Retiring Early

Friday, May 25, 2007

Countdown to retirement (or whatever!)

Ok, this is some admitedly geeky stuff, but you can't help but want to get some yourself once you see it (or maybe it's my inner geek just coming out). So, some of you know that I am running Windows Vista on my laptop and one thing that it lets you do it to pick amongst a number of "gadgets" that you can place on your desktop that provide you live updates over time. Things like clocks, weather, stock updates, etc.

As I was browsing through some of the available "gadgets" that are available, I came across a gadget that lets you "count down" to any date of your choice. Naturally, I added the gadget, set my retirement date goal and promptly labled it "until FIRE", meaning "until [I'm] Financially Independent and Retiring Early". I set it to count down in weeks, but you can also set it to days, hours, minutes, or even seconds.

You can see some of the gadgets I have on my desktop to the left, including my retirement countdown timer on the bottom -- only 226 weeks to go! (Also, as you can tell, we're having a pretty nice day in Seattle today!)

If you're running Windows Vista, you can get your copy of the gadget here.

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posted by fin_indie @ 5/25/2007  

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9 Comments:

  • At 5/25/2007 5:57 PM, Blogger pfstock said…

    Yes, I knew that you were running a pre-release version of Windows Vista after my Site Meter "busted" you. :)

    Since I dropped the topic on my blog a while ago, I thought that I might give you an update on my Vista experience...

    I did get the two DVD-ROMs from HP back in March. The first DVD contained Windows Vista, and took about 2 hours to upgrade from XP. The second DVD contained the HP drivers, and took another hour or so to install. Reading through the HP FAQs on Vista, I found that there was a long list of 3rd party programs that had one issue or another when running under Vista. HP's solution to a few of these problems was to completely uninstall the software that didn't run, and hope that the manufacture would come up with a timely update.

    Then for a two week period (roughly corresponding to when I stopped posting on PFStock), I struggled to get everything working right as I was frequently experiencing a problem with one application or another. To make a long story short, I finally gave up. I re-formatted the hard disk and restored Windows XP on my machine. I'm going to wait six months and do a clean install (instead of upgrading XP). In the meanwhile, I will hope that they come up with Vista-compatible versions of the software I use.

     

  • At 5/30/2007 3:09 PM, Blogger fin_indie said…

    Oh no, that's too bad. I have a number of pieces of software that I use and they all seem to work fine. I had to ditch one thing, but it wasn't that important anyway. My guess that the developer of your software used soe Windows API calls that were going to be deprecated in the next version of Windows. They were probably marked as "do not use" 5 years back, so there was fair warning. Much of this legacy was pulled out of Windows for security reasons, which is a good thing. It really is up to the software vendor to test their sofware (and hardware) to make sure it works. For example, my HP Laserjet printer doesn't work naively, but they gave me an alternative driver to use. While it would be great if everything just worked, it just doesn't work that way -- PC or Mac, Linux or Windows.

     

  • At 5/30/2007 9:07 PM, Blogger StealthBucks said…

    Here is my question....

    I can understand wanting to check out of a job that doesn't thrill you and even the desire to retire early but wouldn't it be better to check out of something bad and find something much better? From your NW posts, you are a great saver but I find it hard to believe you really want to retire so young.

    I use to have a career I really liked but wasn't paid a lot for, I switched to a career I really loved and I can't yet think of what I'd retire too?

    I have a bias. What is it you really want to do next? Can you stay engaged but start doing that thing now? Perhaps you already are? Do you want to work part time? Peace Corps? Whatever. I must admit I'd be freaking if my retirement calculator was set so short.

     

  • At 6/01/2007 12:29 PM, Blogger fin_indie said…

    Stealth -- Great question. We may have different definitions of "retirement"… It's true that retiring, in the traditional sense at my age can be kinda scary.

    As I've discussed before, I don't take a "time to hang it up and do nothing" approach to retirement. I quite simply, have other things that interest me more than working. A LOT of things, and unfortunately, they take time -- more time than I have on weekends and during planned vacations. In “retirement”, I may work part time, or I may not. My current moonlighting gig would be a great “retirement” job, but I'm looking for more from life than just work.

    I'm an explorer, a tinkerer, a husband, a traveler, a volunteer, and a whole host of other things. Maybe a job exists that will fulfill me in all of these things, but I don't want to do these things for money. ...And that gets to the heart of the issue: having enough money to be financially secure means that you get to do what *you* want to do, regardless of money. THAT is the goal.

     

  • At 6/01/2007 8:30 PM, Blogger StealthBucks said…

    Got me, great answer....

    I am lucky that I get paid to do what I really love. (O.K., most of the time)...

    My company though is going to go through some huge changes soon though. Doesn't affect me much but does a ton of my coworkers.

    I hope your hobby pans out, if not financially, in every other way...

     

  • At 6/08/2007 6:33 AM, Blogger fin_indie said…

    Thanks Stealth. Goals are just that goals. If they work out the way I expect them to, then great. If not, they I move on to something else.

     

  • At 6/24/2010 3:09 AM, Anonymous antony said…

    Nowadays people want to retire early, but retiring early is impossible unless people follow a result oriented investment strategy

     

  • At 6/24/2010 3:09 AM, Anonymous antony said…

    Nowadays people want to retire early, but retiring early is impossible unless people follow a result oriented investment strategy

     

  • At 7/01/2010 4:36 AM, Blogger Unknown said…

    Retirement plan is a vital plan for the people to live independently without expecting others financially. The person who wants to secure rest of his life financially he needs to put his money in low risk investment.

     

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