Retiring

I got a call today from a friend who was just offered the opportunity to retire three years before he'd planned to do so. His company would pay for his health care for those three years, and compute his pension now as if he'd worked for three more years. He wanted our opinion as to whether he should do it.

We wasted no time in telling him that this was a good idea, and he said that was what most people told him -- though we were the only people that he knew had actually done it. We said that he should be sure his income stream was up to leaving early, and he replied that, like us, he has a spreadsheet that goes out several decades. Based on his current assumptions, and the fact that he'll have a military pension, a pension from his wife's estate, Social Security, and his 401(k), he should be fine. In fact, he thinks he might not even have to touch the 401(k) for at least twenty years.

My golly.