Thought I would ask others about what they plan to do with their upcoming retirement years, or what they are currently doing.

I'll be 58 this summer. After having surgery this past summer for early stages of cancer, it brought me back to why I trained to work in the medical environment after college when I was on active duty in the Army.

My MOS was 91 C, Clinical Specialist. I was able to get licensed in the civilian world as a Paramedic and an LPN in Washington State where I was stationed at the time. Afterwards working at the University of Washingon Hospital, I received a RN certification, based on my level of military training, and previously having a college degree.

After getting married for the first time and raising a family, I migrated into medical sales as the money was much more lucrative and there was no need to keep all those medical licensures current.

At this stage in my life, I decided after Cancer surgery, that I want to spend the next batch of years, working with my fellow man in need. So recently I have taken the basic course to get reinstated as an EMT. I had to start at the bottom of the list once again. Next I am going to be taking a refresher course on line from Washington State that will allow me to renew my LPN licensure.

this fall I am enrolling in Advanced EMT or Intermediate EMT at the local community college.

Definitely not doing this for the money. But at this point in my life, I want to go back and work with those who are injured or ill. Ideally I would like to get on staff at the VA Hospital in Roseburg, or the local VA Domiciliary that we have in White City.

First desire is to work with Fellow Veterans. if not available, then to work with private citizens at one of the local hospitals.

I desire to give back to God to thank him for the life he gave, regardless if it has been a good one or not. There is no greater personal reward than serving your fellow man, in his time of need. So this is what I want to do, when I grow up.. and about this time in life, I am grown up.

This also brings up one other thing we don't think about in life, is appreciation for the life that we all have been given to live. 40 years ago this morning, at 4 AM.. I cut down my 16 year old brother from a rope, after he had committed suicide when my folks were going thru a divorce.

My 16 year old brother never got to live the life that the rest of us have been blessed with the opportunity to live.
He made the sad decision to cut his short.

So when it is my time to leave this world, I want to be judged, not by what I accomplished, but what I gave of myself to my fellow man.

I have been doing it for the last six or seven years. Hunting , Shooting, Building my own rifles, Traveling, and Internet. Life is Good

I want to have a garden, raise chickens, work in my shop and be left the [bleep] alone.

Seafire, very interesting post, I am truely sorry about your brother at such a young age.
That being said, I was forced into early retirement due to a loss of sight in my right eye. It is the hardest thing I have ever gone through, as I have always put in long work weeks that average 90 hours and then being reduced to "0". I am in the process of looking for a part time job of some sort just to take up that idle time, you can only do so much yard work around the house. I try to shoot a couple times a week and after awhile that also gets old. I think staying busy is the key to retirement and enjoying the years one has left.

Me too.

Works for me!

I didn't mention fish, hunt and shoot as I figured that was a given.

Retire?? ME?

Only when I'm too decrepit (sp?) to work.. Then I may volunteer at functions to rid this government of democrats..

A worthy goal, IMHO..

I'm just hoping that I can find some type of work that I can handle at that age.

I'm trying to do this, and most of it's working, except for the leave me the [bleep] alone part.

I agree with steelhead, be self suffcient on a small acreage and live off the grid!

I reckon that's a given for all of us.

Wear better camo to make it harder to be found.

Spend some money early doing some of the strong healthy things that you always wanted to do. When it's too late.... When I first retired, I did an eight day tuna trip out of San Diego and also tuna fished a couple of days at Venice, LA. I wanted to do an elk trip, but it's too late now for me to do any long fishing/hunting trips. I took my 16yr old grandson and one of his buddies for a 2 week trip to the Tetons, Yellowstone, and the Black Hills.

My wife and I did a 4 week motorhome trip to Alaska before we retired. If you have not been there it should be on your list. Retirement should be for your enjoyment. Giving back to the community should come second to yourself and your family. Good luck and a happy retirement.

I am a retired troubleman from the electric company. Happiness is the phone not ringing on a stormy night.

I will be 66 in October of this year. Plan on working about two more years from now, so totally quiting work in April or may of 2012. I won't get full Social Security as I worked for 27 years and didn't pay Social Security Tax, but did pay Medicare tax. I plan on moving back to Missouri where my children and grandchildren live. West of St. Louis there is an excellent shooting range and hunting and fishing is excellent in Missouri. Plan on spending time managing my investments and volunteering time with church and CMA. Might help with PGR as well. Having a garden again, hunting, reloading shooting sounds like a plan to me.

I am almost doing that now except I am still working 60+ hours a week.

I plan to work the farm and do several farmers markets and shows a year. I am going to add two kinds of mushrooms to the farm and work the forge into a craft business.

For me retirement means something a lot different than it does for many people. I think retirement is when I quit doing what others want me to do and start doing the kind of work I want to do.

I did a lot of volunteer stuff when I was off work for that five and a half years. I like Seefire's ideas.

The girl in my avatar keeps making bikinis out of my camo.....

I'll be retiring August 1 of this year.

Except for the chickens we think alike. It'll be nice to hunt and fish weekdays whenever I please. And I have a new grandson I'll be introducing to the outdoors..........

Still 14 years away but I'm thinking about it more with each passing year. Raise more livestock, more gardening, hunt and fish a little more, I'd like to get the old traps out and catch a few coon, coyote and bobcat, some volunteer work through the church and last but not least more travel. Hard to work the travel around the gardening and livestock, but I'll find a way!

The travel part is probably of less concern to me than some others. Whilst I'm sure I will still travel some, I'm looking forward to finding out what it's like being in the same place for more than 3-4 years. 30 years of moving around in the military and currently flying 2 weeks out of the month for work as pretty much taken the luster off of traveling.

I don't plan on fully retiring. I plan on cruising SE Alaska in a well equipped power troller wearing my body out catching fish to pay the bills, hunting remote areas, and enjoying my last years in peace. Not a bad way to bar hop in SE AK.

Fish, hunt, travel.

Every single day I struggle to decide; shoot, fish or play golf? Some days I have to work; write, mow the lawn, do a little housecleaning, run errands, stock the liquor cabinet, weed the garden - stuff like that.

Other than that, not much, LOL!

If I could retire today I would be in the full time motorcyle ministry by Monday.

Calvin, you are a lucky man. May you live a long life.

I can relate. I much prefer opening a dresser drawer in my bedroom than a suitcase in a hotel in the morning. No place like home.

3 years for me, spend time hunting in BC, fishing in Kona(a drinking village with a fishing problem) and riding the hog in new England in spring and early summer, or do all that in BC...

Was going to be at 62 this summer, but now stretched to 65. Can't wait to get back to hobbies I have had to put on hold raising kids and now almost grandkids. I haven't had my B/W darkroom set up for 20 years, stacks of fly-tying material packed away, along with my watercolors, 3 Honda mini bikes to work on plus one on the way, keep our vintage snowmobiles running. We have a newer 19ft travel trailer plus our place in Oregon, so there will be travel. I do have dibs on Fall every year for steelhead fishing and hunting though. May have to find a part-time job just to rest up.

Perhaps this is why dad says he has worked harder in retirement than the 60 years he spent working for money.

The key to a great retirement is flexibility. When the opportunity for early retirement came when I was 47 I took it with the thought of a few months off and then looking for a new challenge. The Monday after my retirement luncheon I was back at work for a different industry. Oh well. 7 years later I retired again to pursue building my own house. I had worked in construction while going to school and always wanted physically construct my own home on mountain property purchased several years earlier. After that 30 month adventure I was ready to retire. Wrong.

I received a phone call and found myself starting a new division for a Fortune 500 Company. When I was 62 that division was moved to Mexico and I retired again.

I always wanted to hunt Africa and was fortunate enough to hunt the Selous before the prices went nuts.

Spent a lot of time drifting for trout and steelhead when I blew out my shoulder and developed some lower back problems. Had the shoulder fixed by a sports medicine guy, and decided my back was not acceptable. Visited a neurosurgeon, removed some disc pushing on nerve, did the rehab and am back to hiking the hills, chasing the pigs, deer, and elk. When the weather is right I do my best to make life tough on the bass.

My wife and I travel to visit the kids and grand kids several times a year in SoCal and the east coast. We look forward to their visits in the summer for long hours water skiing and just being together as a family. If we are lucky we get the older grand kids alone for a few weeks in the summer just to be sure they get their proper outdoor training, fishing, shooting, nature hikes and all. Did I mention my wife and I have annual passes to Disneyland. We make several trips for a few days as old folks, and have two major trips, one with the SoCal Son and his family and one with east coast Daughter and her family, all on dad of course.

We are fortunate to be able to do these things and know that as we approach 70 things can change rapidly. Keep active, have fun, give thanks for what we have, and look forward to the next day.

Was planning to just relax & enjoy it.............but given the current political rulers & the spread of Communism, that may just be wishful thinking.

MM

I plan to work part time in a gunshop. I did it for a couple of years when consulting work was slow and loved it. Too bad there's no money in it.

I've been practicing:

"Hello, and welcome to Walmart."

I made a "life decision" long ago. Men in my family are short lived, I had a heart attack at 31...managed to do well in the market and decided to retire at 37...paid everything off and decided to spend a few years doing what I wanted in the middle of my life, instead of at the end of it.
Went to work 20 hours a week in a gun shop and took off a bunch...Half a dozen trips to Africa, another dozen to Canada, a couple to Alaska, and roaming around Montana hunting and fishing.
Eleven years later the money ran out...back to work full time!

No problemo, at 57 now and no longer able to do alot of what I did in those eleven years...Mere words cannot come close to describing how thankful I am that I did that instead of waiting for I knew not what...


Ingwe

Find a quite out of the way place where you can just do what ever you want with out somebody telling what to do. I been so damaged by 9/11 and this current down turn that retirement will not be possible for me. That is the breaks. I am looking for a place where I can put a Super Cub type airplane to work and an out of the way place for myself. Fly till I die I guess. Maybe next year with a New Congress.

Get a Norseman or a Beaver and fly the campfire folks around- stuff it to the headliner with moose. I'll be your IA.

Since I was too stupid to get a job working for the state or federal govt, I suppose I'll be working till I fall over.

:>(

I retired from full time work five year ago at 53. We had purchased 275 acres of very rural property in Southern Oregon as we knew that if we stayed in the Portland metro area I would probably never stop working. I continued working part time for several years and was really getting excited about doing a lot more fishing and hunting. Then I was offered a large exciting project that was to last for one year. Now, two and a half years later I'm trying to shut that project down. I plan to buy a bulldozer to use on our property and have many plans to work outside thinning and improving our tree farm. Part of the fun is to also improve the land from a wildlife perspective. I plan to fully retire by the end of the year. I assume we have enough money, but you can never be sure, espcially with all of the tax changes, etc. Two things have worked to solidify this decision. The first is watching my mom as she slowly slips away from cancer. It really remind us of the need to enjoy life. The second is a growing frustration of seeing over 50% of our income being used to support government run wild. I've decided that I don't want to feed that pig anymore. Everything is paid off, we have a few investments, a big garden and the nearest neighbor is 1.5 miles away. I'm heading in the direction that Rocky expressed.

I am going to be retiring in 3 months at the age of 63. I am going to be hunting, fishing, shooting, and flying as well as yard work, tieing flies, cooking, and traveling around. My worst fear is that I will be bord and have to sit in the easy chair and watch Oprah day in and day out. Yuck.

I still have some time left, I'm 31. However, when I retire from my vocational job, I hope to still be serving the Lord in some capacity at church and in the local community.

I plan on working til I die, unless schit turns around in a hurry, getting off the grid might not be an option; when I'm too decrepit and no one will hire me I'll kiss my wife and go for a walk.....

Yeah, its good to be the gumment

I already do. Not easy but nice being self-sufficient
Have chickens and a garden when the deer are not destroying it.
Wife works out of home and is going to nursing school
Looking forward to more travel already have worked in many different countries

www.1nwwd.com

I retired as an LEO after 31 years. I worked in Afghanistan for 5 months and had to leave becuase of a blood clot. I am now looking for some part time work as we are barely making it on my retirement salary. I would love to live off the grid but my wife will not. I'm back in college working on a degree to start my second career at age 56. I don't see being retired as there are too many bills and too many taxes. The liberal left is stealing way too much from us, the dam dirty apes. kwg

+1

My dad died at 58.
I'm 48 now, I've lived hard for many years.
I can retire in three years unless the US melts down completely.
My home & vehicles are paid for, I try to avoid credit.

I have a bunch of pins & plates in my left leg that slow me down a little now & am not real excited about another surgery to remove them but suppose I'll do that.
I just want to hunt & fish with my son as much as I can before he gets too busy to be with the old man.

So many folks make plans of a grandiose retirement only to find they don't have the health to pull it off, some never get there.

At the rate everything is going, I will work for the rest of my life.

Yep, me too. But this ain't new news. I've figured on same for about the past 5 years, and had it confirmed when my 401K turned into a 101K 18 months ago.

For reasons I don't care to get into here, I'm going to need to continue to generate my current level of income for a minimum of 15 more years, which means I can't even think of retiring until I'm 71. But my projections show the only way I can continue this level of earning is to either take my medical skills outside the CONUS & Canada (i.e., to "attractive" and more or less stable 3rd world countries, catering to the rich & elite), or taking up criminal activities of one type or another here in the USA, within 5 years or so.

At that point I might start fishing a little more. I guess we'll have to see how it turns out.

But retire as in totally retire... nope. Never gonna happen.

Good topic and got me thinking.

I've decided to run for Congress and then ride the gravy train the rest of my life.

My platform will be based on a mandatory 4 day weekend and all kinds of free stuff for lots and lots of different sub-groups of citizens, or non-citizens, it don't matter. Figure to capture about 80% of the vote with that one. My first act as a duly elected official will be to raise my pay.

Can I count on y'all's votes?

I'd like to get a couple of chicks to double up on me when I retire.... and shooting, hunting, fishing and also having everyone leave me the [bleep] alone too.

Build a cabin.