Subject: Re: Early retirement pitfalls?
I'm really late to this discussion but wanted to add that you need to have a goal in retirement. Saying "I'm sick of this job" is not a sufficient reason to retire. The goal can be anything from "here is my new career" to travel to babysitting grandchildren to volunteering to taking care of parents. But just retiring because you can seems like a recipe for disaster. I was able to retire at 53 but turned around and got into the lucrative (not!) position of ski instructor. I had a blast for 11 years finally learning to ski and hanging out with a very different workforce than I had during my real career. This also allowed me to do lots of travel while young enough to enjoy it. At this point I'm very active in a disaster response organization but still get to travel between operations. You're allowed (encouraged!) to change goals after retirement, but having no goals leads to sitting on the couch drinking at 10am, which is not a good long-term plan.

Rgds,
HH/Sean