Retirement Planning & Experiences

[k_sheep]

If you make the right investments now, you can step back work less and retire soon ( even with kids down the track ect..).

I'm very risk averse so currently just have the PPOR fully offset (cheap place), plus a bunch in ETFs. Oh and 2 positively geared investment properties, one of which is in BNE bought pre-surge so has a good amount of equity. I find property a bit annoying though. Unsure what else I can realistically do without a whole lot of research.

Well I had a new surge of enjoyment during Covid. Really felt I was essential.

But to the retirement plan there seem to be many locum Pathology jobs around Australia. great way of earning enough to fund more travel.
As well you get to know Australia better. Living and working somewhere even just for a few weeks is totally different to being a tourist. And if a place chose to CMO then I just didn't go back. Some places really were a challenge but I rose to the occasion. Nothing like having to intubate 2 brothers with severe muscular dystrophy at 7 and 8pm at night and then have the Tertiary hospital tell you we won't be able to take them until after 8am tomorrow.
But I really loved the life.

I felt the same at the start - was setting up new labs and tests and protocols and even talking to media as a subject matter expert. But then it just became very draining as the demands became more and more unfeasible with more and more 'managers' who insisted on having meetings every day lasting 2 hours where everyone would talk about how many boxes of gloves they had left. And demanding to know why had I not personally arranged more nasal swabs that were their preferred colour (when the company that made them were in Italy ... no joke, they somehow thought I could control that as the entire country burned). Plus several of my immediate co-workers were covid deniers so they were super hostile to any attempts for risk minimisation and made me super uncomfortable.

I really do love locuming as a way to travel and really experience a place. But for us the locum pay rate is actually significantly worse than a permanent job weirdly. I guess I like the security blanket of having sick / rec / long service leave up my sleeve.