What were your most surprising things about retirement?

How far out are you? I'm 4 yer away.

The surprise (good): I can live like I want to on half as much as I thought I needed.

Regrets: none really, but there are things I wish I had known or realized fifteen years ago.

Suggestion: Don't save money, invest. When you get closer to retirement, reallocate to some cash. Think of savings as insurance, it protects you from a loss but doesn't build wealth, only investment can build wealth. Therefore, think of savings as a necessary evil, just to avoid having to sell your investments in a down market, but also realize that is not always a bad thing, especially after you've made 5X + on your investments. So if you had to sell it for only 2X, you still probably got a better deal than savings.

Also, think of the Flexibility of a Roth IRA. The engine of your retirement should be traditional tax deferred IRA/401K but the Roth adds flexibility that will help you navigate the treacherous waters.

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Retired! Don't want too Don't have too Can't make me

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Love it!!!

Awesome.

Seperate note but I’ll ask anyway…

As someone that is 30 years away from typical retirement age, what have others done to prepare for retirement? What do you wish you had done earlier?

I already max out my 401k and Roth then have automatic monthly investments into a fidelity account.

I’d like to retire by at least 60 with hopefully around $5M then live off interest and golf and fish everyday

Second the fitness routine and health. I'm feeling better than the day I retired and it keeps me sane. After years of accumulation I've yet to adequately shift mindset to spend down. Still look at portfolio growth as a success metric. I still have school age kids at home so staying busy isn't an issue. I need to establish more structure to my days though if I'm gonna pursue hobbies and more
community involvement. We traveled more when work required long range planning for leave now its mostly spontaneous and other obligations pop up. Nearly 3 yrs in and still figuring things out.

For those that have a longer runway, pay attention to potential passive income streams. A goal should be to have enough in ongoing income to not touch your market investments until RMD’s are required. If that not feasible, try only peeling off your dividends in those investments that are not tax deferred to supplement other streams.

I retired early in 2019. My wife retired early before I did. We both love our freedom to do whatever we want, whenever we want. The most surprising thing to me is even though we do so much more for fun than we used to do, I feel like I have less time to do everything that I want to do. More hobbies, more friends and more money has turned into less time for everything. I need a couple of clones of myself, lol. It's a good problem to have though. Life is so much better now than during my corporate career, which in retrospect was like being in prison compared to retirement life. It was a very easy transition.

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You need to set your base higher. Today, at a 4% return, 5M will bring in around 200K. The dollar buys 50% less every 20 years. In 30 years, your 5M will only generate 25K of buying power.

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That’s not how it works

Find a wealthy divorcee or widow.

How you still don’t have any time.