When do you plan to retire?

[FatherPsychiatry]

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Lots of interesting financial discussions in other threads, but I am curious about your thoughts regarding when you plan to retire. Obviously we can never know for certain but I think a lot of us have rough estimates (ie, "FI" by age / year x, etc). I think psychiatry, compared to most (if not all) other medical specialties is you can really practice in some way until you're dead. During my residency there was a 70+ year old attending who we thought died multiple times while/after seeing patients but he was actually just asleep.

Poll is broad but you could delve into nuances like, cutting back from FT at age 48, then coasting at 50% until fully cutting the cord at 60 etc.

Me - thinking I'll hit FI in my early 50s (~10 years) but I'm enjoying living large and don't experience much stress at my job, so could see myself doing this at least till 55 easy. Probably cut to 50-80% by then to enjoy time with the kids when they are teens and starting college. Then, I don't know, either go back to 80-100% or even down to 20%-ish. Unless things really change a lot in the field or I get some bad disability, or I find some huge new passion, I don't think I'll ever fully stop practicing.

 

[comp1]

I think retirement is exceedingly challenging to do right. Finances are not the issue, at least for professionals. The issue is finding meaning outside work. One day can be very long and kids/grandkids have their own lives. I've seen many, many people fail spectacularly at this. Heck, retirement failure is a core part of my practice. Personally, I don't think I'm strong or smart enough for retirement, so I'm definitely looking at 70+ if I survive that long. My family practice grandfather died about 3 months after retirement and that's probably the way to do it.

 

[calvnandhobbs68]

Yeah I mean with psych it's so easy to even just have a very part time outpatient practice or do some intermittent contract work coverage, I feel like a lot of people don't truly "retire" completely. Definitely one of the major benefits of psychiatry as a specialty.

It also alleviates basically any financial stress as you can still clear 100-200K working 1-2 days/week and not even have to touch your retirement accounts yet depending on your lifestyle if you're partially retired.

 

[Merovinge]

I have absolutely no idea what I will do once we are empty nester's in our early-mid 50's since I expect my partner to be long since retired. Toying around the idea of buying a 40-50' trawler and puttering around the Mediterranean for a year or two, but who knows, tech might be good enough for me to still work a day or so a week while doing that 🤣 .

 

[TexasPhysician]

I voted based on “partially retiring”. I have no interest right now in ever fully retiring. Hoping to be doing well enough by early 50’s to do whatever I want.

 

[finalpsychyear]

Everything should be laddering up and then laddering down. Thats my goal. This allows you to figure out outside hobbies, activities and social groups.

People that find issues go to extremes. 50-60 hours to 0. You need time to adjust to the free time as odd as that sounds and then you can slowly drop clinical time as you have time for other activities/hobbies/learning/volunteer etc. You might surprise yourself and find you actually start enjoying work more once you reach the point of it making little to no differencec in your finances and/or balanced with a good chunk of free time for other interests the other days.

I've always been about reaching FIRE asap while not sacrificing the present. Retirement is a process. I plan to start dabbling with it in the next 5 years as its equally important to me to maintain prime level physical fucntion perhaps even more so then the actual retirement numbers.

 

[Bartelby]

The idea of having a 3-day or even 4-day weekend every week sounds appealing. I could probably switch to that now, but would still like to save more and find it tough to decide what I would give up in terms of professional commitments to trim down to less than 5 days per week.

So probably by my 50s I want to work 4 days per week or less, but I am not sure if I will actually stop working unless health or other external conditions prevent it.

 

[finalpsychyear]

The idea of having a 3-day or even 4-day weekend every week sounds appealing. I could probably switch to that now, but would still like to save more and find it tough to decide what I would give up in terms of professional commitments to trim down to less than 5 days per week.

So probably by my 50s I want to work 4 days per week or less, but I am not sure if I will actually stop working unless health or other external conditions prevent it.

I like it. Lets say markets keep the overall trajectory upside going aside from 12-18 mo bear market coming soon imo.

2030: 4 day week hopefully in fire territory
2033: 3 day. Work for fun
2035: 1-2 day. Work for cog stim