Countdown to Retirement – 60 days to go

I have been posting updates on our countdown to retirement in a forum I am active on – and then the thought occurred to me – why don’t I write about that on my own blog? This is the second post in the series on how we are marching towards the finish/start line.

Can’t believe it was 30 days since my last update… So, what happened in those last 30 days?

Mental state:

• As expected, the boss has had much less time to micromanage in those 30 days since he was given four more groups to manage, which gave me a room to breathe and kept my sanity intact. Even when he came over from Texas for a week, he did not have any time to meet with us as he was spending all his time with the leadership: my 1:1 with him and our “leadership meeting” were cancelled that week, he just stopped by for 10 min at my desk one day to explain one additional ask from him.
• On the other hand, that week that he spent with a room with the department leadership – they are planning something, some kind of reorg. My boss currently has 16 direct reports, which is unsustainable. So some changes are coming to make it more manageable. And for my technical team it may mean one of three things: 1) my entire group moves under another Sr Manager (my peer); 2) my entire group moves into another group under a different director (who manages the centralized technical teams for the entire department) and 3) part of my team (analytics managers) report to that Sr Manager (my peer), the other part (software engineer and database developer) move into the centralized technical team, and I am let go.
• Obviously, I would prefer the scenario 3, because I would get some severance package. Right now, everyone on the leadership team is mum about what they were discussing and planning to do (it’s been a week since they got together). For now I will continue according to the plan, with the intent to announce my departure in mid March. Hopefully, I will learn about their decision before my announcement 
• I was smiling driving to work on Monday, since at that point I had only 10 Mondays to go! Mondays are also somewhat dreadful for me because I have 1:1s with my boss. However, I just booked a time off for Feb 16-20th, which includes one of those Mondays! So yay, one less meeting with my boss (I doubt he will reschedule, he is very busy these days)!

Preparation for retirement:

• My husband’s colonoscopy is done (all clear, come back in 10 years), mine is scheduled in a couple of weeks. One dental appt for deep cleaning is completed, two to go. Completed a vision exam (still have 20/20 vision, which is awesome!).
• Signed up for LA Fitness gym membership. We have LA Fitness signature gym nearby with a swimming pool and nice facilities/group classes offered. And my gym membership allows to attend multiple gyms all over the country and to bring up to two guests with me. Planning to use the gym extensively once no longer employed and attend 9-10 a.m. fitness classes/use the pool when it’s not crowded.
• Opened Chase IHG Premier card for myself with 175K elevated welcome bonus. The card provides a free night every year, making the annual fee of $99 more than justified, and when booking with points, you get the fourth night free. So, looking forward to getting the pool of IHG points to use in the future travels.
• Fully booked the accommodations and car rental for the conference trip in April. As I mentioned before, I am adding a few more days to spend at the nice beaches of Clearwater and Treasure Island before going back home.
• Booked accommodations for three weekends of volleyball tournaments that my youngest kid will participate in. We would travel to Portland in 2 weeks, Vancouver in April and Spokane (WA) in mid-May.
• Booked a few nights in Madrid at Thompson hotel (part of Hyatt chain) with Chase UR points.
• Continue planning out trips to Germany in June and to Spain in October. Fun!
• We would still have about $150K left in mortgage for our vacation home, which will run its course in five years (we got 15 years fixed rate of 2.5% four years ago but have been paying it out aggressively, until recently I pivoted to saving for the cash buffer). Today I looked whether refinancing into 30 years (and have lower annual payments in the next few years) would increase my success rate – it didn’t! So, keeping the mortgage as is. If the markets soar over the next couple of years and we have more than enough in brokerage accounts until Roth IRA conversions are ready to withdraw, we may pay out the mortgage sooner.

This was my 60 days update, stay tuned for further updates as we get closer to the D-Day!