Enjoying Retirement

I'm finally within touching distance of retirement.

As of today I have 21 working days left!

After applying for voluntary separation in 2019, being accepted and then at the very last, the offer being withdrawn, I have been trying to be relaxed about my prospects this time.

However, HR have approved the deal, I've been working with my replacement to handover my role, so it seems that it really is going to happen this time.

My wife will continue working for a year or two so it will be a bit of a "hybrid" retirement for me until she escapes.

Because of what happened in 2019 I haven't really thought too much about future plans, but now it's so close, I have been brain dumping all the things I want to do and it's fair to say I think retirment will be fairly busy.

Roll on December 20th!

What are people's experiences where their partner continues to work? My wife's a little younger than me and would probably continue to work for a while longer after I retire.

If it was the other way round I think I'd be OK, but there's maybe a part of me that thinks I wish it was me who'd retired.

There's no issue with money, we're covered either way,

Noting the above discussion about disposal of cars it will be an issue for me in the next few years I expect. An in my 76th year and have a bunch of cars that I bought new - the oldest is from 2003 and newest is from six months ago. Insurance costs are non- trivial though I store three here for winter and two for summer at the Arizona house.

I have one big track event next year when I will ship a car back to Europe but after that will start to get harder to do this kind of stuff. I think I will start to dispose of the Porsches first, probably the Panamera ST, 992RS,997RS, replace the 2004 Smart with some kind of very small EV for the city. This would leave me with a 21 year old SL 500, 11 year Jeep Wrangler, 12 year old 991RS and a 2022 Cayenne GTS.
No manual cars,no fixed buckets, no super edgy stuff. The last RS has comfort seats so everything is easy to get into.

I have no great interest in the latest and quickest as the existing cars are already better than I am a driver at this stage. I still do long distances no problem-heading for PhilAdelphia this morning (800km which I will do straight through), and will drive the dog down to Arizona for the winter (3700 each way).

This brings me to the question of dogs.I have had Great Danes for many years and my present dog is 10.
I have resigned myself to no more huge dogs because another one might well outlive me and would be a handful for an 80 year old. My younger wife (66) does not want the burden of a new high-energy giant so after this it will be some kind of little dog she can manage. Evidently the long trek to AZ would no longer be necessary so the little dog could fly.

I have a fair number of contemporaries at this stage so am very familiar with the vagaries of the ageing process. So far so good. The AZ house is a single story so no stairs but the house here is a Victorian from 1890 with three flights of stairs .This will ultimately become an issue so no doubt the house will go and be replaced by a condo I expect. We are both city people -everything is very convenient from shopping to having hospitals five minutes away. I have noticed with older friends the concern about access to convenient services when they live farther away.

No regret overall -worked till last year from age of 11 in multiple countries and bloody loved it, but in the end age out as happens.There are still plenty of places I will try to see such as the Atacama desert in Chile.

Trying to figure out what to do with stuff is a conundrum though. I have a full wine cellar -should have stopped buying years ago and OH does not drink.. The Covid period pretty much killed dinner parties so I am giving a lot of wine to friends this winter. Buying no more.

All sorts of stuff has to go ultimately -antique tinplate toy cars, huge library with many Porsche books , loads of memorabilia. My son has no interest in any of this crap so best to deaccession over the next while.

It is ridiculous how this stuff accumulates. I did at least plan my wine cellar based on age from when I was about 45. I realized that vintage port for example is 30-40 years to mature so I stopped at 1994 which I still have and bought some 1970 and 1963 which were cheap at the time and have those too. No idea if I will drink many of them.

These are the concerns when I can no longer claim to be middle-aged. I do not feel more than mild nostalgia.the cars will all exercised -lots and lots of track and rallying and hopefully someone else will enjoy them


I never waited to do things-no bucket list as I was aware that time is the most precious thing. There are things I could not do now like driving an ancient Mahindra Jeep in the desert in Rajasthan and a sleeping out there to wake up for some camel milk chai pretty much straight from the camel or crazy risks driving cars when I was young, or epic nights in pubs everywhere that would kill me now. Recently got together with some old mates in Montreal whom I have known for almost 60 years and of course we could not do anything even slightly resembling a pub crawl.

I had really no ageing issue before the last couple of years and there is nothing horribly wrong-irregular heartbeat which can be medicated and not serious enough to be operated. Still , joints are more creaky and I have a trainer who stretches me three times a week.

I know my track days are ending but was a huge amount of fun when it lasted. Well, have to get on the road for 800km to Philadelphia.

Congratulations J4 - it will probably not sink in until you do not need to get ready for work on 2nd January 2024!

This is turning into a year of 2 halves, started with surgery for prostate cancer (gents if you haven’t had a blood test for PSA recently get yourself down the surgery, I had no symptoms and it was only due to the diligence of my surgery that the big C isn’t coursing through my body!).

And on a happier note, I’ve been selected to represent Wales over 60s at walking football (no giggling at the back ). First international cap at the age of 61, who’d have thought it

Congratulations and hopefully welcome you to the club next month!

I think winter is quite a good time to first retire as the excitement of not having to work offsets the short days and not being able to do all the things that you want to do. That said, I made full use of the sunshine yesterday and that’s one of the joys of having the ability to choose to do things based on the weather, not work deadlines.

You are right about the wine - I’m lucky enough to have a decent cellar and so have already stopped buying port (last vintage 2017) as I’ll be 75-80 by the time it’s fully mature. I buy ‘en primeur’ wine in the spring after harvest and keep it for 10-20 years to mature before drinking, so will have to slow down on that soon too.

I’d like to time it so that my last bottle(s) are drunk shortly before I expire!

My mum and dad have been doing this and really thinning out their stuff and getting rid of it.

In fact a coup,e of months ago mum said that she had just thrown out all the love letters that dad sent her when they were courting. She didn’t want my sister and I reading them all after she died. I found that quite a sobering thought to be honest as, for the first time, I thought of my parents not being here.

Thank you.

I'm enjoying the final few days and looking forward to my permanent holiday!

Me too - Covid was a fantastic trial for being around each other 24/7 - even though I was working, I was still 'in her space' and it worked out better than either of us expected. Retirement seemed more natural than going back to commuting.