Retirement? When/Why/How?

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Hi all.

Late 30s software developer here, in a stressful role with couple of greys in the beard. Still a couple of years left on mortgage and no prospect of FU money soon.

Looking for advice from elders who worked in the industry who know they’re retiring soon or have retired (probably better here than reddit).

Assuming you still “do tech stuff” (probably wouldn’t be here if you didn’t), but ran away from “the industry” to make space for millennials and zoomers to make their own mistakes…

How did you decide it’s time?
How did/do you manage finance and how did you plan it?
What keeps your “itchy fingers” going these days?

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Retireme-
79bmps

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Burning out eases the decision. Don’t burn out.

It’s a minefield, especially if you believe like I do that retail “investors” are merely cannon fodder for Wall St. insiders. Try to live as frugally as possible, tech nothwithstanding, but the recent return of inflation (and the inevitable next financial disaster that’s looming) has meant significantly foreshortened finances, people deferring retirement indefinitely, and even returning to work, if you have an in, and the ageism isn’t too overpowering. At the moment I’d say if you have a job don’t give it up and don’t think about giving it up - do whatever you have to do to keep going. Once you’re out it’s very difficult to virtually impossible to get back unless you “know people” and even then they might be gone too.

One word: Linux. It’s free, but there’s absolutely tons you have to figure out to use it effectively (IMHO) and unfortunately in my case it’s been the reason for a recent splurge on new PCs, so being free wasn’t as cheap as it was imagined (however, it did revitalize old, otherwise defunct kit too).

Planning ahead is a good idea, but you never know how things are going to go these days - it seems like a new crisis every 6 months is a given. Good luck.

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Retirement plans in the USA are basically a joke at this point. If you are actually interested in retiring then you will need a combination of steady, autonomous income (Pension lol, landlord of several properties, business you own and can step away from, etc), good amount of savings, and living frugally/within your means. 401K’s are basically a scam at this rate with how bad inflation is and I think the federal gov is about the only place with a pension plan that you can count on being honored when it is time for you to retire.

Basically grind until you cant anymore and put as much money as you can into becoming a slum lord until you are financially independent.

Or just bury yourself in debt for the last 20 years of your life and and make sure you file for bankruptcy before you die so your kids don’t have to pay it off for you.

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If you haven’t already you might want to seek out a financial planner. They can help you estimate what you’ll need to do to be able to retire when you want to.

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most state based pensions are still funded, but unless you get into a place with a pension and stay there for 30 years the odds of you getting anything substantial out of it are slim.

‘retired’ in America now just equals ‘working differently’.

i have a fully vested pension that i can draw from in my late 50’s, a separate retirement account that i deposit 10% into, and my mortgage will be paid off about that same time. so i MIGHT actually be able to retire in my early 60’s, provided the politicians have not caused WWVII Remake, or some other catastrophe, in the next 20 years.

also, burnout is real, every day in I.T. makes me more O.K. with voting for Giant Meteor in the next election.

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hey you sound like a literal carbon copy of me

i’m not exactly the target audience for your question as i’m literally the same as you, but i’ve found myself asking the same question a few times, more and more often lately

reality is i’m going to be working for a long long time yet, so i need to love my job, which i do, it’s just stupid hours and stress

gotta work for the biccies unfortunately

can you try to wind down your hours?

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On the same boat as you, but one pattern I’ve noticed is that people who care about software development burn out significantly faster than people who don’t and are in it just for the fat pay check. Don’t get me wrong, being in it for the pay check is not a problem, my point is that people who care about the quality of the project end up with more responsibility, pretty much the same pay and a lot longer hours.

Retirement is completely ultra off the table for me, but realizing that people saw me as a club to wave at a difficult project made it easier to leverage that gravitas and make sure I’m not always being used to put out a fire every week. Realize your worth, work less whenever possible, share responsibility with your peers, take all the vacation you legally can and try not to have a heart attack before your retirement so you can actually enjoy it when it does come.

Good luck mate.

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Slightly different take from me, I am over 50 and have been going at it for 25 years now … Retirement or whatever will it be in a time where inflation is triple the return of a safe investment and everything else is high risk is not in the next 20 years, even if here in Italy I am being paid almost double the current market rate for my skill level (and taxed accordingly)

Instead of work less I try and work smart, putting most effort in work that I feel will have the most return for my employer and holding back when involved in the shitty ones
And instead of hoping for good health by the time I do retire I make sure I get enough rest and travel and enjoy time with the kids now that I can most enjoy it, instead of betting on being healthy when I am 70 and even grumpier than now :sweat_smile:

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Thats a sticky one for sure

Invest while you can and do your best to keep healthy.
My retirement was early due to stress related heart issues.
And it ate up all my savings .
I do receive a pension and its been a struggle for me due to our f.m.p.o.t.u.s. and his “” wonderful""( gratuitous sarcasm) policies that have resulted in rampant inflation, shortages of food’s, medications, and patience among the populace.

Keeping your skills sharp and learning new and diverse skills may keep you busy and may open doors for you (( Providing you are healthy))

And quite frankly if insurance companies cannot raise your premiums due to previous health issues they would prefer that you die

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I’m younger than you, but my plan is to look at my life expectency and make sure I have enough of a nest egg.

So my target year is 2050, and I will be 30 this year.

I still plan to volunteer with the local robotics program like I do now, and probably do a bit of consulting on the side for fun money.

Ive planned it out by trying to estimate how much I would need annually to live the life I want. That number turned into a big ? These last couple years, but we can only work with the data we have.

And I have no idea if my plan will work or not.

Really a shame boots ain’t still here…

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I am a lot younger than you, so I don’t think you should really consider my advice, as our circumstances are different.

Software setups, although I got into very low power consumption things and I have a whole thread for that. Doing micro-servers running ARM and trying to work with what you got is a nice challenge (lower the RAM allocation of your containers, good luck if you plan on running VMs, keep everything as low cost as possible, do not spend too much money, if possible, have a system in place to power off stuff when not in use, like some kind of “business hours” thing, but for your personal stuff).

Living frugally, currently investing in my own skills and diverging them (you never know if IT will always be a thing). Trying to find a cheap forever home, small, something that won’t cost a lot in taxes, because I try to limit the amount of money I spend, so in case I have to go on a lower wage, I would still be within my lower income limits.

From my point of view, I’d be surprised if I’d be allowed to reach mid 40s, I am trying to plan my life like I am not going to live more than 20 years more. Risky if I do manage to get passed that, but the times look too gloom for younger people. Trying to lay-low and live frugally. Looking into tiny homes, getting land and making my own farm, become as self-sustainable as possible. IT makes the big bucks for me right now, but I am not betting on it. If I can live on a small farm that can sustain my food, water and shelter needs, I can just take odd jobs here and there afterwards.

The best-case scenario, which I’m not betting on, is to open a consulting firm and help people with their IT setups for cheap, targeting mostly small and medium-sized businesses. The problem with that though is that I am the kind of person who loves sharing knowledge with my fellow man, I would open source all the details of how to build a good, functional IT setup and stuff. And I’d probably only be left with people who don’t want to learn how to do that, or follow my instructions, so I’d be kind of an outsourced IT setup guy. Maybe I’d be lucky to get customers who are trying to lower their costs of operation, but most people don’t try and do that.

I’m mostly betting on open sourcing, crowd-sourcing and knowledge sharing, hoping that with enough people doing the same, our standards of living will increase. This is how it went for all human history, until monopolies started forming around the intellectual property monopoly privileges. I also plan for open sourcing automating gardening, so plants will mostly take care of themselves and you just go here and there to pick up the fruits or cut some weeds.

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I’m not sure what an “f.m” POTUS is, and while I would prefer to veer away from the political and the partisan, you can’t really avoid it these days, even if you’re just trying to stick to economics. Especially if you’re trying to stick to economics, I’d say.

The cause of the inflation we’re suffering now, and are likely to be suffering for some time is basically The Fed: they overreacted, or rather Jay Powell, the single most useless Fed chairperson in the 110-year history of the institution, overreacted. He pumped over $7T of unneeded liquidity into markets that were already inflated, at a time when that money had nowhere to go other than asset bubbles while workers were being laid off and barely kept going through government handouts.

And the reason Jay Powell overreacted was because the markets knew that Trump was essentially playing King Canute with the pandemic: he wanted to avoid reality and try and happy-talk the markets into continually rising. Investors fled to safety, taking the DJIA down about 10000 points. Had he taken the issue seriously we’d have had a much more measured response to the crisis and markets wouldn’t have been spooked which then led to Powell sticking rates all the way back down to zero AND printing 25% of all the cash the US has ever printed in the year from March 2020 to 2021.

The financial system is in a moribund state from all the debt that has accumulated since 1998 (LTCM), but mostly since 2008 when to avoid a 2nd depression, the Fed simply went hog-wild with QE for the next decade (and then doubled down after the attempted “taper” in 2018). The amount of debt in the global financial system is quadruple what it was in 2007. There’s too much debt, there are too many financial zombies, and the Fed (and other central banks) have lost control. Inflation is the only game they have to monetize the massive amounts of debt, including the $31T that America owes to investors (most of them American corporations, pension schemes and hedge funds).

Government spending when the economy is in tatters - Keynesianism - is not inflationary. Running up $8T in national debt at the same time Trump was crowing his was the “best economy in history” and then adding at least another $7T in invented funds to stop yet another financial system disaster is what has produced the inflation we’re suffering now and which is set to continue at inflated levels for many years because as the famous saying goes, There Is No Alternative.

And if the GOP nutters try to drive the country over the financial cliff because of their national debt fundamentalism that only exists when a Democrat is in the White House, then you can kiss your derriere au revoir!

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Basically, it all comes down to: don’t trust the system and their numbers, don’t let yourself fooled by it into contributing into its slight life expansion with your support, invest in assets and skills that will ensure your survival. Follow the real human economics system, in times of despair, save up in things that don’t depreciate and that people might find utility into.

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Pick up freelance work to add income when you get bored? So way to increase nest egg in case it runs low.

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Precisely but diversify you skillsets.
Certification in a variety of skills opens many more opportunities than just focusing on one.

Consider tradesman skills such as welding, carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrician.
These are needed skills. And many are high paying.

While they may seem simple there is a hell of a lot to learn

Like computer work? Industrial automation is a field for you! Pay is damn good, especially if you are a traveling technician.

There are so many other fields to get into as well.