My wife and I retired almost 3 years ago with no absolutely regrets. We were both teachers so we had the chance to practice for 2 months every summer. We both retired early (age 55 and 57), my wife needed to quit working due to health concerns and I didn't want to keep working when she wasn't. I was a bit worried about money because our combined take home pay from our pensions is significantly less (like 50%) of our combined take home pay from our working salaries, but that is no longer a concern as we still don't spend both our pension checks on our everyday needs and we are traveling, doing our home renos, etc as we were able to when working. We are very lucky in that we were able to buy a modest house on Shuswap Lake, and we were able to keep our place at a major ski resort (Sun Peaks), so we are at the lake boating and swimming in the summer and we live at the ski resort and ski and snow board about a hundred days each season in winter. We travel and camp in the spring and the fall. There are the odd days when we wake up without anything meaningful scheduled for the day, but not very often. We have not felt the need to do the volunteer thing, but will consider that when we stop skiing. So for us it was definitely a good move. I highly recommend it!
