I’m 46yo (47 in a few months), been a teacher since the early 00s. Thanks to all of your advice, i put in my notice today that i will be leaving the school at the completion of this school year and retiring early.

After:

• numerous posts/conversations with people on Reddit on various subs (including this one, thank you all!),

• putting in my info into every retirement calculator I could find,

• putting my info into every AI chat bot I could find

• asking my financial advisor brother-in-law, and

• talking to a financial planner on Nectarine,

and all of them giving me the green light to retire early, I finally pulled the trigger and made it official today by notifying my principal/boss that this will be my last year teaching.

Still hasn't hit me yet, and I doubt it will until September (since I'll still be finishing up the school year, and we get summers off normally).

But thank you all for your help and advice. Even after all the green lights I've gotten, I have to admit I'm still scared. But I feel like I'm ready for whatever comes.

Like my Nectarine financial planner lady said today after assuring me I have more than enough, "you can always make more money; you can never make more time."

For some very brief details, I have a $1.5MM nest egg, about $45k yearly expenses (including estimated ACA costs), and I have a pension that I can tap as early as 55.