Hind sight is a great thing isn't it..
It torments people like hell on earth..I bet everyone would like the trip in the time machine to give your Useless git of self a kick up the .....
The question is would you listen to yourself if you could...
I used to say...If I had known what I know now I would have done it differently..A Jamaican guy I know said..I don't understand this saying...You didn't know so you did what you could to the best of what you understood then...
You know he is right...A better man than me..
Regards
M. Gregg
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Retirement sucks if you have no income.
I have been looking for work for 4 years with no success and over here I can't get any government assistance as my beloved earns a little too much money.
Truth to tell I hate not having a job, not just the money; but not using my work skills I trained so hard to acquire and hone and you can't do audio on a zero income and I hate begging my wife for the money to buy parts,glue and timber.
The government stole half my wages from me from when I started work at 15 and now I cannot get the pension even.
No wonder we all hate the government. In a previous life my ex-wife got the kids and house. Bitter old man just about sums it up
I have been looking for work for 4 years with no success and over here I can't get any government assistance as my beloved earns a little too much money.
Truth to tell I hate not having a job, not just the money; but not using my work skills I trained so hard to acquire and hone and you can't do audio on a zero income and I hate begging my wife for the money to buy parts,glue and timber.
The government stole half my wages from me from when I started work at 15 and now I cannot get the pension even.
No wonder we all hate the government. In a previous life my ex-wife got the kids and house. Bitter old man just about sums it up
I guy I know,
Could not get a job no matter what he did, so in the end he asked around if he could work for free because he was so bored..
Well eventually someone let him help out and after a while they said I don't understand why you can't get a job...I can't keep using you like this let me at least pay the minimum rate...I guess he was just lucky..he made contacts through the guy who he worked for and got a full time post.
Regards
M. Gregg
Could not get a job no matter what he did, so in the end he asked around if he could work for free because he was so bored..
Well eventually someone let him help out and after a while they said I don't understand why you can't get a job...I can't keep using you like this let me at least pay the minimum rate...I guess he was just lucky..he made contacts through the guy who he worked for and got a full time post.
Regards
M. Gregg
I'm 53 and my only hope is social security. Wife and I were 5 years from paying everything off but the conservative wave in 2000 ended that plan. I was laid off and there were no jobs for men pushing 50. So goodbye to the house watch the retirement funds vanish ect. Finally got hired part time 3 years ago and just started full time 2 weeks ago. It is 1/2 of what I use to make so I compensated by not buying anything unless I really want/need it. If we can stay healthy and working we may be able to buy some property.
This election will determine if it is possible or not.
This election will determine if it is possible or not.
I was sent to a "management seminar" by the National Film and Sound Archives where I worked at the time. The chap giving the talk was a high-flyer from Boeing Aerospace. He started by saying that his co-workers were the top in their field, they worked hard and were paid well. They all had plans for their retirements. Within 5 years of retirement age most of them were dead. He pointed out that we get one chance at this life, and if what you were doing now wasn't really what you wanted to do, it was time to move on.
It wasn't that much later that I moved on....
Terry
I've given this issue a lot of thought over recent years, I'm in my mid fifties and have spent my career mostly in electrical engineering R&D. I spent a few years in sustaining engineering after the last start up I worked for went under, and have been contracting for most of the past four years. Never dreamed I would end up back in R&D and doing medical robotics to boot, and as a direct employee.
Good engineers are getting hard to find around here and there is a lot of demand, this has worked in my favor despite my age.
Retirement plans aren't very formal, and I doubt I will ever fully retire if I can avoid it. I expect to do more tube audio design related consulting in the future than I currently have time for, this may even be fun as long as I can avoid dealing directly with the audiophools...
We have been extremely careful with our money over the years, and this has helped us to weather the turbulence of recent times well. We have one simple rule, if we can't afford to pay cash for something on the spot we don't do it - the mortgage on the house being the one obvious exception, and that will be paid off soon.
Making sure you have enough money is probably the biggest issue after health concerns in retirement. My dad has hammered this point home after 20+ yrs of retirement where he has never had to ask anyone for assistance of any sort. Many of us will live to be quite old (my dad is 86) so we need to think about this aspect more perhaps than previous generations did.
Good engineers are getting hard to find around here and there is a lot of demand, this has worked in my favor despite my age.
Retirement plans aren't very formal, and I doubt I will ever fully retire if I can avoid it. I expect to do more tube audio design related consulting in the future than I currently have time for, this may even be fun as long as I can avoid dealing directly with the audiophools...
We have been extremely careful with our money over the years, and this has helped us to weather the turbulence of recent times well. We have one simple rule, if we can't afford to pay cash for something on the spot we don't do it - the mortgage on the house being the one obvious exception, and that will be paid off soon.
Making sure you have enough money is probably the biggest issue after health concerns in retirement. My dad has hammered this point home after 20+ yrs of retirement where he has never had to ask anyone for assistance of any sort. Many of us will live to be quite old (my dad is 86) so we need to think about this aspect more perhaps than previous generations did.
someone from Seattle who was in my dorm at college later claimed they had a phone call from a high school buddy who dropped out of Harvard
claims his end of the converstion was something like, "it's nice that you have a contract for some software Bill but I think I'll stay and get my degree..."
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I expect to do more tube audio design related consulting in the future than I currently have time for, this may even be fun as long as I can avoid dealing directly with the audiophools...
i deal with those types quite often.....they call me on the phone, asks if i can build a tube amp for them, and then goes on a litany of tube preferences, how this tube sound better than that tube, how this caps are superior to that cap, they sound as if they knew a lot, so much so that i am tempted to tell them in their faces, if they knew so much why not build the amp themselves, but of course i have to politely turn them down, these are the kind of folks that never gets satisfied.....there are more to this than money alone....
jean-paul, thanks.
it seems every day there is some talk of cancer this or cancer that. tv, radio, newspaper magazines etc. There are the hot ones, breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer etc, a few years ago when almost everybody smoked, lung cancer was the hot topic. Kidney cancer is one of those funny ones that has no screening. Nobody looks for or tests for it. If it's found early, it's by accident and generally the survival rate is 90% or better. If found a bit later (3-5) years when symptoms start to appear and not ignored, survival is around 80%. Once it starts to leave the kidney things aren't so good. I am in the 80% catagory.
My clock is ticking a bit faster now and I have been motivated to finish some projects that I was thinking about for a while. One is a peamp based on OPC's headphone amp, and the other is some party speakers for my son (dual 15's and 24 inch EV horn). I will post some pics hear in a bit.
Next is a stereo amp using OPC's lme49830 lateral mosfet boards.
it seems every day there is some talk of cancer this or cancer that. tv, radio, newspaper magazines etc. There are the hot ones, breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer etc, a few years ago when almost everybody smoked, lung cancer was the hot topic. Kidney cancer is one of those funny ones that has no screening. Nobody looks for or tests for it. If it's found early, it's by accident and generally the survival rate is 90% or better. If found a bit later (3-5) years when symptoms start to appear and not ignored, survival is around 80%. Once it starts to leave the kidney things aren't so good. I am in the 80% catagory.
My clock is ticking a bit faster now and I have been motivated to finish some projects that I was thinking about for a while. One is a peamp based on OPC's headphone amp, and the other is some party speakers for my son (dual 15's and 24 inch EV horn). I will post some pics hear in a bit.
Next is a stereo amp using OPC's lme49830 lateral mosfet boards.
Retirement?????WHAZZZAT!
Seriously I wanted to retire at 50....well the 2000 stock market cured that thought. 55 came and went. I kept getting calls from "financial planners" that all wanted to tell me how to lose the rest of my retirement money, provided I give them some of it. The question often asked was "When do you plan to retire?" My answer used to be "Somewhere between 5 minutes and 5 years, the choice won't be mine" since we had a layoff every year for the last 11 years. Well those 5 years have passed, 60 is two months away, and we aren't laying off anymore. Now what??????? Do I walk away from a 6 figure salary in a job that I like? NFW, I might be blonde but I'm not stupid! So when do I retire......
My grandfather retired at age 82 when he sold his company. He died a year later since he had nothing left to live for. My father retired in his early 50's, but sat around doing nothing until that was all he could do. He also died at 83 but couldn't get off the couch for his last few years. I want to beat the 83 number. It seems that the extremes are not good, I'll aim for somewhere in the middle.
Either way I have had far too many of my friends pass on already. Many abused and neglected their bodies until it was too late. Some also fell into serious bad habits. I think a wise old person needs to challenge their mind and body daily. I plan to stay in shape, and keep working on my projects until I can't. One thing for sure, even after I got rid of tens of thousands, I still have enough tubes to blow up a couple a day for the rest of my life!
Seriously I wanted to retire at 50....well the 2000 stock market cured that thought. 55 came and went. I kept getting calls from "financial planners" that all wanted to tell me how to lose the rest of my retirement money, provided I give them some of it. The question often asked was "When do you plan to retire?" My answer used to be "Somewhere between 5 minutes and 5 years, the choice won't be mine" since we had a layoff every year for the last 11 years. Well those 5 years have passed, 60 is two months away, and we aren't laying off anymore. Now what??????? Do I walk away from a 6 figure salary in a job that I like? NFW, I might be blonde but I'm not stupid! So when do I retire......
My grandfather retired at age 82 when he sold his company. He died a year later since he had nothing left to live for. My father retired in his early 50's, but sat around doing nothing until that was all he could do. He also died at 83 but couldn't get off the couch for his last few years. I want to beat the 83 number. It seems that the extremes are not good, I'll aim for somewhere in the middle.
Either way I have had far too many of my friends pass on already. Many abused and neglected their bodies until it was too late. Some also fell into serious bad habits. I think a wise old person needs to challenge their mind and body daily. I plan to stay in shape, and keep working on my projects until I can't. One thing for sure, even after I got rid of tens of thousands, I still have enough tubes to blow up a couple a day for the rest of my life!
I had to take early retirement a few years ago but now being 4 years post op[heart surgery] and in the past year having been to the funerals of two ex work colleagues of a similar age I consider myself lucky to have been given a second chance even if the pension isn't all it could be.Lots of projects from this site to work on and I can go cycling again.
Getting old sucks. I've lost way too many friends in the last few years. One was found setting in his car on Sunday afternoon with his church clothes on ready to go. Dropped dead. His wife was out of town. Church members went by when they couldn't reach him. Non smoker, non drinker, yada, yada, yada....
Lost two to liver cancer. It goes fast. Again, no bad habits that could be causal.
Statistics only apply to large groups of people. For individuals it is a roll of the dice in the cosmic crap game.
That said, I still walk at lunch time when I can, etc.
I rode a bike for exercise for years but a Mazda MX-6 took care of that.
Lost two to liver cancer. It goes fast. Again, no bad habits that could be causal.
Statistics only apply to large groups of people. For individuals it is a roll of the dice in the cosmic crap game.
That said, I still walk at lunch time when I can, etc.
I rode a bike for exercise for years but a Mazda MX-6 took care of that.
Bought one or creamed by one??
It happens, I still haven't got back on a pushbike and I was knocked off years ago, I blame my wife; she has a nice Renault Megane that is fun to drive.
Consultants joke (bad one) "If civil engineers build bridges what do rude ones do?"
I am getting a bit weird about the "Liver Cancer" thing. Its all i seem to hear lately and I probably have a good potential. perhaps a trip to the doctor? I feel fine,I am fit, but that doesnt seem to matter.
My retirement plan will probably involve cheap warm third world country i suspect, hopefully with tasty food and attractive locals
My retirement plan will probably involve cheap warm third world country i suspect, hopefully with tasty food and attractive locals