"The Pen:" Live NLHE Chat Thread

The same day we got snow I went and picked up some Blizzaks for my truck. I’m way ahead of the game, but ready af nonetheless. (To be fair I bought the tires a week ago on a massive sale, aka my buddy runs discount tire and was tryna hit some goals for the month). Keystone is talking end of October and Breck Nov 8 for opening. I will be joining in those shenanigans - and Jr will be skipping school

And yes, Fgk wirch and Fik skewl!

I can retire early in 12 years, age fiddyfi, according to my retirement calculator. I’m going the distance though… Age 56 and a half.

I have always used gambling as a springboard toward doing the things that I found interesting. Those things happen to be adventure sports. I designed my life so that I could work in chunks and then take blocks ot time off in order to pursue my ambitions. Back when it was blackjack it enabled me to to take months off at a pop to compete on a european ski circuit. When it was online poker it enabled me to take enough time off to train and make the us skeleton team

I have worked on a bunch of gambling projects over the years. A few years back one project panned out nicely and I banked what I think at this point is enough to call it quits. My dear pal who I worked on this with is currently nuking sports betting and wants me to do some recruiting for him. Its pretty straight foreword but these days Im really committed to just having a good time and do not want to get caught up chasing $ that I really dont need.

I actually had this epiphone of "chasing $ i dont need" this past year. I am now 58 and am spending more and more time recovering from nagging injuries. I have broken a lot of bones and put my body through the ringer over the years of doing high consequence stuff (crashing at 140mph on skis takes a big fcuking toll on your body). I still recreate hard. But i have come to the realization that I have at best a handful of years of real kicking ass left and I am not going to have anything get in the way of that so I am not partaking in work related activities. I have completely revamped my diet and training in hopes of keeping my fitness levels high enough to accomplish this.

i wish rtp and 72o would come back to the thread so i wouldn't feel so relatively young anymore

for my own retirement plans - right now there's none

i'm kind of planning in that direction having made some contributions to an ira but it's not a significant amount and probably well behind what most young professionals my age already have in their retirement accounts

i have way more cash on hand and liquidity than most but again that's not passively growing but instead being actively worked - if i take a year off and don't work then that just sits there losing to inflation

my real concern is i'm approaching an age where medical costs could be excessive in the near future so i've been passively seeking a return to tech simply to bank some healthcare just as a way to hedge in the event that 10 years from now i discover i have colon cancer which i likely got from posting too much in this thread 😀

i'm in a spot where i could go back to traveling the world, i could even take a year off and not even work just travel, but already feel like i'm behind the 8-ball as it stands and as much as the idea of just going to panama for a few months this fall to go fishing - it'll do nothing but increase the impending doom i'm imagining if i don't take steps in the near future to either make a ton of money doing what i'm currently doing or getting stable employment and then converting my bankroll into a retirement fund

i also don't think i'll ever retire - i've always come across income streams that i genuinely enjoy (ie i used to do baseball projections for years for fun before i realized i could make money off it) and have recently gotten into political wagering and that's been going greatly to start

so i'm not too worried about nearing old age without tons of squirreled away assets as a normal person would be in my situation, but at the same time i don't want to ever be in a position where if my democratic primary positions go tits up then i can't go golfing for 6 months or need to cancel that trip to italy so definitely want a nice buffer

i won't inherit anything in terms of cash (or at least hope i don't - will be beyond tilted if my parents who scrimped and saved everything to have 4 kids didn't spend it freely in their retirement - took months for me to talk them out of putting their money into an annuity - not only was it a bad deal as "an investment" but would also severely limit the choices they had available

but will always have a nice vacation home in maine available which i can't even legally sell if i wanted to and that's also why i've been spending so much time in maine because i had a nice home that was right on the ocean and just sitting there empty which in 2-3 decades will become something that i'll have to compete with my 3 siblings for usage but would probably be a decent parachute if things went really badly where i could probably airbnb what would have been the time where i would have had usage of it

but seriously, f annuities

my parents were dead set on doing one

their retirement plan had this option where at some point you need to convert that pool of cash into either an annuity or close it out - so most people just choose to roll it into an annuity

they were in their early 70s when this happened

they asked me about it

i did the math, told them they'd need to have one of them live until 97 just to break even, but even then cash on hand now was worth more than cash later

so then i made a spreadsheet showing them if they didn't invest it optimally but went for pure safety of a cd ladder where each month they'd get a payment equal to the annuity how when they were 97 they'd still have quite a bit money left in the principal etc

it was just a terrible deal but they insisted that they wanted the security of it and it took ages to convince them how terrible an idea that was

GG,

I feel like you have the right instincts, wanting to be able to go and do stuff while you're still physically and mentally able. Don't fall into the "just one more year" trap--where, "sure, just one more year, and I'll have enough." That year never comes.

When it becomes just accumulating more wealth, it's time to take a hard look at, "why am I still doing this, and not doing things I enjoy?"

Of course, some people legit love their jobs, so good on you if that's the case. But, don't work so long that you can't enjoy life (or enjoy it at a significantly reduced level) just because, "well, that's what society expects of me."

Here's a podcast on the subject of retirement planning I listen to. Really like their philosophy.

AIDS is the real concern here, ldo.

GeveryonelookssidewaysatSkippyG

@ golddog

Yeah, just more hyperaware of stuff now as I get older. Having this ~year (or whatever it will end up being) removed from my normal life due to my nerve injury has been an eye opener on the fragility of it all.

GcluelessrainbowsandsunshinenoobG

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

legit lol 😀

Man what spidey sense I have. Popped into this thread for my yearly colonosco2p2y to talk of retirement.

Good new, I may be retired now nut don't even know it since I left my job last week. Guess we'll see if all the Gen Z kids constantly complaining about how **** the job market is are correct.

In b4 stfu zoltan.

From what I hear, those types of butlers are actually easier to find. But they definitely don't make your life simpler.

In AUS#1, it’s the worst job market I can remember outside of the first 6 months post covid 1.

Less so for the kids tbh and more for the older and more experienced people. But we’re definitely at the worst part of the cycle

Hope your market is better

Yeah, I got pretty far away from that over the last few years. Need to get my technical chops back. Also, back to the nonprofit world for me, since I'm a commie and all that, as I recall.

Talking to a local college about a CDO position. Might be fun.

As long as I get all the money and none of the responsibility, I'm good.

Labor Dept in USA had to come clean that they were exaggerating job reports for a year straight and corrected it downwards by almost 1 million jobs.

Almost all new USA jobs for the past couple of years have been government or gig jobs… not great here either.

But I wouldn’t say it is terrible either.

Fed is going to cut rates but I think they will need to go slowly as inflation will smolder for a bit in this 3-5/6% range putting us in a stall for a while.

/my very non expert take

Chief Douchebag Officer does sound like a fun position

At a "local college?" Too many supervisees.

FWIW, I enjoy my job and for me at least, it is pretty easy. I help people and if was "retired," would be doing something similar. The difference would be I wouldn't be paid. My wife and I have already done the "bucket" list type of things, so there isn't anything there that we are wishing to do. We've traveled a lot when we were younger and had companies pay for it.

I seem to have diverted my life into a job that I am unsuited for. The last ten years have yielded little income, a lot of debt, and no clear direction to improvement.

Sorry to hear that lawyer life is unsatisfying, DMW. Have you considered non-profit work? Not the highest paying, but better than "little income," and perhaps more fulfilling.

is the lawyering a midlife career pivot?

So spc is doing this really hard core bike packing race in montana. 1700 miles through some very rugged terrain. 9 signed up 4 made it to the start and 3 are left. She is having a lot of fun but informed me if she knew how tough it would be she would be home. Last night she had to break camp cuz of unidentified critters. Today she bumped into this guy

look small for a grizzly but hopefully she dodged the bear 😀