IGX

Retire early and ... do what?

Now, I admit, I was lucky, but I fell directly into what I considered the best job on earth. Travel to weird places and write about them. People actually paid me to do that. Now, at 72, I find that market is pretty much gone, but I milked for all it was worth. Which is to say, I don't need to work. For money, anyway.

But I loved the work I did and I miss it. Therefore, I do a little of it now and again. For short pay. Because I still like the work.

I say that is better than retirement. Work into a job you love: that is my advice.

Finding a job you love sounds ideal. I've got a job I can tolerate that is satisfying often enough to get me by and I've only got ~10 years before I expect to retire. I'd like to do stuff I really enjoy at that point like building furniture, riding dirt bikes, hopefully having some grand kids to hang out with, etc. I do wish someone had suggested I go in for a trade and that I hadn't just thought of construction as something just to do in summer during school. I actually enjoyed that...

This is a subject that is fast becoming near and dear to my heart. I am in my early to mid 30s and made the mistake of buying into the hype of a four-year degree, despite the need to take out loans to do so. I made it out with less than some, but still with enough that it will certainly hang over my head for the forseeable future. What's funny is that I am now going back to school for a career that actually has decent prospects for growing and supporting our family, albeit withou any loans to do so. Between my wife and I, we have probably $40,000 in total student debt. It's a lot less than some owe but the payments certainly do take out a chunk of earned income that could be better used towards investing in retirement and other endeavors.

As it stands, the only retirement that I currently have set up is the TSP (thrift savings plan) with the federal government/Air Force. While I would love to take and expand on our retirement options, with the arrival of our son and the expenses of day-to-day life, there seems to be little extra capital laying around to putting any real use. Currently our biggest accomplishment thus far has been working to pay down our debt, which now only consists of a mortgage and student loans.

Unless the educational situation changes vastly by the time he is of age, I will do everything in my power to keep my son from using loans and any sort of of liberal arts focus.

In regards to everyone going to college. One day we were talking, would you do it again if you knew now what you know now etc. One of my colleagues said that he would never become a doctor. Instead, he would become an electrician and build a strong business, employing other electricians. The point is, as per very well known adage, education opens certain doors. You cannot become an architect without an appropriate degree. Same with medicine, accounting and other professions that require certification. I would add that one should never become a doctor (or something else) just because it earns good money. You can have successful career and a very decent living without fancy degrees.

It's easy for the doctor to say that from a position of making at minimum a couple hundred grand/year. Median income for an electrician is under $50k which means that for half the electrician's career (or longer), making it a less than middle-class wage for most people.

What my friend had in mind is the fact that electricians - unlike doctors - can hire other electricians to do work for them. He is probably idealising it a bit, but that was his point. Also, he was talking in Australian context, where all trade professions are highly regulated and therefore strongly protected. Charging $100 - $300 AU$ per hour by an electrician is not uncommon in this country.

In regards to retirement - the trick is not to stop working and do nothing. The trick is to get into the situation where you don't have to work for money, but can do it for fun. In other words when your work is your hobby.

Maybe that's it. Trades here in the states fluctuate a lot in terms of pay. While you can make decent living, i.e. keep the bill collectors at bay or you are working a shit ton of hours. In many cases, my own being a decent example, working 60-70 hrs a week means I have some extra to put back but I'm never home and even then I'm nothing more than upper middle class. That being said, my own trade doesn't have much in terms of upward mobility hence my going back to school....without loans this time.

For the first time in my life I feel the need to go to school and would have any kind of chance completing it. I am very aware I'm going to spend the next couple years taking classes to even bring me to college level in all areas. Im 49.I do well for myself given my level of education and some sloppy life choicesa allthough I work obscene hours.Im a full time firefighter and as mentioned in numerous other post, a bartender 3 nights a week.Im getting tired.

I have always gravitated to the darker side of life and its underbelly. Im more comfortable in shitty places that you would prefer to have a gun on your person . Im fully intimidated by school..Me ? A degree?. Great thread.

knuckles wrote:For the first time in my life I feel the need to go to school and would have any kind of chance completing it. I am very aware I'm going to spend the next couple years taking classes to even bring me to college level in all areas. Im 49.I do well for myself given my level of education and some sloppy life choicesa allthough I work obscene hours.Im a full time firefighter and as mentioned in numerous other post, a bartender 3 nights a week.Im getting tired.

I have always gravitated to the darker side of life and its underbelly. Im more comfortable in shitty places that you would prefer to have a gun on your person . Im fully intimidated by school..Me ? A degree?. Great thread.

It's hard work but in the end it's worth it.... I hope. LOL. I just left my full-time firefighting/medic gig to pursue medicine/nursing, so I sympathize. Good luck.

I decided I wanted to open my own private gym to train athletes out of so I went to school and got a 4 year degree in exercise science. In hindsight I wonder why the hell I thought an exercise science degree would set me up for running my own business. Towards the end of school I started selling atlas stones and just running an add on Craigslist got me a satisfactory amount of sales. With a few months left in school sales had petered out to the point I had gone months without a sale. I knew I had to market and advertise through a different route than Craigslist but didn't have a clue of how or where. That is when reality smacked me in the face and I realized attempting to open my own business was completely irresponsible. I finished college and went to the temp agency and ran a press for $9 an hour.

I ended up hired in at a billboard company that I had temped at previous summers and was making $10.50 plus a 75 cent shift pay. I hated the work. The vacation policy and the people were the only redeeming aspects of it. Our shop was right next to weld shop and I figured I wouldn't hate welding and knew I could make a lot better living doing that than unskilled labor. Ten months and $7000 later I finished weld school and got very lucky and landed in a job starting at $16 an hour. I wasn't unrealistic about getting a job, I figured my first job would completely suck, after a few months of experience I could find a better job, I would stay at the second one for near a year, then my third job would be a great job. I landed in my third job right away and couldn't be happier.

I don't believe the consumer needs all kinds of warnings, and I believe the consumer needs to do their own research before buying something. But at the same time I think something in society needs to change with this idea that college is the next logical step after high school. The US Census reported in 2014 that 74% of those with bachelor's degrees in STEM fields don't have jobs in those fields. That is 74% of a population that made an expensive investment that didn't work out as originally planned. So what can society do to help the next round of potential colleges students make the same mistake? I don't have a clue. While in college I shadowed a guy with a master's in exercise science from my same school. He told me how most people he went to school with didn't have jobs in the field. Rather than seriously consider that I just assumed that wasn't going to be me. I ran into a former classmate at the gym who didn't have a job in his field post graduation either and we were talking to a guy who was a junior in the exercise science program. I suggested going for athletic trainer as it would give him more career options without having to abandon his original goal of being a strength coach. His main thing was, he made it that far, it would be foolish to change this far in.

Personally, I see their being a big backlash against college education coming in 10 years or so. People are frustrated that college educations are not paying off and leaving them saddled with huge debt. Meanwhile the trades are hurting for fresh people, which some high school students will recognize as a prime opportunity and will enter the field while taking on minimal to no debt and making a much better living than Joe Blow working for not much more than minimal wage with a 4 year degree and $50,000 worth of debt.

MrMM isn't exactly scammy and he makes a few good points. His big advantage, aside from salary, was that he and his wife did the DINK thing for a while. But he doesn't eat out, doesn't buy cars, and doesn't really buy non-essential consumer goods. These are tough pills to swallow for a single guy or a married one where the rest of the family isn't 100% on board.

From what I can tell, MM isn't exactly unemployed. He does construction work, apparently as a contractor. And I imagine his website brings in a few bucks.