One thing I'm observing is a lot of people here who had kids late in life, or at least their last one late. I think that definitely impacts retirement and boat buying. You wonder from generation to generation. Today we're seeing people wait until later to marry, although not necessarily waiting to have kids. It's a double edged sword as to when to have children. People wait until they feel more stable and financially able to support them, but then that impacts at the other end as they think about retirement. One isn't going to go cruise the world while they still have children in high school and most aren't going to while they're in college. Plus even after they finish school there is generally some time required to build that nest egg where one wants it for retirement.
So, we adopted our daughter from China. She has been the absolute light of my life since Day One! Believe me, there is no possible combination of our genes that could have done half as well. Her name, in Mandarin, means "Little Elegant" or "Little Beautiful". So, we named the boat after her. She has taken to the boat wholeheartedly. She may know more about boats than some here, surely more than most guys she will meet. She will shock some guy when she pushes him out of the way and backs in a 50 footer perfectly! Single or twin! She fully understands and supports the fact that once she is off to college, we are off cruising. In today's times, you have to get pretty remote to be more than about 24 hours from wherever she is. So we figure wherever she ends up, we can get there from wherever we are just about as quickly as if we were still in Seattle.
I retired 3 years ago this coming June. I'm keeping up with the boat maintenance but we,spend everything I earn on retirement, including a drawn on the dividend income from the RRSP. I just picked up a couple of contracts which will help things a bit.
I am working for the boat. I'm doing many of the projects myself. For example, I rebedded all 7 Pilothouse windows and replace 4 panes that had clouded around the edges. Total materials were just under $700. I talked to another owner of a KK42 and he paid a shipwright $4,000 to do only the 3 forward windows and his completed work didn't look any different than mine. I figured I saved $8,600.
Jim
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I would have probably worked another 2-3 years but I was having to put in way too many hours and just got burned out. I won't rule out working part time if I found something tempting but I'm really enjoying not having a schedule to work to. I'm finally getting around to repairs around the house I've been putting off and also getting to work on the boat. In addition I have a bunch of other boats and motorcycles sitting around that will be spruced up and sold off. The real benefit to retirement though is having time to be with family and friends for sure.
Kevin
Some industries and some jobs don't lend themselves to part time work or part time employees.
Compare that to Berkshire-Hathaway, Warren Buffet, who acquires companies with strong management and then does no more than provide them with the resources to continue doing what they are doing, just more and better.