Retirement Planning

[Reloadron]

I retired just over 4.5 years ago going out at 63. My wife retired six months after I did so I tell people I had six relatively good months after retiring. Yes, the income took a hit but we planned retirement. I now have plenty of time for the range and doing the things once reserved for weekends or vacation time. The trick if there was one was planning. There is no way I could have forecast how much powder or any reloading component I would use. I have always maintained a good stock of components. I work all of my hobbies into the budget we have and that works for me. Before we pulled the plug on the work force we made sure we would continue to live in a comfortable fashion and that has served us well the past four years. I never did round counts as one week I may shoot 1,000 assorted rounds and the following week zero. When I see a good deal on components I buy them.

I wish you the best in your retirement and enjoy the time. This is what you have worked for and earned.

Ron

 

[Jim Watson]

I am at present loading .45 ACP with Bullseye and 9mm with HP38.
Unique is fine for .38 Special, about 5 gr w. 158.
I would save the 800X for a rainy day. Book loads look good for stout .45s.

 

[LiveLife]

When I see a good deal on components I buy them.

Trouble is I am seeing good deals everyday ... spent over $1,500 just this past month stocking up on components and 22LR at lowest prices I have seen over the years

I wish you the best in your retirement and enjoy the time. This is what you have worked for and earned.

Yes, retirement should be time of enjoyment and not suffering.

I have suffered enough working the past 35 years, especially the past 21 years of marriage
< looks around for wife >

 

[Hardtarget]

I retired March 8 this year. I know exactly where your thoughts are taking you. I live close to the range. Therefore, I can make a stop for a short time and get my "shooting fix" without expending all that much ammo.

That said, use what you have. Read about others loads and you can make educated choice changes in your future powder, primer, bullet purchases. I bet you're going to enjoy the change of "life timing" retirement brings. You'll have time to do things on a different order of priorities. Can be a fun thing!

Mark

 

[hdwhit]

Sunray wrote:
Your income will drop, but your time will increase exponentially. And it'll slow down. Retirement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Worse without a huge retirement fund.

I've been planning for this over the last twenty years. I'm pretty sure I'm financially ready.

If it turns out I'm wrong, I have a good reputation in my field and I'm already getting cold-calls asking for me to contract on future jobs rather than retire, so adding to my retirement income should not be a problem.

At 100 rounds per day(being conservative),

I'll be shooting less than that.

 

[hdwhit]

bds wrote:
I shoot "in the woods" and retain 95-99% of my brass.

I've never been able to find that proportion. Your eyes are clearly sharper than mine.

 

[LiveLife]

I am using brass catchers.

 

[hdwhit]

Reloadron wrote:
There is no way I could have forecast how much powder or any reloading component I would use.

Ever since I started a paper route at age 11, I have been very good at anticipating my needs and adjusting my wants to coincide with the resources I have available. My projections for cartridge consumption are based on the life expectancy of people with my neurological problems and assume I will be shooting right up until the day I die. That's unrealistically optimistic as I'm likely to spend the last several years of my life with Parkinson's-like tremors that will make handling a gun irresponsible.

 

[hdwhit]

bds wrote:
I am using brass catchers.

Ah, the secret is revealed!

In the case of 9mm and 223, the cases cost me about 3 cents each, so I think I'd rather forego the cost and clumsiness of a brass catcher and buy some more brass if I run short.

 

[hdwhit]

Hardtarget wrote:
I retired March 8 this year.

Congratulations!

 

[LiveLife]

I work all of my hobbies into the budget we have and that works for me.

Well, I thought I had a good handle on my hobby of reloading and BBQ until I bought my retirement vintage 21' Starcraft fishing boat with Berkerly jet drive. In comparison, my shooting/reloading hobby is cheap.

What do you mean a Yamaha outboard kicker motor costs more than the Buick I am driving! Seriously? What, there are sharks where I want to fish too! ... Damn, I need a different hobby!

Obviously, I have been doing a lot more reloading and shooting than boating/fishing the past year.

 

[hdwhit]

HardTarget wrote:
You'll have time to do things on a different order of priorities.

My father retired from the Army at age 46. He went back to college, got his PhD and taught college for a while before quitting that and retiring for real at age 54. He's 93 now. He tells me that he likes living on the farm in the middle of nowhere because when he gets up he sees a thousand things to do that day and he knows that if he does none of them, nobody will either know nor care.

The county where the farm is located flirts with bankruptcy nearly every year. The county Treasurer often manages to keep the county in the black by applying for every grant he can think of. One particularly bad year, 20% of the county's revenue was from grant money. I've offered to volunteer since after a career as a Federal LEO and then a consultant - frequently to government agencies or people suing or being sued by government agencies, I speak bureaucrat.

That, and working with the local church alliance on hunger relief (er, ah, pardon me, ever since the George W. Bush administration redefined it so they could say there was no longer "hunger" in America, there was just, "food insecurity") should help cut down on my free time. I'm not trying to be political about the "food insecurity" thing, but it was the Bush administration that changed the definition of hunger so that they could say it no longer existed.

I didn't know anything about "hunger" until I got roped into an experiment by my then-girlfriend who took a group of graduate students and had us spend a semester living as homeless people. She did some of the groundbreaking research on how lack of regular and balanced meals, lack of a fixed place to stay and the other uncertainties that go along with it combine to cause the mind to focus on small, short-term things rather than dreaming big and planning an exit strategy. Since then, I've never been satisfied that in one of the most overweight countries in the world people still go hungry. Now, maybe I'll have more time to devote to that.

 

[Doublehelix]

All the best to you man. The world is a better place because of people like you. Good luck on your "retirement", but I don't see you resting too much!

Cheers!

 

[Reloadron]

Well, I thought I had a good handle on my hobby of reloading and BBQ until I bought my retirement vintage 21' Starcraft fishing boat with Berkerly jet drive. In comparison, my shooting/reloading hobby is cheap.

I hear you. I had my love affair with boats years ago while living on the NC coast. My brother continues the love affair with boats, especially fishing boats. Oh you want a part for this engine? That will be $20. Oh it's the Marine Version? That will be $120. Beyond the gun I suffer from a Harley Davidson syndrome. Hey, we only go around once so enjoy the ride as best we can.

Ron

 

[LiveLife]

Wife and I almost got into Harley Davidson as mother-in-law and her family rode Harleys. Since I grew up riding Yamaha dirt bikes/quads, V Star would have been my choice for road bikes.

After decades of riding quads and pulling toy haulers, I was happy to gift our 4 quads to my sister's family for my nephew and niece to enjoy (sister tells me my BIL is enjoying them the most on their property).

Yes, in comparison to ocean boats and quads/toy haulers, reloading seems like more "economical" hobby but after 450,000+ round count just for pistol, my reloading hobby has costed more than $60,000. For shooting and reloading, it's the guns and presses that are cheap. It's the ammunition that's costly.

But life is short and how can you put a price on precious memories with family and friends?

 

[Reloadron]

But life is short and how can you put a price on precious memories with family and friends?

You can't!

Ron

 

[otisrush]

Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I've sort of considered our gun/reloading hobby as relatively inexpensive. Yes, it takes a good chunk of money depending on how into it one is. But the cost per hour (especially if one has a single stage press and thoroughly enjoys the time at the bench) I think works out to be pretty reasonable. And if one lives in a place where the weather gets cold, one can participate in their hobby without having to go outside.

 

[LiveLife]

Yes, I think the bottom line is enjoyment of hobby.

I find reloading, especially single stage reloading of rifle cartridges very relaxing, almost therapeutic. Wife always told me I come out of reloading sessions relaxed and return from shooting happy with a smile.

 

[hdwhit]

otisrush wrote:
But the cost per hour (especially if one has a single stage press and thoroughly enjoys the time at the bench) I think works out to be pretty reasonable.

I use a single-stage press and I do my loading in batches of 50 or 100 cases, my pace is almost "glacial". I generally take a day each to:

• Inspect new-to-me brass
• Decap, wash and dry it
• Resize it and tumble the lube off
• Remove the primer crimp
• Trim, chamfer and debur;
  
• Re-inspect the brass
• Prime, document and box up.

Assuming I can spend time every evening, a batch of cases takes about a week and that's a nice easy pace to get the work done and let the stress of the day melt away.

Add a day each to:

• Retrieve the box-ed up brass
• Set up the powder measure and scale
• Charge the cases and seat the bullets
• Final quality control checks, boxing the loads up and documenting the process

And I'm close to two weeks to get, maybe 100 cases loaded; something just over 2,000 rounds a year. Depending on the cartridge, it costs me between 12 and 30 cents per round to load, so running the process continuously, I'd be talking an average of maybe $25 every two weeks or about $650 a year which seems very reasonable to me.

 

[hdwhit]

bds wrote:
I bought my retirement vintage 21' Starcraft fishing boat with Berkerly jet drive. In comparison, my shooting/reloading hobby is cheap.

No doubt.

Still, it sounds very nice.

 

[hdwhit]

Doublehelix wrote:
Good luck on your "retirement", but I don't see you resting too much!

Thank you.

When I mentioned retirement to my doctor, he asked me what I was intending to do. I told him I had a 118 acre derelict catfish farm to work on. He said that was good because his experience was that his patients who "retired to an easy chair" were dead within five years!

 

[Dudedog]

Forgot to mention it, congrats on retirement.