Unemployment Chronicles: Semi-Retirement

This year has definitely not gone as expected.  I could have guessed at the beginning of the year that I might not work at Farmers all year, but by the time December 31 comes to an end, I will have worked less than 6 months of the year 2012.  The trick is getting used to a new reality and adjusting to it rather than panicking, although panicking is very tempting.

Up until this year, the plan was to retire sometime around my 62nd birthday, which is when I can start taking Social Security, plus close enough to 65, meaning Medicare and full pension, that we could bridge the gap.  However, even then, with Jarrod turning 20 the year I turn 62, we figured that I might have to keep working, but maybe at something a little less demanding and lower-paying.  Besides the possible college costs, our savings are not everything they could be.  I have read that you should save 12 times your salary for retirement, and that probably assumes that you won't retire until at least 65.  For us, that means over $1 million, and we are not close.  Fortunately, I think the 12x guideline is nonsense, but still, we don't have oodles of extra cash.

Anyway, it seems that I have come upon this semi-retirement thing sooner than I wanted.  I don't think that I will do this for the next 10 years, but it's what I am doing now.  Technically, I have only been unemployed about two months this year, but in reality, contracting so far has resulted in 5 months off, 10 weeks working, and 7 more weeks off and counting.

The challenge right now is to use these days well, which I have not been doing as much as I should.  It's difficult for me because it seems like these days are just filler between work, with no real purpose other than to get the next job.  I'm not really retired, or even voluntarily semi-retired, but I'm not working.  Today I took a walk, and I'm writing a blog post, so that's better than most days.

I knew that entering the job-seeking world might be a challenge, but I tend to have faith that the economy is efficient, so someone with better skills than most of the accountants I have seen will find employment in time.  Perhaps this is so.  Or perhaps it is stupid to believe that the economy is really efficient.  I know that this is what I believed for more than two years would be my salvation at Farmers, but the end solution there was irrational, clearly not best financially for either me or Farmers.  The economy may be reasonably efficient on a large scale, but on a small scale, not necessarily.  In any case, being older and highly paid and wanting to move down the ladder rather than up puts me in a tough position, tougher than I would have thought.

So semi-retired at 55, hoping to become less semi-retired as time goes on.  My best guess now is that at some point I will find something permanent, maybe through my contacts, maybe through contracting.  Until then, life is unpredictable.