UHND.com - Notre Dame Football, Basketball, & Recruiting

Fully retired. Partially retired in 2020 - consulted 25% of the time for 3 years or so. My wife just fully retired last in June 2024. So it's just us now with no commitments to anyone or anything but each other.

We don't sweat the spending. We can't find enough ways to spend it faster than the balance grows - we aren't collecting social security yet and have deferred one pension. In a few years once those kick in there isn't any way we'll be able to spend what will be coming in. This part has been significantly easier than I thought. Our planning now revolves more around how much we want to leave to each of our kids vs. worrying about running out of $. We've never had expensive tastes in cars, or expensive hobbies. Generally take frugal vacations. Enjoy cooking ourselves so don't spend a fortune eating out. Cooking is a great hobby.

We hike/walk 3-5+ miles virtually every day. We do have 3 properties that we enjoy spending time at. One is 20 forested acres that keeps us busy making and keeping fire safe. The other is a recently purchased vacation home that is attractive to our kids and their families - much outdoor activity - biking, kayaking, hiking, skiing, etc. We spend a lot of time planning and doing updates on the place and have frequent gatherings there with family and friends. We both have hobbies we enjoy - for example, I spend many months building a wood fired pizza oven after I retired and now am trying to develop my skills cooking in it.

We spend as much time as possible with our grandson without being intrusive. He's a joy and we like to think we are helping his folks enjoy some time to themselves. We get to "watch" him for a day and occasionally a week at a time. Nothing better!

We aren't politically active - avoid it at most all costs. But do volunteer work with Habitat, the local food bank, and financially at risk families (keep them in their housing) several times a month.

We've found we really enjoy some of the TV shows that can be streamed - so 2 or 3 nights a week we'll have a glass of wine and watch an hour or two. There is some great stuff out there - especially international.

I retired just before I turned 60 and haven't regretted it even for a minute. Between old and new hobbies, family and friends I haven't found myself bored or lacking things to do in 5+ years. I have avoided taking up golf again - there are just too many other things I now enjoy more than golf.

My likely most controversial advice is to forego pets. Especially once you are retired to us anyway it is about minimizing constraints in your life that would interfere with you ability to do what you want, go where you want, when you want. Having to factor a pet into that equation would limit everything. We don't want to plan our retirement years around managing a pet. And I don't fancy spending my days walking with a green plastic baggy in my hands.

Good luck!