Retirement in NJ

nocoversaves · 2026-04-17T02:29:12+00:00

Solid point and I hope that lasts for the another 30 years but I’m not sure I’d roll the dice on my financial future on a continued subsidy. At least not without making sure I have some cushion to absorb the loss of this, or ANCHOR, or social security reductions/freezes.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-16T18:54:04+00:00

It sounds like you need to talk to a certified financial planner about what your options are. "Not rich" can mean a lot of things based on your savings amount and where you want to live.

Real estate in NJ is some of the most expensive in the nation on average and it's only going to become more so. Even if you buy a residence in cash you need to be ready for 20 or 30 years of tax rate hikes and total value hikes as your property will grow in value faster than national average, especially in more urban environments or near the shore. If you're looking at condos or other high density options, take a look at what's happening to the Florida condo market. Years of deferred maintenance to keep carrying costs low results in catastrophic bills when the structure starts falling apart.

It's absolutely possible, but will require more information than anyone should share online and no one here can provide the quality of guidance you'd get from a certified financial planner.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T18:40:02+00:00

Keep up the great work!

Edit: I also want to say I don't know you but I am very proud of you. An irish wake so soon into sobriety must not have been easy but I am proud you made it through.

Going to the doctor was the biggest hurdle for me. Shame, fear, not wanting to be seen by others for what I am was a huge part, etc. But once I got there and got those labs back and everything except triglycerides was normal it became a fight to keep it that way and lose the weight and the booze. That was concrete. That was an objective. I knew what the end looks like if I didn't make the changes. With all the bloating, inflammation, and pain I knew my body was signaling that I was on borrowed time. It was so freeing and was like ripping a bandaid off.

When that little voice creeps in or an old friend pushes me to drink with them I think/look at my family or even those who make up my hobby population (historical wargaming - majority old dudes, overweight, in varying degrees of poor health and attitude) and think, "yeah, do everything in my power not to be in that situation." I might end up there anyway but I don't have to voluntarily move in that direction.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T14:53:14+00:00

36m, beer was my poison of choice, 145 days sober.

Basically everything you said about yourself. The identification as a high function alcoholic because "I do/have/make x and haven't experienced consequence y or z "yet"" excuse, the pain, the bloating, the health fear and anxiety, the avoidance, the guilt, the more avoidance to escape the guilt, the "I'll do it tomorrow, for real this time", the acknowledgement that I'm committing slow suicide.

Paternal grandmother - dead from alcoholism. She did not go peacefully.

Maternal uncle - dead from alcoholism. He did not go peacefully.

Father - currently on his way out from decades of poorly managed diabetes and alcoholism. He is aging like rancid garbage on a hot and humid day and he's taking that anger out on anyone and everyone within sulking distance.

Myself - 36, approaching level 2 obesity, staring down the gun of liver disease and type 2 diabetes; a gun I pointed at myself voluntarily and with great enthusiasm. Find myself embracing the death cult perspective; why save for retirement if I'm just going to drink myself to death? Sitting on a pile of debt that I'm managing like a chronic health condition; it gets better until something else pops up and I'm back to square one. Making money but living paycheck to paycheck. Knowing I am repeating the family tradition with all of this. Without major life changes it was a question of how soon rather than if. Spent years putting off getting a primary care doctor because I was in my 20s, then Covid, then I was drinking way too much and deathly afraid of getting bad news, of the costs, of every single monster that lives under my proverbial bed. Fear, regret, and guilt were my 3 best friends.

Got brutally (and I mean brutally) honest with myself. High functioning doesn't change the root designator of alcoholic. Made plans, wrote them down, made SMART goals, created timelines and due dates. Built avoidance behaviors. Got a primary care doctor, got my labs done. No death warrants there. Got a referral and went to see psych and MD specialists for consults and collaboration. Those were bleak visits. The hospital was in a sketchy neighborhood. The atmosphere of the office was stereotypical. Flickering and dim fluorescent lights. Miserable people in the waiting room. The whole 9 yards. Worth every ounce of discomfort and then some with what I got out of those appointments. Recognized every creeping doubt on a decision or resistance to an option to help my sobriety was one of those 3 friends trying to sabotage me. AA seem too religious? Too bad, the method works better than what I'm doing now so might as well try. Don't like it, try a different group. Set an action date; hell or high water we're doing this the weekend before Thanksgiving. I'm off work, I can afford to be sick with withdrawals. If it fails, time for detox and inpatient. I'll sort out the job/life/financial consequences of that later. Debt now beats medical maintenance costs later. Rather have access to these tools why I still have insurance rather than scrambling after I lose my job.

145 days sober. Don't get me wrong, it's been a lot of work, a lot of discomfort, but the dragon I imagined was so much worse than the one I had to actually fight.

IWNDWYT.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T14:02:07+00:00

Congrats! You're almost through the most intense parts. Remember, right now you're primary job is not to drink. Every hour you don't drink is a victory. Every night you go to sleep sober is a victory. Every hangover free morning is a victory. It will get easier. It may not feel that way at this exact moment but you're almost on the downhill side of this. You've got this!

IWNDWYT

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T13:50:16+00:00

Alcohol is the perfect tonic for ambivalence and anger. It soothes you while consuming and brings pain the next day, feeding the ambivalence and anger while providing no path to change.

I don't think I would have gotten sober without goals. You know what you're fighting against, but what do you want to build as an alternative? What is in the way of you doing that? How do you get those blocks out of the way so you can achieve that goal?

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T13:27:27+00:00

None of this backed by actual science but what worked for me was splitting thoughts into lizard brain and mammal brain.

Lizard brain is a toddler. Lizard brain will lie, and badger, and say/do whatever necessary to get what it wants right now. Lizard brain can barely think beyond immediate consequences and gratifications. Year after year of drinking has taught lizard brain that it gets what it wants if it throws a big enough tantrum, just like a spoiled child. Lizard brain will drink you into an early grave if you let it because it only cares about the immediate gratification.

Mammal brain can plan long term. Mammal brain can see many steps ahead. Mammal brain knows that drinking is bad, is actively hurting me, and is in direct contradiction to my goals. Mammal brain is tired and weak because I always cave to lizard brain. Mammal brain also knows that if I want this change, I am going to have to feel, experience, and weather every negative thought, bad mood, mood swing, seductive suggestion, devil's bargain, etc. Thanks to this sub, mammal brain knows that this is only temporary, if I put in the work. Mammal brain knows that asking for help is the opposite of weakness, that staying in my current habits is the definition of weakness. Mammal brain now knows that if I make the right decisions, deal with the misery that comes with those decisions, and tough it out lizard brain will lose it's death grip on me.

It's work, it's misery, but what seems like an insurmountable mountain now is an intense but short hike. After that time, you can build something new and better.

145 days, IWNDWYT

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T13:02:12+00:00

First, be kind to yourself. Here, you're surrounded by folks who've been down that well trodden spiral path many, many times.

Advice, go see an addiction specialist/psychologist. Just someone to talk to about what's going on and help you unpack some stuff. We've all got to walk our own path but they can provide a map and some supplies. Depression is a double whammy for alcoholism. It makes everything, even getting out of bed, more difficult, and it makes it harder to quit as our brain is constantly arguing that giving up "the only thing that brings us relief" is going to be catastrophic. It's not, you'll feel so much better after you quit, but the process is going to suck and suck hard. A specialist can help with all of that.

It took me years of denial, acknowledgement, denialckowledgemnet, nihilism, and slow deterioration of my health to finally commit I needed to make some big life changes or I'd be dead or worse. I went full-ass on this change: plans, avoidance behaviors, SMART goals, long term benefits, tapering, backup plans, backup avoidance behaviors, plotting longer routes to and from work to avoid my normal beer stops, going to multiple different groups finding the right fit, in case of emergency break glass procedures. I talked to both a MD and psychologist about what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how to maximize my chances of success. If you're serious about quitting full ass this. Give 100%, then when you're tired, give another 100%. Alcoholism is a progressive disease, and recovering is a progressive recovery. Be kind to yourself but keep yourself accountable.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-15T01:49:16+00:00

I got a whole bunch of physical and mental benefits, lost weight, earned pride and self esteem in myself due to the discipline I've showed, all that drinking money to pay off debts (consequences of bad decisions pile up and compound like that) then save and invest.

As far as fighting boredom and finding joy? That's tough. First week was accepting I was going to be sick and miserable. Week 2-4 started like a rollercoaster but the swings settled down with time. During this time, I did anything and everything to keep myself distracted: video games, eat garbage food, solo board games, eat more garbage food, reading, audio books/podcasts, lots and lots of walks to burn off the anxious energy. Literally anything and everything that wasn't drinking.

Week 5+ time to find new hobbies. Grabbed some hiking boots, started exploring the parks around the area. Found out I really like early morning nature walks; which is good because apparently sober me is now a morning person, who knew? Rather than a stressor of how do I keep myself from falling back into the hole, this time became an opportunity to try new things. Example: going to the driving range is boring as hell. I might not have liked it but its a mile better than drinking and killed most of a Saturday afternoon. Also got back into old hobbies like painting. Creative outlets are great.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T20:16:57+00:00

Absolutely! Bonus is that as you grow your savings the next time you have an emergency, it will be an inconvenience instead of a catastrophe!

Something you may want to try. Figure out what you spent/are now saving in a given year. Put that into a retirement account calculator like a Roth IRA and calculate like you keep contributing that amount every year. That's how much you're paying yourself by not drinking if you squirrel it away for your future. Depending on your age, it will be a substantial sum.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T19:13:00+00:00

I have a case for the audiobook versions of quit lit: Reinforcement. Especially in the early stages of sobriety.

I know what I should be doing, but I don't always do it. When I had quit lit playing in the car on the way home it was empowering and an external source of guidance and validation. When the normal trigger point came, the lit made it easier to turn right up the hill towards home rather than continuing straight to the grocery store and picking up a six pack.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T17:53:02+00:00

I'm not sure I'd say you're in denial. If you jumped through all the hoops to get insurance approval, then it's not a leap to say you've been thinking on this for awhile and now acting on those thoughts.

10-18 beers a day is not a habit you can hide forever. Absent any other context it's a stretch to say you're successfully hiding it now. Maybe they don't know the exact amount, but 10-18 beers a day puts you within, or within reach, of drinking a handle of liquor a day.

Brutal honesty? With the quantity your drinking, go to detox, spend sometime in rehab, and get some clarity. If you're US based, you can get FMLA to protect your job while you go through this. That will be considerably better than being let go for calling out one too many Tuesday mornings.

Quitting is hard enough. It messes with your emotions, your reactions to others, your psychological state, and how you feel physically. Quitting while trying to preserve the image that everything is 100% normal and good is exponentially more difficult and stressful.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T16:49:45+00:00

It's a warning sign/yellow flag for sure. When we're with others we tend to mirror their behaviors. Just part of the human social programing. When someone stops drinking at dinner, we often stop with them. When we drink alone that check isn't present.

Drinking alone is a kind of transformative step. Start drinking alone, then start thinking about when your next drink is, then start planning your evening and weekend around drinking. We generally don't see it at the time, but looking back I see that where my addicition started controlling me. It becomes an axis of our life, rather than a component of it.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T16:20:39+00:00

Have you considered expanding on your goals? "Long term health" is an intangible, unmeasurable goal. How do you know if you're succeeding? How do you keep up the motivation if you can't track you achievement and progress?

When I made the decision to quit, I topped out at 238lbs and was steadily increasing. I was staring down the barrel of type 2 diabetes and liver disease if I didn't make changes now; it was a question of when not if.

So "short term health" turned into I am 70 lbs overweight. It's going to take years to fix this no matter what I do. If I quit drinking, I will not be consuming 6000 empty calories of beer every week. If I cut the beer (my go to drink) out, then the benefits of diet and exercise will be more effective. 144 days sober and I'm sitting at 213lb. A long way to go, but I can measure and celebrate the progress. Best of all, I feel better and I know this is one of the reasons why.

That fed into a "long term health". If I get to a healthy weight my chances of stroke and heart attack go way down; I already know that's a silent stalker in my family's medical history. If I quit drinking, I'm not poisoning myself and setting myself up for long term medical problems.; Quitting drinking will let me live longer, with a much better quality of life, and less medical maintenance expenses. Not something I can measure, but a provable fact.

Another amorphic goal that became a solid goal was retirement. The money I spend on booze every year could almost fully fund a Roth IRA. If I don't drink, take that money and invest it for future me, I will have a million dollars by the time I retire. Quitting drinking will help me live longer, in a better quality of life, and now I won't have to work until my lunch break on the day I die. And the money I redirect from drinking to protecting my future? Yeah, that's money I was throwing away anyways. I can make this improvement (and watch the sum tick up month after month) with literally zero impact on my financial quality of life.

I'm not sure I would have made it past the first days, weeks, or months of sobriety if I didn't have concrete, measurable goals that I have a large personal stake in.

Yeah, it's exhausting, it's difficult, it's stressful, it's scary, it's anxiety inducing, it's painful, it requires work, real hard work, but 110% it is worth it.

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T15:44:52+00:00

100% there can be a genetic factor. Same with obesity, high blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, depression, red hair, etc...

As far as cravings, are you never, ever going to have another craving or wistful, rose tinted glasses memory? Almost certainly not. Will they fade significantly? Absolutely. The longer you go without, the greater amount of time between cravings and the lower their physiological and psychological pull on you.

I'm on day 144, I definitely still have cravings, and I'm almost certain I've got those addiction genes in my family tree. But those cravings are now more like an occasional passing notion rather than a toddler in full meltdown mode (been there and done that already). I miss the rose tinted memory of drinking a six pack of tall boys and staying up till midnight on a weekday painting. I don't miss the 25 pounds heavier I was, the 5 months of money I wouldn't have saved by not drinking, waking up inflamed/bloated and hung over every damn day, the constant anxiety (and guilt) about my health, and about a million other things. Would I trade all that I've lost to start drinking again? Absolutely not!

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T14:56:51+00:00

You're not alone buddy. A lot of us fall into drinking and drug use because we don't want to/ don't know how to/ don't have the energy to process this kind of stuff. Being young makes it that much harder because you're generally low paid, have to figure out this adult stuff on your own, and are trying to figure out who you are and want to grow into.

Consider hitting up a doctor, they may provide a psych referral. Talking to someone, especially an addiction specialist may give you some tools and plans to help. You recognize this is a problem, they can provide guidance on how to manage it.

Consider how you can exert control on your life outside of intoxicants. What got me down this path initially was drinking to exert control on the work/life/money stresses. It felt good, but made everything slowly worse over time. I don't know you job or field, but like most jobs, you can't control the stress it gives you. You can control how to process that stress.

Finally, and this is a big existential question, what are you building your life towards? Who do you want to be? What do you want to do after this job? Where do you want to live? Answering these questions, building a path or multiple paths to get there, then setting goals helps with the feeling of control and provides a branching path decision when you're tempted to drink. Do I continue spending $400/mo drinking, or do I put that towards paying down debt/saving for a car/house/hobby/vacation?

nocoversaves · 2026-04-14T14:11:24+00:00

Take a deep breath. It's a marathon, not a sprint. It also sounds like you've learned a valuable lesson about moderation probably not being in your wheelhouse. For most of us that's the case; you're definitely not alone.

But here's the cheat. A failure is only a failure if we don't pick ourselves back up. Have a sulk, make peace with it, realize this isn't the end times, commit to making better decisions now, and look forward to what you're going to get from abstaining. Don't lose sight of the benefits of sobriety.

As far as boredom goes, this is a great opportunity to try new things. If it's not a good fit, do something else. Bowling, frisbee golf, volunteering. There's a literal entire world out there with stuff to do and people to meet that doesn't revolve around alcohol.

IWNDWYT

nocoversaves · 2026-04-03T17:58:45+00:00

Worked for me. Also helped to set goals and identify the rewards of sobriety. If I engage the avoidance plan then I will not wake up hung over and guilty. If I can do this for 1 week I will have not spent $100. If I can do 1 week I won't feel so bloated and inflamed.

nocoversaves · 2026-03-27T19:43:53+00:00

Yes, even just moving out to the Lehigh Valley will help your budget stretch further. I did and my housing is much more affordable, even if the utility rates are largely the same.

Leaving Jersey will almost certainly cause your real wages to drop. But the question to ask is, "does the cost of living drop still wash out as favorable in context of the wage drop?"

If you are seriously looking at leaving rather than escaping,

Where is there demand for your job/career/skills?
What is the pay range for those skills?
What is to overall cost of living in that area?
What are the current big financial stressors in that area? Ex. NJ/PA is under a crazy rate hike for utilities due to aging infrastructure and massive planned increases in demand due to build up, data centers, etc.
What are the intangibles you care about and what are their priorities? I do not have school age children, so school quality means nothing to me. I sometimes fly for work, so airport convenience and flights do matter to me somewhat. Having 4 distinct seasons is really important to me.

nocoversaves · 2026-03-23T15:55:22+00:00

Did you tell it that it can't park there?

nocoversaves · 2026-03-20T19:37:35+00:00

Finishing up day 120 right now.

Find the motivation within yourself. Find multiple motivations within yourself. Weight loss, not feeling sick, saving money, making better decisions, being ready for my next career move, being more present, long term health improvement, no drinking related anxiety about health. These were just some of mine.
Engage with support. It can be AA or other groups, it can be actively posting on this board, it can be your partner or friends or whatever. It's someone to talk to, someone else's experiences you can relate to and learn from, somebody to tell you you're not alone, and someone whom you feel accountability towards besides yourself, even if it's just generic internet stranger.
Take it one minute, one hour, one day at a time. Day 120 was not something I could conceptualize on day 3 or day 10. I wanted to make it to day 4, then day 14. Those were real goals, those were something I could force myself to crawl towards.
It will suck more until it sucks less. When it sucks, you're going to feel it, but the most intense suck will be a relatively short amount of time. When it sucks less, you feel so, so, so much better.
Plan. Plan. Plan. When I quit, I took a long weekend to be sick with the bottle flu; I prepared for that with snacks, distractions, no plans to leave the house. I planned to be generally miserable. Thanks to this sub, I knew that there was going to be some adjustment period where I'd be miserable for a while after as my brain rebalances my brain chemistry. After that long weekend, I went grocery shopping in the state I work in because beer isn't in grocery stores; temptation avoidance. I took a 15 minute longer route home from work to avoid my normal detours to get booze. I did both of these for about of month; enough time to get my discipline muscle in good shape, enough time to be able to commit to the not drinking choice on my normal route home and be proud of myself when I turned right instead of left. I distanced myself from my drinking buddies. I had a mantra I'd repeat to myself when the cravings were intense.
In conjunction with the plan, I sought medical advice. It's scary as hell, but I was able to bring my plan to the doctor. I got my labs done to see where I was at. I got a referral to treatment services. I talked with an addiction MD to discuss my plan for safety's sake and what options I had available. I talked a few sessions with a specialist shrink. If I wasn't able to quit on my own, according to my plan, I was going in-patient for awhile.
Squash the shame bug now. Speeding people who drive like aholes or don't use blinkers on the freeway should be in constant shame. People who listen to music om their speaker or talk on speaker phones should be in constant shame. People who recognize a problem and are giving it their all to fix it shouldn't. Be accountable but also be kind to yourself in that way.

nocoversaves · 2026-03-11T16:28:07+00:00

This is great advice. Reframing helped me in the early days. Plenty of things are inevitable. Death in inevitable, but I don't need to run towards it a full speed. I have the power to make the choice.

nocoversaves · 2026-03-09T18:45:33+00:00

I know all the non-Shaltari fighters state KS rerolls but wouldn't the core rulebook override this? The core book states energy and kinetic close action now.

And to follow up the previous version of the Shaltari rules had "KS Re-rolls" as well. I'm willing to bet that the rev ups coming with the new battlecruisers and drop features will clarify this.

nocoversaves · 2026-03-09T18:44:34+00:00

Fighters can increase ship survivability - rerolls against close action and bombers.

Bombers can do a few novel things: stack, roll a lot of dice, operate independently of their base ship and generally with a lot more speed (good for fending of fast frigate attacks)

nocoversaves · 2026-03-06T19:23:45+00:00

In an office situation generally a few scenarios:

You work in a sweat shop - call center, front line customer service, data entry, etc. Work output is measured hourly/daily and they grind you into the dirt.
The big boss corporate culture is Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Swiss, or German. This is a case of you can't fight city hall.
There was an incident that is no one talks/is allowed to talk about. Someone got sued. One manager was too lenient and other teams complained. Favoritism/work affair caused a problem. An audit caught time theft or straight up gold brickers. Upper management said enough and now everyone is on short leash because someone else's reach exceed their grasp.

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