Like Tommy said, I was a mechanic most of my working life, it got to be a drag after time went on, but not always easy to find good paying jobs when you get older, unless you want to spend years training for a different career. I wanted to retire with zero debt, so made sure that any monthly expenses (mortgage, car payments, loans, credit cards etc) were taken care of long before I gave my notice at work. The fact that we decided to move from a red hot real estate market, to a much quieter, more rural area, allowed us to move into a much newer, much nicer and larger house, on acreage, with a shop almost 4 times the size of my old garage, for less than 1/2 what we sold our tiny 65 year old bungalow on a city lot for. A 1/4 mile dragstrip 1/2 away, 1/2 hour to the Atlantic Ocean, and now Beaver Springs is "only" 23 hours away, rather than over 50 hours! Now I only work on my own vehicles, when I feel like it, although I may take on an interesting side project , IF the right one comes along.
