S/O retirement, when did/ will your parents and ILs retire?

[Philly Mom]

My mom hasn’t worked in a paying job in 48 years when she had her first child. She did significant volunteer work through her late 50s and then started playing golf about 20 years ago. She plays golf and cards. She has a very active social life. We joke we want to be her when we grow up. My dad is in his late 70s. He will never retire by choice. He has decreased his responsibilities and works remotely as much as he can. He loves to work and would drive my mother crazy if he didn’t. Most of his friends are retired and the ones he relates to the most wish they weren’t. Both my grandfathers worked until they died by choice.


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[klwa]

My parents both retired from their main jobs after 30 years. My dad was 49 and my mom was 53ish. Daddy then went to work full time until he turned 62. Momma worked part time at odd jobs. She was working back with the school system as a part-time reading teacher because they couldn't afford to bring in a full-time person (& she thought it was important to have a reading coach in the school) up until she died at 62.5.

My in-laws: FIL retired in his early 50s from the state, then went to work full time with a consulting firm until he hit 62. He's gone back a few times part time to help out since. (The owner of the company has had some health issues, and trusted him to run the projects until he could get back, etc.) MIL retired completely at 60, with 25 years of service.

[AnnieW625]

My fil retired from federal service (FAA) when he was 55 in 2003. He started in the Air Force when he was 18 and was active for 6 years and then in the reserves for 14. He worked in the private sector for a bit while he was in the reserves but then got hired on with the FAA not too long after getting out of the military. He had 35 or so years of service iirc. My fil just turned 72.

My mil retired from state government in 2003 when she was 57. She had 37 years of service. She started working at 20-21 and then took minimal time off when she had kids; I think 6 weeks with both and went back to work as quickly as possible (her aunt watched my bil and my dh). My mil is 74.

My mom is 67 and was medically retired in 2017 at age 65 due to having Cushings Syndrome (thankfully she is fine now!). She originally worked in billing/credit for a department store chain in the early to mid 70s and left when I born in 1977. She went back to work part time (like 10 hours a week) when I was 17. The following year she went up to 24 hours and then finally between 32-40 hours until 2016 when she got sick. She was an office manager for a few different companies during that time span.

My dad is 69 and probably officially left full time work in 2009. He was in full time beer/wine sales from 1972 to 2009. He still works part time at Costco and other super markets doing beer/wine/food demos and classes for local distributors. He loves it and he will probably do it until he dies. He also worked on the 2010 census, but am not sure if he will do it again this year.


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[Snow mom]

My dad retired in his mid or late 50s, my mom retired in her mid 50s. Both went back to work part time pretty quickly and found some other ways to fill their time (classes, volunteering). My ILs are still working. They are younger than my parents and also not as well off. They had a late in life lay-off that has extended how long they will need to work.

[belovedgandp]

My father is 76. He worked for himself for over 40 years. He definitely slid slowly into retirement. His number of paying jobs decreased and his hobby time increased over the last ten years of his business. He officially shut it down at 74. My mom is 74 and retired at 64; this was from her second career she had for 20 years after being a SAHM for 18 years. They both keep plenty busy. Both still do a lot of volunteer jobs. They were extremely conservative with finances and big savers. To the point it aggravates my brother that they aren't spending more of their money now.

My ILs are still working and will because they have zero financial security. FIL is 71 and works FT. MIL is 69 and works a 3/4 time job.

[basil]

My mom retired at 60 from teaching. State pension plan made it really difficult for her to continue after that. She had a difficult time adjusting at first, did some part time consulting work for many years for a small private school in the area. Now at 68 is embracing it more, but also busy doing part time caring for my grandmother (98, lives semi-independently but needs help with doctors' appts, etc) and my uncle who just moved to a nursing home.

My dad has always been the one with the Hobbies, always made fun of himself for how much time he spent "thinking about his hobbies", but hasn't found it in himself to retire. He will be 70 soon. I think it helps that his job is very flexible (he does academic research) and he has valuable specific expertise that not many people have. I think that aspect is probably very rewarding (being the expert/mentor to the next few generations in his field), and since he can basically take off whenever he would like, there isn't a ton of downside to staying.

[hellokitty]

My mom was a sahm, sometimes she'd help my dad at his office, but it was never formal employment. My dad retired when he was about 70 years old, not by choice, but bc he ran his practice into the ground and we had begged him to retire for over 5 years by then. So, he did it kicking and screaming and was a total ass about it for about 5 years. Then all of a sudden they decided to move closer to my brother who lives in one of the most expensive metro areas on the east coast and build a big ass house (instead of downgrading to a condo, which is what we wanted). His health took a nosedive right around that time, and against our wishes, he went along with this plan anyway. He is now 79, has a complex medical history, is medically fragile, including being on dialysis, has heart disease, and has been diagnosed with early stages of dementia and can barely walk. My mother is sick and tired of being his nursemaid, other than being mentally tapped out from being married to my dad for almost 50 years and dealing with him, my mom is physically healthy. He has been an unpleasant person for as long as I can remember that nobody likes and has just gotten even meaner with age. My mom was miserable when he first retired, bc all he did was pick at her, even more, all day. Due to his health, we think he probably only has a few years left at best, but IDK, being in healthcare, the meanest ones can hang on for the longest time, just out of spite.

My mil retired at age 65, got herself a boob job and other plastic surgery. I think that fil retired around 70, but he had been tapering down bc he opened a small shop with another person so it was his own hours, thankfully they did downgrade to a condo, He was miserable after he finally closed up his shop, bc he was stuck with mil 24/7, previous to that he always had 2 jobs so he didn't have to spend time with her. Mil is now 75, and about 2 years ago developed a-fib and being a hypochondriac it has set off a marathon of her rationalizing that now she had to see every single specialist under the sun. None of them could find anything physically wrong with her, which made her even more mad. She has been treated for her afib and it is being managed, but is convinced that she is not ok. I basically think that bc she is so vain, she is not happy about the entire aging process so is having one long temper tantrum about the mere fact that she is aging (normally). One of the many neurologists she finally saw put her on meds for bipolar (mil does not realize this) and it has helped a lot. She even told DH that this doctor is her favorite one, bc she actually "did" something about it, lol. This explains so much about why she has been a difficult, mean-spirited drama queen to deal with during the almost 30 years that I have known her. She carries the longevity gene, so will probably live well into her 90's or even 100 and she still keeps bugging us about letting her move in with us. I told DH when we first got married 20 years ago that if his mother moved in with us, it's grounds for divorce. My in-laws call my husband about 3-4x a day, mostly about mil whining that she needs to see another doctor and she keeps asking him who she should see next, and he told her nobody, bc she has seen them all, has taken PTO time off and wasted it to go to these specialists for them to say that everything is fine. She has been convinced for the past 20 years that she has Alzheimer's, even though every doctor says that she doesn't. What kind of effed up person wants to have Alzheimer's????

Sadly, our parents retiring has not been a pleasant process, bc they are not busy with work or other daily activities like they were previously they are bored and unhappy and try to suck us into their misery. We are all just fed up with it, they are sucking the life out of all of their adult kids. The only thing that is ok is that it seems like both sets are ok financially, but my parents making the stupid decision to build a McMansion to retire in, instead of downgrading, while refusing to de-clutter stuff before they moved the way they should have means that they have simply deferred the misery of that being something that we have to do when the #@$% hits the fan. My mom has already told us that after my dad dies, she has no desire to live in a giant house by herself and she only went along with it, bc that is what he wanted.

[DualvansMommy]

My dad still works at 84, although much reduced capacity. He owns a busy restaurant with his wife in their home country, so won’t ever retire ever as no plans to sell it. His wife is 24 years younger, so he signed over most of ownership and shares to her, and is leaving the decision of keeping or running it up to her after he’s gone. They only cover the restaurant every August to allow management take their vacations. They live in Florida 80%, so travel and golf, social lives keeps them busy.

My mum did retire from her job as a psychotherapist full time when she was 65 or so. But became quite bored, gained lot of weight from mindless snacking, and decided to return back to same employer as a contractor employee. Only works 3 days a week and she’s 76 now, although her health issues is starting to pop up more frequently with more longer hospital stays. She also travels a lot, but that had slowed down significantly though to just 2 flying trips a year.

My in-laws retirement is very different and not what I want to do. MIL retired at 60 from her paralegal career, and moved to a smaller paid off townhome with FIL. By then her kids was in college/graduated college. FIL retired as a teacher in his early 60’s and was supposed to retire at 65 to get the full pension. He couldn’t deal with the changing school politics, technology so retired at 61 with lifetime medical benefits and 80% of his pension. That was 30 years ago, and they did nothing basically apart from traveling to Florida for a month every year. They’ve watched their niece’s kids as she lived in same town as them, but that wasn’t a daily occurrence. No idea how they stayed sane without anything to occupy them, but MIL did get more into cooking which was her passion.


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[KrisM]

My dad retired from Ford in 2007, figuring it was the best buy-out plan he'd see for a long time! I'm sure it was a good decision knowing how the economy went from then on. He was 59 and had 23 years at Ford. He did some part-time contract work for 3-4 years and finally stopped working at about age 63.

My mom worked until 62, which is when my dad stopped his contract work.

I never knew my in-laws to work. Going on fuzzy memory, I think my FIL stopped in 1985 or so? He would have been 62 that year. i have no idea about my MIL. She was 70 when I met her and was not working then.

[marinkitty]

My mom (college prof) retired at 61 - she and my dad had a whole vision of their retirement mapped out that they sacrificed for and it didn't really pan out for them - it's a cautionary tale about living too much for the future for sure (she's 76 now). My dad (chemist/lab director who ended up on the management side of things) was retired early with a package by his company at 55 and then went on to a second career (going back to the lab) until he was 66. He was not a happy retiree - didn't really find his stride and then he died at 70.