General > General Technical Chat
Retirement - when to take that step (leap?)
Oldtestgear:
Planning for retirement is wise. Sometimes nature intervenes & the best plans go wrong. A very good friend of mine had planned his early retiremt (at 63) with meticulous detail. Nature had other ideas & he died suddenly 3 months into retirement. In my case I had plans to quite my job at 55, then become a consultant to the customers I hade been working with. Solid plan that made financial sense if I had been able to implement it. At 47 (in 2005) I became seriously ill & have never been able to do a proper job since. Eventually medical advice was to accept that I would never work again & try to enjoy life.
To be honest I have never been happier as work got in the way of my interests & hobbies. The best advice anyone can offer is " do what is right for you today" The future will happen and we cannot control what fate has in store for us. We may be able to have a marginal effect but the big things in life will juat happen. Keeping as active as possible is wise but not all of us have that luxury.
Just my thoughts.
Phil
aargee:
Thanks for all your replies and insights!
Red Squirrel:
With the constant rising costs of living it made me realize that retirement is probably not realisticly in my future unless I find a way to somehow reduce all those costs. Been starting to plan more for my future as I really want to retire at a decent age and not have to work through my 60's and beyond and at the current rate of costs of living not only will I still need to work at that age I will probably need a second job too. I really don't want to work my whole life only to die.
So my goal is to move off grid where I will be able to eliminate most of my bills, especially property taxes. That goes up by 10% every year and takes up about 1/4 of my pay cheque at this point and will continue to take up more.
Recently bought 40 acres in an unorganized township where taxes are $100/year instead of like $400/month so I will start to slowly build as time and money allows. Once I have it setup where I can live there year round I will then start looking at a source of income that does not require to be at a certain place for a certain time, as I'm like an hour out of town. Since I won't have as many bills I will also won't need to be making as much money so I can take even a part time job or a job where you make your own hours. Basically as long as I can do it remotely I will be able to be very flexible. Ideally I will want a passive source of income though.
I'm 35, wish I had looked into this plan 10 years ago since I feel I'm getting started late. Will probably take like 5-10 years before I have the homestead ready and I'll be in my 40's. :o 10 years ago my finances were not as tight as they are now though, I only started to realize in past few years how much costs of living keep going up and how I'm heading towards a point where my costs will exceed my income. I make good money too so not like jumping to another ship will help much. If anything it would set me back more as I would need to build up seniority again. So reducing my costs of living while living a more laid back life style seems like a win win to me. I miss the days where I didn't work and used to go camping a lot. Being off grid is basically going to be 24/7 camping, but with the amenities of home.
Bud:
"Camping a lot" made you feel great but that did Not hep build your assets, it was a liability and you were just burning your life. What you are trying to do now makes much more sense, however I'd carefully explore local Regulations / Laws applicable to it. The $100/ year may well turn to something different once you build a permanent place of living on the land as it will be classified differently. It is likely all sort of licenses and permissions will be required for construction. And by the time you hit 60 the town may move closer and be at your doorsteps. The Taxman knows his shit >:D
Red Squirrel:
Not sure what you mean about camping being a liability, it was just something I did for fun and was a kid back then hence not needing to work. Used to go with my grandparents. My parents never been into it so once I started to work and my grandparents stopped going regularly I basically had no place to go which was one motive for buying this land. But may as well do more than just a campground.
Thankfully in unorganized township there's no permits or any of that BS needed to build so it's probably the closest thing to freedom that you can get in this ridiculous society. I did hear that they sometimes still send assessors in cottage areas though but I'm not lake front or in cottage country so will hopefully be safe from that. But either way it's still better than being in the city.
Though I do worry that they could eventually amalgamate with the town and no longer be unorganized but no sense in worrying about that now. I just pray it does not happen. But if it does hopefully there will still be unorganized land available at that point. I will probably want to buy something higher north like James or Hudson Bay area if ever I see land become for sale in those areas, just so I have a backup plan. With climate change I think we're going to see changes for the worse society and weather wise but maybe up there will basically be the same as what it's like here now.
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