We seem to be falling into three camps here:

1) Young and foolish
2) Early mid-life crisis
3) Older and foolish (you don't retire to here; you retire out of here)

older and foolish me, some things you never grow out of

er -- (probably a mistake asking will get refered to loads of previous threads but here goes) whats wrong with retiring to canada??

It gets cold. Snow has to be shovelled. Old Canadians avoid that by retiring to America.

so the answer is staff??

Ha! We lived in a condo town house for a few years. That was nice, a firm came and cleared the complex, including our front step and backyard picnic table, while we were still in bed.

Personally for us probably a variance of [2]

Kind of a ...."life crisis"....knowing that one has to do "something" before it's too late for a range of life options and knowing that that something has to be done before conditions deteriorate beyond our ability to achieve the "something".

Thinks "should've done this years ago" but knows that wasn't possible at the time and that the last few years have put in place the building blocks of experience and financial capital to achieve the "something" while still having a level of security and protection of existing Q-O-L in the process.



Rich.

Thanks! Had a good day yesterday, and am off to Amsterdam for the weekend!!! Just getting on with enjoying life for now, Canada will (hopefully) happen eventually

Or to western Canada, specifically Vancouver Island.

Many retiring from the US there too, trying to flee the Bush administration etc

We "retired" here in our early forties, why? ... because we could.

Not all retirees are old.

Didn't you post a while back that you were thinking of moving to BC later in life ?
I took that to mean that you were in Calgary for the moment for work related reasons. Maybe that's wrong but I suspect you're using a novel definition of "retired". Do you, or your partner, currently have full time paid employment ?

On edit : I don't dispute that BC is a retirement destination, I just think more Canadians go to the sun belt states.

We chose Calgary because of its proximity to the mountains, good quality schooling, excellent facilities and we have friends with children here. Had we not had children we could just as easily have moved to Victoria, Kelowna or the BC coast.

Once the kids have flown the nest, we will look at Victoria/Kelowna etc again.

We're retired on the basis that we can live off our investment income. However, to keep our minds active we both do consultancy work in our respective fields. Not full time though.

There was an article in the Globe and Mail recently about the new definition of retirement. Many baby-boomers are taking packages/early retirement but are still too young to sit in an armchair drooling so top up their income and keep their brains ticking over by consulting or voluntary work.

I was 40 when I applied.

Packages are very much the Canadian way. I've consulted on and off for a quango for years. Recently I met someone there who has taken the package from the same organisation three times. It's for less money each time, of course, but still the most recent one was over $100,000 and he's since been hired back. The neighbours on both sides here took packages and then went back to their old jobs as consultants. I understand why all this works in the US, consultants don't get company paid healthcare, but why firms do it here is beyond me.

Still, it's not retirement, is it ? It may be working part time, slowing down a bit, changing lifestyle, but it's not living on a pension for the rest of your days, it's not never working again.

Depends how you define it really.

My pensions don't pay out for 17 years, but then pensions are only tax effecient investments so where's the difference between living on a pension and on investment income? A gold watch?

I tried doing nothing for a while and hated it.

I'm 41 (nearly 42) now OH 36.
Started down this looooong road when I was 40, don't know which "class" you'd put me in, but I consider myself to be the mid-life crisis without the crisis (and not so much of the mid-life ).
We basically fell in love with the place and found that, after researching extensively, we could come over and start a new life in BC!
Roll on next summer (hoopefully!)
KennyJosie

Hey, I remember Coventry! Used to shop there regularly. I lived in Nuneaton till I moved to Vancouver at the grand old age of 43.