Retirement

 Many Americans worked for 40-50 years in a job with one company or spend a few years at several companies, and when they retire, they say goodbye to the marketplace forever.

There are also many Americans who work 40-50 years and when it comes time to retire, they say no to retirement and continue to work until they are forced out or until they die.

There are also those Americans who worked for 40-50 years and when it comes time to retire, they cannot retire either because they did not save for retirement or the company for which they worked had no retirement plan.

Then there are those Americans who are very wealthy and don't need the money who continue to work just to see how much money they can generate over a lifetime.

My wife and I retired in 2015; she was 62 and I was 67.  I got full social security benefits, and her monthly allocation was reduced because she retired early.  During my last place of employment, I had set aside money to pay for her health insurance for three years until she was old enough for Medicare.  I did this so we could retire together.

Neither my wife nor I had a company pension plan and had to rely on social security and savings to pay our monthly bills.  Fortunately, we had saved enough over our marriage to compensate for not having a pension plan.

We were lucky...  although, many people do not believe in luck.  So, maybe we were just fortunate to have the insight to start saving money when we did.

It also helped that we had NO DEBT and had to plans to buy anything that we could no pay off by the end of the month.

Our lifestyle was simple and had been simple for several years, so we had very little to give up when we actually retired.  In other words, we sacrificed nothing to retire like some people have to do.  In fact, we did not change our lifestyle at all.

IF YOU ARE WANTING TO RETIRE, IT IS NEVER TOO EARLY TO START PLANNING FOR THAT EVENTUALITY...