for jobs with summers off (We live in Wisconsin). It would be nice to not have employees report to us. I think a an absolute retirement date is 7.5 years from now...when our son graduates from high school.

[sisto]

My date was picked as the exact date I meet the rule of 75. It also had been shaping up nicely for the numbers to align before that date. There aren't many perks for retiring from MegaCorp, but enough for me to wait due to nice timing on bonuses. Now I find myself in a weird situation. It's been nearly 3 years ago that I was in an accident on a business trip. That has left me on disability and while I'm still technically employed I've been off work entirely for over a year now. It's been a rough transition in many ways because I wasn't prepared yet. So many things on the checklist can't be done while in a limbo state of Workers compensation. The only good thing is that the stash has done extraordinary even though I haven't been able to contribute to it.

[Chuck Ditallin]

I'm definitely an "other".

My quitting date depended on the sale of my business, plus having to fulfil my academic responsibilities until the end of August 2019.

I then became ill in February 19 and didn't recover until the end of July, so we agreed there was no point in my returning.

It wasn't quite the exit I'd envisaged, nor have our plans come to fruition due to my wife's illness then the pandemic restrictions,  but it's all working out beautifully so far nevertheless.

[Zikoris]

I think that once we're sort of in the ballpark of our FIRE number, the actual date will depend more on what's going on in our lives than anything else. For example, we don't have any interest in retiring during the pandemic when we can't do any of the stuff we want to - travel activities, stuff with friend/family, etc, so retirement wouldn't even be on the radar until all this is over. If it drags out, I could see working longer than I need to, since I have zero interest in retiring just to sit at home and do nothing.

[bmjohnson35]

The mindless pursuit of the latest corporate initiatives, endless telecons and senior management driving the business into the ground, I was definitely burned out.  When you start referring to senior management as the "IIC" (idiots in Charge), it's time to move on. When you added the daily commute and the desire to travel more, it was a no brainer.

[SunnyDays]

I picked my date through a combination of age (55) that would get me a lifetime DB pension, a magic number of age and years of service, and decided to leave in January for tax reasons.  I didn't care at all that it was winter because I had lots of resting and decompressing to do.

[Photograph 51]

I am a physician assistant and have to take a difficult to test to recertify every 10 years.  Without passing the test, I can't work in my profession.  I am planning to retire the day that my current certification expires so I don't have to spend the year ahead of the test brushing up on everything I forgot from school.

[Vashy]

Picked mine based on age and 'stache. I'll be 50 then, and that's quite enough. I can feed myself from work I enjoy more until I can access my pension, and COL will be low in the meantime. Also, I'm in an industry where people either die in their boots (high spenders) or grab all the money they need and run. Or burn out.

[SwordGuy]

I retired in the year I did because we were both financially and emotionally ready to do so.   Turning off that income stream is a bit scary, particularly if you're older.

I retired on the date that I did because my wife was a professor.   I waited until the week before her semester was over.   That way I wasn't retired while she was still working -- except for the last week 'cause then I could cover meals and house stuff during exam week for her.

[tipster350]

For me it is the number, but date adjusted to also receive one last bonus and RSU vesting date. I "couldn't take one more day" a long time ago, but hang in because I need the comfort and security that that comes with achieving my stashe number.

Season or one-time unusual event such as the pandemic play no part. When retired, I will be retired through all seasons (hopefully lol) in the future. With the pandemic, while many activities aren't possible, many activities I enjoy are possible and will keep me busy while we wait.

[asauer]

It’s a combo for me.  We’ll likely have our magic number in place, plus it’s right after my annual bonus to get that last infusion of cash.

[Arbitrage]

I'm planning to move my family, and we have kids in grade school.  Not about to make them move in the middle of a school year (such as it is these days).  It'll be enough upheaval without adding that to the pile. 

[Travis]

Will retire with a pension in 3 years at age 43.

[markbike528CBX]

The actual date (early June) was due to "I don't want to work summers anymore".   That was said in the previous November.  It was taken as "I'm retiring", which I guess was right :-)
The retiring was more of "I'm tired of looking at my retirement spreadsheet at work for 1+ hours per day", with no particular date.

[FINate]

We were FI several years before pulling the trigger on RE. Why did we wait to RE? I liked my job, the company was great and had unbelievable pay and benefits, and I really liked my boss and my team.

But over several years the company/job became much less interesting, the commute got much worse, I rarely saw my kids, and I wasn't getting enough exercise or sleep. Then my boss announced he was leaving and I didn't like the replacement that was being brought in, was clear he would be trouble. So it seemed like a good time to RE. That was five years ago, absolutely zero regrets.

[2sk22]

I quit a job in a megacorp in 2019 and joined a startup. At that time, I told myself that I would work for a year in the startup and retire. That was in fact almost what happened - I stayed in the startup for exactly 13 months. Now enjoying retirement.

[aceyou]

My pension vests in march of 2031.  DW's vest in early 2032.

[Blissful Biker]

I am thinking end of April 2024 because annual bonus are distributed in March and the employee company stock program vests each April.  Plus mountain bike season starts in May!

But the plan is still dependent on reaching FI.  I should reach 25X expenses by then but if not, the date might push a bit.   I work part time at a pretty interesting job that pays well and generally enjoy my lifestyle, so I am not too fixated on a particular date.  But I will pull the pin quite soon after reaching FI.

[secondcor521]

For me it was an evolution of different things:

1.  First I wanted to hit 25x expenses.  That happened sometime in 2013/2014.  At this point I had a high paying job and a boss I liked.

2.  Then I decided that I preferred to do a Roth conversion ladder rather than a 72(t) / SEPP for almost two decades.  So my goal was to have 5 years expenses available to prime my ladder.  Not sure when I hit that point, but it was probably 2014 or 2015.

3.  Somewhere in there I got reassigned into a different management group and a different project.  I was far less than impressed with the management group.  All of them.  Including my peers, my direct manager, his manager, and *his* manager.  The project was a mess as well, and some of the engineers involved were also pieces of work.

4.  My last batch of nice (i.e. worth anything) stock options vested February 4, 2016.  So I decided I would exercise my options on the 4th and give my two week notice on the 5th.

I ended up taking a 12 week sabbatical leading up to my retirement date, so I lined it up so my two week notice aligned with the last two weeks of my sabbatical.  This helped me ease into FIRE, give me plenty of time to maximize any work benefits (such as my FSA), and let me avoid the going away hoopla (don't like that).

My RE date also lined up nicely with some other stuff.  My Mom was on hospice, so I wanted time to help her as much as I could.  My two younger kids were mid-teens, so I wanted to help them out.  The few months at the beginning of the 2016 calendar year enabled some tax planning and benefits planning.

[Ladychips]

I've loved reading all of your responses.  Thanks so much for responding!!

[Well Respected Man]

Originally, it was 2022, after my last scheduled tuition payment. I decided on 2/22/22, because it was fun, and importantly, after annual RSU vesting, 401k match patch, and annual bonuses clear. Then I moved into 2021, because this s*** ain't worth it. I'm now going for 8/1/21, because ESPP and RSUs will be cleared, and I think the health insurance coverage is good for the whole month of August that way. But I'm threatening myself with moving it up even further. I'm working right now on a weekend, and don't like it.

So, big picture, cash flow for college expenses, and then fine tuned/optimized from there.

[Linea_Norway]

We reached half our number somewhere during 2019 and still needed to sell our clown house to reach the other half of our number, as we will downsize to a house that will cost 50% of our last house.
We still working the whole of 2019, although some months PT, for me as to not loose my new pension that started in January 2019. We put our home for sale for the first time in autumn 2019. We started working on the sale before giving notice, but sale didn't start after giving notice. Still, we took a chance that we could sell the house for a good price. We retired on the first of January 2020 and the house got sold in March. The sale in autumn didn't give a good enough price, so we tried again in spring and received about 50K more for the house than we did in autumn.

My main reason for retiring is that I am not getting any younger and I prefer spending my time outside, instead of sitting on in an office, spending all winter time daylight hours inside. I have also experienced a lot of stesss and high blood pressure, because I let myself to get too involved in my job, without getting anything financial back for it (always 2% salary increase), no matter how good a job I did. It is just so not worth it to spend my health on a job, if we have enough to quite.

[TartanTallulah]

My decision to retire was a combination of my job becoming unbearable due to factors I couldn't change and my DB pension becoming accessible due to my age. Because of a different combination of factors, two years later I'm doing a similar job at a different site and my pension remains untouched, but when I stop enjoying what I do I'll be gone.

[davisgang90]

I retired 2.5 years ago.

I retired at 28 years of service in the Navy. I could have stayed to 30 or perhaps a bit beyond and had a bigger pension, but 2 things made me decide to pull the trigger "early".

1. My youngest was in his last year of middle school and I knew we would move after retirement, so I wanted him to get all 4 years of high school in the same school.

2. My middle son has autism and had used 2 years of his 4 years of job training post graduation. I wanted him to do the last 2 years of training at our new location to increase his chance of employment.

2.5 years later and we are very happy with our decisions. I've recently taken a full time job working for my alma mater in admissions for the fun factor, but we don't need the money. We still live on my pension and VA disability and bank the rest .

[Loren Ver]

Not so many years ago a boy and a girl were dating, and had been so for a few years.  The girl was still in college and the boy was several years in to working at a medium to low paying job he didn't like.  The girl finally told him that if he let her invest his money he could be retired by his 40s.  Her father had done it, and if he had, anyone could.  The boy wrote her, at the time, a large check and told her to make it happen. 

Fast forward most of those not so many years.  That couple got married and the boy is now approaching 40.  The retirement date has wobbled around quite a bit, but never too far from the mark.  In the past few years they have been working diligently to cut the date back, as they are both now ready to be free from their jobs and ready to be on to the next chapter.  They are both analytical but also full of whimsy, so picking the date got, interesting. 

The actual picking of the date: 
Spring time was better for travel, and they wanted to drive Route 66 to commemorate the occasion.  So spring it would be.

Thirty nine for him was better than 40 and would allow for the girl to keep her promise made back when they were young and idealistic (not so different from how they are now).  So the date was moved forward to accommodate that.  Promises are important after all.  Even the pedantic ones. 

The month, that was a little more difficult, if they went later she could retire at 37, a good solid prime number.  A lovely number.  Many merits to being prime, especially when being discussed by two analyticals.  Or they could go earlier and she could retire at 36.  Now that is a lovely number.  So many good things about that number, sure it isn't prime, but 6x6 is 36 after all.  It also rolls off the tongue.  It also sounds so much more impressive.  To forever be FIREd at 36, oh yes, that would do.  So the date was again moved forward to accommodate this desire.

Then they decided it tickled their fancy to have their first day of FIRE be April Fool's day, so April 1st was chosen for a jolly good chuckle.  With the days passing by and the FIRE date jumping forward time was flying by!

The stache hadn't quite hit the number, but was close enough.  They could be flexible.  The date mattered more than the pile.  The boy and the girl left work at the end of March and started down their next adventure on April Fool's day, with crazy grins and wild chuckles. 

[BECABECA]

I picked OTHER because we were going to wait till out stash is $1.5 millions but I got laid-off this year and we are at $1.1 million so my wife will quit sometimes next year. We will take some times off and see where our stash fluctuate.
If it dips too low we can always some type of incomes.

Another vote for turning a layoff into your retirement day. A few months before I retired, I helped my mom realize that her impending layoff would actually be good and was a really great time to finally retire. Then my cushy work from home job went through layoffs and I realized I should take my own advice. Both of our retirement stashes are bigger now than when we retired ~3 years ago, and we are both are thankful for the layoffs: otherwise we’d probably still be working because it’s hard for us to walk away from money from a job that we don’t absolutely hate.

[Vashy]

The stache hadn't quite hit the number, but was close enough.  They could be flexible.  The date mattered more than the pile.  The boy and the girl left work at the end of March and started down their next adventure on April Fool's day, with crazy grins and wild chuckles.

Inspiration! I love the idea of using April Fool's as a quitting day and will aim for that myself. Thank you!

[Playing with Fire UK]

@Loren Ver - that is a delightful story that you told beautifully!