Gary,
I officially retired at age 58 and have never looked back-this year I turned 74. When I left my career I walked out and never looked back. To this day I do not miss it and often wonder how I put up with all the BS associated with it. Since retiring I have done many things - but nothing I do not wish to do or enjoy doing. I tell everyone I can - get out of the working world as soon as you can and start living a life you really enjoy. Now I know financial issues are always an issue with retiring and what we did was to take a serious look at what we were spending money on and how that could be adjusted to fall within what we knew we would have coming in. It was simple and easy and I can truly say we have not had to do without anything we needed or wanted since then. It is all about life style and staying out of debt. I could go on but you get the point. Yes, I gig out regularly - but do so for fun and the money allows me to pay cash for equipment and a lot of other things my wife and I do. As you know, I did a few other things since retiring - worked part time for a local Best Buy store which was a blast and spent a lot of the money buying techy things from them at employee cost. Left that when it became boring.

For me retiring at age 58 was the best thing I have ever done for myself and I have zero regrets about it.

Deane