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Retirement

Retirement allows you to do anything you like (within the law) and not to be shackled to an employer or work you don't particularly enjoy but need to do to earn a crust. I've been fortunate to be working in a profession that I enjoy, and one where there is always a demand for my skills. So, my plan for 'retirement' is to transition from full time employment to part time self-employment; picking and choosing contract work that I like to do and when I feel like it. Being well networked and building a strong reputation will be essential leading up to the transition, which if successful, would be like I never retired from getting paid but not doing anything I don't enjoy.
 
I’ll reach pension age in three months but not planning on quitting work yet. Been in the music biz now for around 40 years and I’m going to miss it when I do pack in work. Decided to go part time soon, sort of easing into full time leisure. Still got the records to listen to, the walks along the coast and photography - should keep me occupied for a while.
 
Bob McC said:
Been retired 10 years from age 52.
Spent the last three years travelling extensively.
Writing this from Lanzarote.
Palma next month
Valencia month after
Umbria’s in April
And all of May will be in Brittany.
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So it’s your pension I have to work until I’m 67 to pay for!!! 52, I couldn’t dream of that. Hopefully my current employer will remain a contributor to the teachers’ pension scheme. It’s just so punitive to access it early now.
 
I am hoping to go down to 3 days a week from September and draw on my pension. I will be financially much better off. The enjoyment that I used to derive from teaching has begun to wane quite dramatically these last few years.
 
Bob McC said:
Been retired 10 years from age 52.
Spent the last three years travelling extensively.
Writing this from Lanzarote.
Palma next month
Valencia month after
Umbria’s in April
And all of May will be in Brittany.
Click to expand...

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Bloss
 
James said:
Retirement allows you to do anything you like (within the law) and not to be shackled to an employer or work you don't particularly enjoy but need to do to earn a crust. I've been fortunate to be working in a profession that I enjoy, and one where there is always a demand for my skills. So, my plan for 'retirement' is to transition from full time employment to part time self-employment; picking and choosing contract work that I like to do and when I feel like it. Being well networked and building a strong reputation will be essential leading up to the transition, which if successful, would be like I never retired from getting paid but not doing anything I don't enjoy.
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That worked for my father, and his before him (who still locum'd a day or two a week until ..81, simply because he liked to; and was turning -down no small demand & offers to do more.)

Dad 'retired' at pennies short of 62; got an invite to consult, decided to keep his hand in for a a bit, thinking 1-2days a week here and there to keep the grey cells alive would be good for a year or two while in transition...

10yrs later, Dad decided to call consultancy a day, working 3days +/wk on projects he chose was getting in way of the fun stuff (inc a few charity obligations)

4yrs after that - his employer at point of retirement (ICAEW) sidled-up an offered him a lucrative role, and it was his great pleasure to say - thanks, but - no thanks.

For both my father and his, none of it was about money, though it add(s)(ed) choice; it was about enjoying exercising a working-lifetime's acquisition of skills, experience & judgement and just enjoying doing so. At 78 Dad now says he doesn't know how he ever found time to work... :)
 
SteveT said:
I am hoping to go down to 3 days a week from September and draw on my pension. I will be financially much better off. The enjoyment that I used to derive from teaching has begun to wane quite dramatically these last few years.
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Sensible. This year a point 6, see how it goes and then possibly reduce further. My friend in tertiary education is taking about 5 years over this strategy, having invested his pot, living on the proceeds, his teacher's pension and his part-time teaching, until his state pension kicks in. He'd've fallen apart if he'd just packed it up entirely.
 
Important, I think, to be doing something that you want to do BEFORE you actually retire. If that needs to be done by winding down on reduced days then so be it. The worst thing to do is work flat out to retirement day and then wake up on Monday morning wondering what to do - apart from deal with the long honey-do list. I have known folks do the instant retire thing and be dead in 5 years -boredom, inactivity, drink etc.

Retiring before say 65 - 66 - still leaves most of us with 20 years plus to occupy.

In my case, with a late family, I need another few years of full income and a recovery year, then I (and the Mrs, with NHS Pension) can retire - Golf and travel beckon...
 
lordsummit said:
So it’s your pension I have to work until I’m 67 to pay for!!! 52, I couldn’t dream of that. Hopefully my current employer will remain a contributor to the teachers’ pension scheme. It’s just so punitive to access it early now.
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I don’t know the terms are now but for me it went like this;

Just have your health destroyed by the job so that you deteriorate over 10 years until you
Become suicidal.
See your family suffer for years as you don’t know what is happening to you other than coming home and switching off every day from them and everything, often going to bed by 7pm.
Abusing alcohol as you try to cope.
End up under a psychiatrist and several horrible drug regimes on long term illness.
Get the DFE to accept you will never be able to work again.

Get awarded early retirement on health grounds.

Job’s a good’un.

But I still wouldn’t recommend it.
14 years on I still have nightmares, almost every night, about how the job I loved destroyed me.

Just trying to make the best of it!
 
Retired 10 years ago after 40 years at the NHS coalface. Loved the patients, hated the whole rotten setup where people who didn't know their arse from their elbow made all the important decisions. That was 10 years ago. I'm told it's even worse now.

Enough moaning. It was the best thing I ever did.
 
I'll be 60 later this month and will be taking my defined benefit pensions on my birthday which will be enough to support a satisfactory lifestyle. I'm lucky to (mainly) enjoy work and so plan to carry on until the end of November when I'll give up full time work after being fully employed for over 42 years. I'm going on a pre-retirement course next week paid for by my employer. I count myself very lucky to have been able to contribute to good pension schemes throughout my working life. The trick now is to stay alive and healthy to enjoy my retirement when it comes later this year.
 
Bob, I sympathise, I escaped just in time. Left the classroom and leadership and ended up working on the peripheries. It destroyed my father’s health too. When I was ‘leading’ I worked from 7-7, I’d come home and tolerate everyone until 10, then settle down for two or three hours of answering emails, doing paperwork. I now get the chance to do what I’m good at, but there’s no chance of an early end. Always wanted to finish at 60, can’t see it being possible now. I’m pretty sure that if I were to try I’d either lose the lump sum or a big chunk of the payments.
 
clifftaylor said:
Having resigned from my (10 year) NHS job last December to avoid going mad, I've been looking at the options, and I must say that after 47 years of all kinds of jobs, I like the look of retirement. I have re-registered with the NHS trust I was employed by as a flexible worker (ie Zero Hours Admin Drone), but I won't need to do any of that immediately - I can survive until State Pension age (2 years), but it would help.

Anybody else retired "recently" who can give any pointers re what to do, or not?
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Cliff

In a word - JFDI

I was lucky in the sense that I had a well paid career in consultancy that I enjoyed and I also had a pension thanks to an early retirement deal. It was also a curse in the sense that I would have been happy to have worked until I dropped. What swung it for me was realising that I was not as young as I used to be. I had to be on the Rail Station at 6.40am most days and often got home from London at around 8.00pm. You can do that when you are young, but when you are in your sixties, it starts to leave you knackered.

The wife and I bit the bullet when she was 58 and I was 61. We both chucked in work on the same day and took a one way ticket to Spain and returned home 6 weeks later. We both enjoy travel so it is a mandatory 24 weeks each year travelling abroad. We like it so we do it and living in Spain must add years to your life because the Spanish are so laid back, they become horizontal.

Basically the most stressful decision I had to make today was deciding what I should wear.

Do it early because you cannot do it if your health gives in and the longer you put your retirement back, the shorter it will be. We will all die one day and I want the bugger who is giving the eulogy at my funeral to say he had a bloody good retirement.

Regards

Mick
 
P.S. I still have dreams.. I wouldn't call them nightmares.. where I'm trying to get something done by a deadline.. They are really no more significant than those lovely days when you wake up thinking 'Oh Shit!!! Work!!..'... then suddenly realise it's the weekend...
 
Spike said:
Lordsummit,
How old are you?
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46, always planned to retire at 60, but the amount Id lose looks really punitive at the moment. Everything was set up for that, but the kicking my career took due to the changes in the last seven years have pretty much ruled that out. My areas of specialism seem to have been pretty much the ones unloved by the present administration.
 
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