Youngest dinosaur

I am coming up on my 15 year anniversary at work.  I started back on October 5, 1998.  I certainly had no idea when I started that I would be there for such a long time.  It must be my age and the fact that Jay had been talking retirement early this year that I had been getting extremely itchy to move along and out of the workforce.  It was dwelling too closely in my mind that I needed to break away.

Jay decided against the idea after all.  The shop is picking up much more business than the past few years.  He is his own boss and managed to cut a lot of overhead when we needed to cut back on expenses.  Now he is in a good situation.  I, on the other hand, had it in my head that I wanted to get out.

It hasn't helped that so many of my counterparts at work are retiring.  Most of the people I work directly with, that do the same job as me, are letting me know that they are leaving the company.  They will be filling their weeks with constant Saturdays.  Yes, maybe they are a few years older than me but I'm not that far behind.

I started looking at what it would cost to retire - in the way of insurance.  It was astronomical.  Even with my years of service and my age, the figure was unbelievable.  So I looked again at the next break point and that was 20 years of service.  I did a rough figure of how long it would take me to save that amount of money to cover the time between me leaving the company and the time I would be the 'official retirement age'.

I could do it in those 5 years.  I could probably do it earlier. 

So I will say goodbye to all my counterparts that are leaving soon.  I feel like we have been with the company and worked together for so long we are our own breed of dinosaurs.  I will need to hang in there a little longer but at least I have a sort-of idea of what I might do for the future.  

It's not easy being the youngest dinosaur.

TT