Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I'm kinda fascinated by the prospect of my retirement, in the same way I'm fascinated by a car wreck and can't look away.  

I'm "semi-retired" now. Which is not retired, really, as I still have to think about work.

So what are you working for?

I'm "semi-retired" now. Which is not retired, really, as I still have to think about work.

My father-in-law is "semi-retired," which to me looks mostly like his pre-retirement.  He started some kind of logistics company for trucking/shipping years ago and worried they wouldn't "let" him retire, by which he meant they would rely too much on him and he wouldn't be able to bring himself to pull the trigger on them.  So he moved from Denver to Colorado Springs and commuted the last few years he worked full-time, thinking that adding distance would subliminally get in their heads and they'd start to consider him as an old man who's not gonna want to make that drive much longer.  Then he retired, and the people in charge at that point offered to let him work remotely on a flexible schedule.  (I say "let him"....I think he still owns 1/3 or 1/2 of the company, and I don't know how they'd stop him, exactly.)  Now he works from home M-Th, which, I mean, doesn't seem like retirement.  

But it's his choice and I know it's because he enjoys it.  And because he was obsessed to an unhealthy degree with golf, which he gave up, and now I don't think he has enough other interests to keep him going.  Unfortunately he has virtually no relationship with 2 of his 3 kids, and his relationship with my wife and her kids isn't ideal, mostly due to the fact that he's married to a crazy woman.  

Financially, he did great.  He works purely because he wants to, and as far as I can tell he's set for life several times over.  He lives in a gorgeous, massive home on some beautiful acreage, a setup I could only dream of affording even with both of us working, and every couple of years he randomly gifts his children a chunk of money, just because I suppose he has it and because he can.  Personally, his situation is a runaway dumpster fire, to the point that we have to receive the money he gives to his son and other daughter and distribute it to them, because he can't contact them directly.  That's as much on his end as it is on their end.  I shake my head and try not to judge because I don't have kids and who knows if I'd have done any better.  I do note they don't mind taking his money, even if they don't talk to him.  It's kinda weird, because my sister-in-law is married to a very wealthy man and they can hardly notice the money he occasionally doles out.  For me and my wife, it's like holy-cow-this-is-quite-a-gift money.  For my brother-in-law, it's basically life-changing money every time it happens.  

I'd be more than lucky to wind up where he is, $-wise.  Otherwise, he's almost like a What Not To Do warning avatar.   

I split the social security posts off and merged them into the Federal Debt / Deficit Thread. 

Let's continue making this about discussions about retirement and not politics. 

I had an annuity, with the money i put in split 50/50 into the conservative and aggressive options, through maybe Great American....anyway, I moved and forgot to update it, so it just didn't do anything.  And they stopped doing them, so it was hard to get someone on the phone who knew anything about it.

I ended up getting mad at them and myself and just cashing it out.  

I thought it was a good idea/timing, about 20 years out from retirement.  Just a big nothing burger, it turns out.  

I'm so financially illiterate.  

My IRAs are Roth.

who here contributes to a Roth 401(k) vs exclusively into a traditional 401(k)?  I'm not talking about a Roth IRA account in a self-directed brokerage (though I do do back door each year)

I now like contributing to both with my DC plan.    can't make every single decision based on where tax rates might be in 5, 10, 20 years, but I like the idea of shielding (some) future retirement savings from RMDs.

My wife's 401k is Roth, though she has the option for either.  I told her to do Roth, because I differ from you in that I do count on taxes to be worse in the future, or at least a thing I'd rather not deal with in retirement.  We're more capable of getting taxed on higher income now than I think we will be in our waning years, thus.....Roth.  

I have a Roth IRA, and one thing that hasn't been brought up in this thread is the silly much lower annual cap on IRA contributions compared to 401k's.  I don't understand why that is at all.  Penalizing self-employed people is generally a bad thing. 

I currently work for a public university, so I technically work for the state.  We have the TRS retirement plan which vests at a higher percentage over time, with a 5 year minimum.  There's also an option to additionally invest in something else--I forget what it's called--which is like a 401k, but it's the public/state version so it's not called a 401k.  I don't make a whole lot, so I don't put much into that.  The TRS is not optional, that's deducted from my check automatically.  

My dilemma right now is, I don't overly care for this job, for a number of reasons.  If I had the chance, I'd most likely jump to something else.  Due to the 5-yr minimum on the TRS thing, if I do leave within 5 years, every deduction from my check that's going to TRS is just money I pissed away.  One option is to stay for at least 5 years.  The downside there is I'm not getting any younger, and age discrimination might be illegal, nevertheless it's a thing in any sort of tech-adjacent field.  It will only be worse in 4.5 more years.  Another option is to leave and do something else (if I even had the chance), but the downside there is every day I work here is more $ I've put into TRS which I'll never see any benefit from if I don't stay here at least 5 years, so the longer I work here, it's almost like I'm more compelled to at least hit that mark.