Retiring and car free
 

Anyone out there retiring soon?

I'm hoping to hang up my commuting helmet this year and lead a more "retired" lifestyle now that I'm almost 65.

However, I still get around on bicycle and enjoy longer... if not marathon... weekend rides. I'm planning on doing some volunteering and have some other activities that will require some transportation... bicycle seems about the right way to get there.

What about you? Any plans?

I'm on the verge of turning 65 myself, and will retire just about 3 months from today. My adult kids are trying desperately to get me in a new car but I'm resisting. I think I'm even gonna quit bicycling, since I do most of my transportations on my feets anyway and happen to live in a perfect area for walking as a primary transportation.

To me not depending on a car at retirement age is ideal. We've called cars "tombs" for years, but as we age don't they become even more so? I say stay in your walking kicks or stay on your bicycle and keep the cobwebs from starting up. Staying active, especially as we describe the term, adds a lot of joy to aging!

I am retired and after years of long commutes in my car, I could not wait to stop driving. I put less than 800 miles a year on my car now, and have to remember to start it up and drive it so the battery doesn't die. Unless I have a passenger, I bike. And I love it. You're going to love being retired and having the time to choose what you do and how you do it. Congrats!

I turned 65 this past year and have no plans to retire but I am cutting back slightly. My job involves some videoconference consulting so I am hoping the corporation will let me do 2 hours of that every Friday AM from home and I would take the rest of the day off. I could do it as a private, self-employed contractor, but it is much less hassle to do it through a sponsoring institution that keeps the records secure, and handles scheduling and faxing and invoicing and other administrative matters, as it would be annoying and maybe not very cost-effective for me to set up a parallel infrastructure of my own for 2 hours of work a week!

Congratulations.

I can't wait to hang up the commuting helmet some day. On second thought, I don't bike commute! I would get a GoPro or some inexpensive camera and start a YouTube channel on your carfree retirement! LOL :)

Florida is mostly flat and warm, and a traditional destination for retirees. There are bike lanes and non-motorized paths all over, which are always in need of more traffic to justify them to the bean counters. If you can't or don't want to move somewhere on the peninsula for retirement, at least consider it as a bike-friendly winter getaway.

I hope to make it 3 1/2 more years before retiring, if my health cooperates. I will continue to be carfree, since my work commute (only three short blocks) is a minor concern when it comes to transportation. I do look forward to having more time for my epic walks, and I hope to do more bicycling when I have more free time.

I think LCF will improve my retirement on a number of fronts:

• A good hobby and use of leisure time
• Good exercise, trying to stay healthy and fit
• Save money on a fixed income
• Gives me a sense of adventure, which is important as I get older.

Are you on the bike these days? I remember you had to lay off for a while.

Many people on this forum will have no choice but to remain or become carfree after retirement. The combined benefit pensions are gone except for government workers. The majority of the population will depend on Social Security as their only source of income. However, it basically only pays enough to live indoors so the car has to be sacrificed.

Having said that, there are numerous people on YouTube living in vehicles. I can see this lifestyle going mainstream in the future because the cost of living continues to spiral out of control.

If the reason you go car-free, is because you can't "afford" a car, it will never be a satisfactory kind of life... IMO... It's just the way it is, or it's just the way it turned out to be, NOT really a good thing, at all for you or anyone in that situation... :innocent:

Maybe the OP cannot afford a car. If that's the case, he certainly has not shown hardly any dissatisfaction about his choice to remain car free.

A satisfactory kind of life is state of mind and it's yours to make. I understand, it's probably too much a sacrifice at this point. That's why you're here on this car free form! You want to become like the OP and other members who retiring without an automobile.

Quality of life and happiness depends a lot on whether your life meets your expectations. If you can't afford a car, and don't want one, you're a lot happier than someone who can't afford a car but does want one.

ASoon , not been so for a while?

Is retirement something you revisit from time to time?

58 now and looking to hang'm up at 62. In the mean time we are looking to move to a urban area where walking and/or biking will suffice in getting everything done that needs getting done. I hate cars.

I disagree. I almost never eat nuts besides peanuts because of the cost, but I'm not less happy because I rarely eat something that I really enjoy. In fact, I think I enjoy and appreciate walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. that much more because they are a rare treat. I get the same effect from visiting places occasionally by bus or bike that I might drive to more frequently if I drove. I've simply learned the basic logic that how much you wait or work for something has an influence on how much you appreciate/enjoy it.

Good for you... But if you can just simply never afford, walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc. I would say you would not enjoy/would not be as satisfactory a life as if you could afford them because you actually want them. ;)

Some people are masochists and enjoy pain, others are ascetics and get their jollies from self denial. There is obviously a slice of so-called LCF advocates who think these traits are convincing arguments for living car free.

No, because I get happiness from devoting myself to doing good deeds. So I look at pricing as a cue for how abundant or scarce something is and adjust my consumption accordingly, i.e. to leave more over for others. So if the price of peanuts is low, I buy more of those with the assumption that there is more that needs to be consumed in order not to waste them; but if the price of walnuts is high, I restrict my consumption under the assumption that they are scarce and more people will have to option of buying them if I eat them less often. I am perfectly happy to live like this and I just advocate the planting of more nut trees so tree nuts will become more abundant and thus more affordable so more people can buy and eat more of them.

There you go, I stand corrected. Not everyone thinks the same as me...

I always wonder if the world would improve if some people would think more like some others or not. I guess I believe in culture as a basis for making things better.

It's not thinking the "same" that make the world "better", it's societies that allow people to think "different" that improves the world... IMO

Just to try and stay on subject, when I retired that is when I cut my car use in half...

I'm 69 and about to retire from my retirement job. When I was 65, I retired from my career and moved to western MA. My wife still has a car, so I can get ready access if I need it. But generally, I cycle where I'm going, summer or winter, rain or shine (or snow, to keep up with the calendar.) I have a touring bike outfitted with dual Wald folding baskets on the rear rack, which readily accommodate grocery bags and trash for the transfer station. It also has a nice front porteur rack for things that don't fit well in the baskets (like pizza.) I live in a small city, so I don't have to go very far to meet most of my needs. On days like today, when the temps were around zero, going to work is no fun. But, for the most part, life is good this way.

Quoting myself with an update. I have been approved for a pilot project to do video consulting from home with my corp's blessing. I have to upgrade my own equipment with a better camera and microphone (about $250 total - according to tracking it was delivered today) and scramble to clear part of the basement to provide a simulated office setting as a background, so it doesn't look obvious to clients that I am at home. The basement is ideal as it is fairly soundproof and I can plug straight into the router instead of using wifi, for a more stable connection. Have to make sure my home printer can send faxes, or else figure out internet faxing - there are rare, mostly hypothetical, legal situations where an urgent document has to be faxed. Also have to figure out how to keep the dog quiet for an hour or two!

So sometime in the next few weeks, retirement 1.0 kicks in!

Cool!!!

66 here. I expect to work ft until 70. Two reasons. One: I rather like what I'm doing (university prof/admin), and would be at loose ends if I weren't doing it. Two: gotta build the pension fund (took a s__t-kicking in '08/9 [don't have defined benefit] like so many others).

Won't be 'car free', but will continue my/our 'car light' life.