Hello! Welcome! I also was (just recently left my job) the finance manager for a community radio station! Is it an LPFM or full power?
Let me know if you need anything while you get settled In Here. We have a share your pets thread that definitely needs your furball in it!
Do you want a location flare badge? We have one for people who live on mountains!
Welcome, rhubarb! I hope you enjoy the forums (and that your furball’s condition is diagnosed [preferably as easily treatable] very soon)!
Maybe because you are SO BUSY! That is a lot of balls to juggle - home always suffers.
I hope you get a treatment for your dog soon (vague things are so worrying)
Welcome - please post a photo of your dog in the share your pets thread.
Hello! We are a full power station that just celebrated our 40th anniversary last year. I like to describe us as KEXP for Neil Young and Grateful Dead fans. I am trying to get a new job because I love the operations side of things, but I am just! so! burned! out! on! fundraising!
I would love location flare! And will definitely be sharing my furballs in the pet thread.
That is something I am terrible at keeping in mind. Thank you for the reminder!
Oh I’m so excited to see you here!
I love this so much!
Hi everybody,
as a longtime lurcher / reader it is now time to become a writer
I am female, in the mid fifties and living in the middle of Germany.
Besides trying to save enough money to being able to go into retirement early I spend my time with visiting friends (now mostly online), traveling (harhar) and reading (P&P fanfic, memoirs and a lot of random stuff)
My workdays are now spend in home-office, I work in a global company on global IT, therefore the members of my team and my calls are spread throughout the world.
As I am a non-native reader/writer hints to improve my English would be highly appreciated. 
Beate 
Hello! Your English is excellent. I find autocorrect makes things more interesting.
Do you have a target retirement date in mind?
Thank you 
As the retirement payment system is working completely different than in the rest of the world, I will go with the first possible timeframe which is my 63th birthday. Than I will loose “only” 14% of my retirement monthly payment 
… My regular retirement age would be 67 plus 4 month …
The principle is that you get awarded “points” through your monthly “retirement insurance” which is deducted from my monthly pay stub. With this payments the actual retirees get paid. It is kind of a generational contract which obviously isn’t working anymore. These points represents a factor with which the amount will be defined. You get these points not only for actually working but also for school over 18 and apprenticeship etc. if you complete this. Also for being on parental leave etc.
To fill out the gap of 14% and the gap that I get paid max 60% of my current salary I am able to use only post tax investment choices. OTOH I am in the lucky position that my company is having an internal retirement plan in addition which will roughly end up with another 750-900 €/month.
Quite a lengthy answer but she German system is really unique (and I have a lot of explaining to do to my colleagues worldwide to make them understand how we deals with a lot of work related laws etc.) 
so I am used to it …
The Canadian system is similar - people can access their CPP (Canada pension plan) from a certain age, with the amount paid based on lifetime earnings, years worked, age at retirement, etc. The CPP alone is not a very big amount and so many Canadians supplement it with personal retirement savings, in tax-sheltered and taxable accounts.
The decision of when to start taking the CPP is complicated because the sooner you take it the less you get each month, and the amount is locked in for the rest of your life. It sounds like you’re familiar with that particular compromise.
What do you want to spend your time doing when you are retired?
@Smacky yes, that sounds very similar. As a single with no kids there are only very limited pretax choices available.
I will move to Hamburg at th latest when starting retirement, I have a lot of friends there and we would like to live close to each other for support and fun. I plan to travel, until 2020 I went on trips to the US and other places where I would have to sit in a plane for longer time. Later in life I plan to do more the car travel options which are great in Europe. I plan also to enjoy the bigger (free) cultural offerings in Hamburg.
I am in the US, and know nothing about the retirement systems and options elsewhere (and arguably know a fraction of the US system etc.). I assumed our Social Security would not exist, therefore I would have to save enough. I was lucky that my first and all subsequent employers had retirement plans. I didn’t know much, so early on I contributed only the required amount (post-university bills and low pay). I tend to learn more as I need to, but am enough of a planner and saver to not wait until the very last minute. It worked out OK.
Howdy folks! My name is Madge, and I live in Pittsburgh in a cute rental house with my husband of 8 years. You may know me from the MMM forums, or from The Hairpin and The Billfold where I published a few pieces over the years.
At present, I’m working as a technical writer right now for a large, well-funded startup, after many years working as a product manager by day and a singer/ writer/ entrepreneur/ artist by night. I changed jobs last summer, and turns out I’m much better suited for
Glad I figured this out because I’m much happier in my new job than I was in my old one! I feel like I get to be everyone’s big sister and I love it.
I also got a huge raise in that job change, and at this point I have more money than I honestly ever thought I would have, so now I need to figure out what to do with it (don’t worry, most of it is invested in low-cost index funds).
Looking forward to hanging with y’all 
hiiiii nice to see ya 
Hi!! I was a hardcore lurker on your mmm journal and loved your writing and my sense of YOU but I don’t remember if I ever posted! So hello!
Aw that is so nice 
thanks for the warm welcome, katscratch. You got a journal here?
Yup but lately it’s just lots of pictures of my food and zero discussion of money other than my newfound consumerism that I haven’t felt since high school
