Would'ja if ya could?

musing on another up stock market day for my employers stock (this after a nice steady run up over the past few months)...

Getting to that age when people start asking, "So when you plan to retire?" Hey! I'm not that old! Sure I'm the north side of 50. Err, 50-something. What's this fascination with retirement? What's with this expectation of early retirement?

At least people aren't asking anymore about what I fouled up in the wild run up in price prior to Y2K. /heh/

People would say after that monster stock run up, "Oh you work at XYZ company since 1991? Wow...."

Then the bright ones would pause and as the realization hit them, I was:
a) still working and
b) had stalled in Engineering position and not been made a VP or director.
That unspoken thought would flash across their faces. One or two actually did say something to the effect, "What did you do wrong? You should either be retired or a VP by now."

Meh. Retirement looks overrated to me anyway. I have a bunch of friends who had better financial sense/timing who were able to retire early.
Early. Like 40's early. Comfortably.

On balance -- 10 years later? Not uniformly the happiest bunch. Sure some seem content. However, several (most?) are back to working at something regular just for to keep themselves sane.

Me? I reckon I'll retire the day they throw dirt in my face. Yeah, back in '99 and 2000 with the stock market rising and the possibility of retiring around 50 it looked pretty good. Not so much anymore. Work is good for the soul.

It's academic now anyway. Like many boomers, working into traditional retirement years might be my only choice.

In anycase, I think I'd like to stay in the saddle as long as physically possible. Perhaps I'll change focus to have more people/relationship/helps type work. Heh, who am I kidding? I'd likely have to change fields anyway if I get cut loose from this job. Most of the need for my industry specific knowledge has relocated to Asia.

Still...
It's days like this in the market for my company stockplan and my401K that I think. "Hmmmm... A couple more days like this -- maybe I'll take a week off before the funeral."

Ya know, just for GP.