Retirement?

I am giving some serious thought to retiring sooner than I had planned. I have to go Thursday (I wrote this post on Tuesday and scheduled it) to get a stent put in my neck to bypass my 80% clogged carotid artery on the left side. Right side needs to be done as well but the vascular surgeon wants at least a month between surgeries.

Over the last couple weeks I have had some numbness on the right side of my body so I ended up leaving work and going to the ER last Wednesday. They kept me overnight and then transferred me to a bigger hospital the next day that has a vascular dept. After a couple of MRIs on my head, an echocardiagram and a CT with contrast they found that both carotids are 80% blocked, I have a tumor in my salivary (sp?) gland that needs to be checked, and a 1mm aneurysm in my head that they need to keep an eye on.

Problem is I don’t have enough to retire and I am two years shy of social security. With what I have in stock through work and my options, I could 100% pay off the house and my wife’s car but that still leaves credit card dept and bills. My wife has income from teaching forever which could absolutely pay the bills but I don’t think it’s enough to pay credit card dept. idk. I am going to take a look at all of our subscriptions and stuff like that and see what I can host locally to get rid of stuff. One more year of work would probably do it but the last week has really put a different slant on things for me.

We definitely aren’t yet making enough money from our side stuff and festivals to support ourselves. I can see it getting there at some point but there are times where we don’t even make enough to pay the vendor fees.

Smoking. Ug. Gotta quit smoking. Obviously I went three days while I was in the hospital but picked it up again right after. I went until noon today until I smoked. Going to keep fighting that.

Any suggestions and advice is always welcome. Have any of you guys quit smoking? How did you do it?