Ask HN: What is your retirement plan? After retirement, what?

Currently dumping $20,000 a year into 401k. Planning on a 65 max retirement age with a goal of 55. 7% rough interest over 32 years would net me $3.5 million by 65, or $1.6m around 55. A 9% average return would net $5.8 and $2.5 respectfully.

Overall I expect that I should be able to happily draw $140,000+ a year during retirement and have that NEVER run out. My wife is a teacher and should be able to pull $40,000-50,000 during retirement as well. Medical would be taken through her retirement plan. Household income between $150,000 and $200,000 during retirement.

Honestly? I don't want to retire. Why would I? I love working on computers, from my basement office and working remotely is great. I have a kid, I would expect to take 2-3, months off a year for less money, but that's not a problem to me.

What would I do with retirement? Clean my house more? walk my dogs more? travel more? Maybe? Work is great and just find something / someone you like working for, have enough fuck you money to not care if you get fired and the rest is gravy.

I think I'm far more likely to leave the programming career (web development) and pursue a masters in something like quantum computing or physics than I am to retire.

When I feel safe enough to do so, I'm leaving the engineering field completely. Hopefully I can find interesting work where I can take large swaths of time off when the kids are out of school. Really the job itself is there to entertain the brain and provide insurance.

After I do that for a while, I'll enjoy the world and what it has to offer. Whatever that means, with whatever savings is still available.

Who knows. I make descent money, but supporting a family of 4 with it so only goes so far. I save to a degree, but it also seems so insurmountable to ever save nearly enough and with the way costs of everything are rising even more so. Simply healthcare & food are crazy. Then my kids education before too long.

I have almost come to terms with I just need to live now and stop the voices of all the people that put this shit in my head for the last 40 years of "oh just do X and it's easy to retire! then that's when you life can start!". Life was completely different when I grew up- people had jobs with pensions, healthcare was all in, education was cheap.

But it's hard to push that shit away in your head. Plus I don't trust financial markets worth a damn. I work in the industry, this entire concept of "investing" that the rich have shoved into the middle class is absolutely disgusting and not the way the world should work.

So there's that.

I intend on having a fruitful, storied academic career before suddenly going mad. I then would abandon everything and live on a mountain, making jam by day and writing insane ramblings on a variety of topics that nobody cares about. Eventually I'd like to graduate to becoming one of those yogis that wanders around the Himalayas butt-naked in the snow, but that might be thinking too far into the future.

I'm going to second this one. A physics professor friend who taught me electronics when I was a kid is now "retired", as in still coming in to the university several days a week, but only to do the interesting things they want to, rather than needing to because their boss says so.

One of the perks of academia. You can retire, but prevent boredom.

Any plans to make some chaotic scribblings on a chalkboard that people realize 50 years later is the solution to a long-unsolved question in quantum physics?

I'm 55. I plan on working until 70 (that'll probably be the minimum retirement age for full social security by then anyway). In January of 2038, the year I retire, the unixtime bug will show up for anything running a 32-bit OS and I'll charge a shitload of cash to consult to fix the bug for my last few months (from Jan (when the bug happens) until May (my 70th birthday)).

My house is paid off (bought in 1999, paid extra each month, just paid it off a couple of years ago (30-year mortgage paid off in 23 years)) and both of my kids will be finished with college in the summer of 2030, so that gives me around 8 years to save up. I'm not putting any faith in my 401k or any investments. If they pan out, then cool, but having cash-in-hand when I retire is much more comforting.

After retirement, I plan on staying un-injured and not falling for any money-stealing scams for as long as possible. I'll write software when I feel like it. I'll experiment with new tech if and when it's cool enough to pry myself away from chatting up my fellow retirees and drinking excessively.

Based on your last statement yoh likely won't make it past 75

Maxing my 401k, and we're trying to buy rental houses whenever we have enough money and credit. Hopefully someday we can get enough that my wife can retire first, and then I can retire. We'll see.

A quick wish list of things I'd love to do when I retire (of course this is a long ways away right now, so it's very tentative): - Focus more on exercise and health. - Hike and camp more, and enjoy the beautiful parks the U.S. has to offer. - Motorcycle around, maybe go on long road trips. - Connect with my kids more, and help them with their own kids. - Be more social, and have people over more often. - Keep contributing to open source. - Cultivate my drawing and writing skills - Maybe move to Europe for a bit. I love the idea of living in someplace like the Irish countryside, with their beautiful culture, history, and landscape.

I always joke about never retiring and dying at my desk.

But given my family history, it's not ha-ha funny insomuch as 50/50.

It may be bad for the person who finds me, but think how I'll feel.

Nothing. I plan to bank enough to live modestly off the returns and focus my life on my spouse and kid. I'll travel, farm my average and relax. I'll do it when the accounts are full and the bills are covered.

Male. 35 years old. Married. Single income. 4 kids. Bought a fixer upper house last year. Zero saved. I don’t think I’ll be able to retire till I’m 85.

If human spaceflight is sufficiently affordable 30 years from now, and I'm still alive for it, I intend to book myself a one-way trip to Enceladus to be an ice fisherman.

No plans, other than maxing my 401k and IRA. I try to ride the line of saving while also not letting life pass me by. I'm doing enough to where I won't be in dire straits, but I can't suffer in the hopes of retiring early. Just not something I'm willing to do while I'm young and healthy.

I would like to contribute to rewilding projects like https://www.americanprairie.org/ and build software to support them or if possible buy land directly for them and establish more throughout the US.

No plans, can't even afford to think about it yet.

Initially at least I want to be able to pay off a mortgage and own my own house, so that whatever retirement ends up being, will have to be much less.

I'm a postdoc in Portugal who by a mistake - not really mine, although I should have spotted the problem earlier - doesn't even qualify for pensions yet. My contract likely ends before I qualify, but if I qualify my pension would be around 500 EUR/month.

My current retirement plan is to work outside of academia until I die.

> What age are you planning to retire?

Plan on retiring before 40.

> What are you doing to get there?

Maxing all retirement accounts, putting leftover money into taxable accounts, and letting compound interest do it's thing.

> What do you plan to do after retirement?

This is definitely an open question, and I sometimes feel uncomfortable when I think about it. Saving for retirement is my life goal and when I achieve it, I bet I will soon feel empty. That multi-decade challenge that took thousands of hours will be completed, and now what? I don't know how I am going to fill my weekdays for another possibly 50-60 years. It will be a great problem to have, I just don't have a solution yet.

Honestly, I don't ever expect to be able to retire. I've followed financial the advice of my financial planners, targeting retirement at 67 in another quarter decade, and I expect housing costs and inflation to eat up all of my savings to the point where I will still need to work.

I haven't been able to purchase a home due to medical debt and the market conditions when I entered industry and the subsequent surges in home prices, so that's a large part of it, and I'm far too old where a bank will be comfortable giving me a thirty year mortgage, so my options are to rent or be homeless. That's a large part of it.

I implore you, if you're under the age of 30, buy a home now. Eat ramen for several years if you have to. Otherwise you will never retire.

>targeting retirement at 67 in another quarter decade ... I'm far too old where a bank will be comfortable giving me a thirty year mortgage

If you're 42 now, you're in no sense too old to get a 30 year mortgage - who told you that? In any case, it's literally illegal under Federal law to use age as a factor when making a credit decision.

I was a consultant at a FinTech startup who had a full-time loan specialist who told me she wrote a 30 year loan to someone in their 70's.

I wish someone gave me that advice when I was 30. Well, probably I wouldn't have listened.

> I'm far too old where a bank will be comfortable giving me a thirty year mortgage

I wouldn't assume this, you can always try. The criteria will be based on your income and savings and the cost of the home at the time of the mortgage. You may need to move to a lower cost of living area than wherever you are now, though.

If you don't mind me asking how old are you (I presume somewhere in 40s?)? This is scary as hell, to hear banks refuse loans due to age.

They don't. It's about finances, not age. If you die before you can finish paying off the mortgage they don't care, they'll either get the property or a payout from your estate.

>I expect housing costs and inflation to eat up all of my savings to the point where I will still need to work.

You keep cash in your mattress or what? You worked and lived through one of the greatest bull runs in history, did you really not put a penny into a 401k or IRA??

Do you live in Aspen or something? Making minimum wage in nyc? Assuming you are a "normal software person" like OP is asking, that seems a little bit dramatic for the average software career in 99.99% of cities on earth.

"What age" is biased. You should open the question to include the option of "Never" because if you love what you do, why should you ever stop?

To obey some societal expectations?

I'd be happy to stop working on someone else's projects and work on on things that solve problems I care about.

The "you should have a job and it should give you meaning" thing is the societal expectation that needs the most interrogation.