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Early retirement… who did it?

Took redundancy aged 43
Went back (same job, same place) as freelance until 52
Finally realised work was a PITA (I catch on slowly) and stopped
Coaxed back a couple of years later to train others for five or six weeks a year and earn some pin money to feed my Châteauneuf habit
Immediately pre-Covid the training courses moved to London (no, thanks) so I thought I had finally fully retired (63 at the time)
Covid happened, job moved back, asked to start again next week. Where’s that Wine Society list?
 
Nero said:
Did the split have anything to do with the early retirement? IME, a big event like retirement can have real knock-ons - for me, it was when the kids left home, and I found I hated spending time with my (then) wife :)
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I retired a couple of years before my wife. We'd both been diagnosed with high blood pressure some years before retiring.
A couple of months after she retired she had a routine appointment with our GP. Her blood pressure had gone down. A few weeks later I saw him. He found my blood pressure had gone up. "Your wife's just retired, hasn't she?" He said with a grin.
 
zippy said:
I sort of 'semi-retired' i.e. at age 50 I gave up my highly paid but high pressure consultancy job and took a job as tec support at a university.
Salary drop was more than 50% but well worth it to have time to do other things.
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Something similar here. I quit a well paid IT job in The City about five years ago because I was working six days a week (on call the seventh) in a stressful environment and it was damaging my physical and mental health. I'd known for a long while that I would have to quit at some point but there was always the temptation of 'one more year' making really good money...

Went back to HE and did a degree (got a first!) and now working as a tech in a college four days a week. Fraction of the salary I had, fraction of the stress (most days anyway!). No kids, no debt and simple tastes so running costs are reasonably low.

I'd like to do a Masters at some point but there's no rush. At 48 it feels like I'm gradually taking my foot off the pedal preparing myself for something a bit like semi retirement.
 
Still full time but i've changed the job.

I was finance director but got a bit burnt out on that plus sitting at a computer too much was starting to take it's toll on my health.

Employed a secretary to do all the really boring bits and now i do more manual work.

On top of that i now have more time to research new projects and fix problems that arise.

Currently looking at a small vineyard for spring planting, then have a compressor to rebuild and a tractor driver to relieve for the rest of the day.

Approaching 67 and i hope to never retire, my father was working in the morning the day he died, played a round of golf in the afternoon, had dinner with his mates and died in his sleep.

Maybe a bit early a 80 but i don't want to spend time in a home.
 
I thought I was going to retire 3 years ago when I came back to the UK, but found a new job very quickly, and have, on balance, enjoyed it. Although it is a senior role, it is much less stressful than my previous employer, which morphed from a great company into a highly stressful, sociopathic environment within just a few years. I’ll be 60 later this year, and am seriously thinking about retiring within the next year. I’d really like the time to do some writing, and perhaps a degree, before I can’t, but it’s a big decision which is easy to procrastinate on.
 
My wife and I had a first go at retiring when I was 50 and she was 53, which included leaving our jobs (me as a director in a global IT consultancy and my wife as a head of department in a private school) and selling up in London and moving back to our Edinburgh place. It only lasted about 6 months though as I was approached for a job in Edinburgh that had a lot less responsibility & stress than my previous role, plus was more or less offering London money. When I got that job offer we'd just set off for a 1 year motorhome wander around Europe but ended up only going away for a couple of months as that's all I could negotiate for a start date. My wife also initially took on some supply teaching work with a private school she used to work at, and has since take a 2-day per week role there.

I'm now 53 and have a tentative idea of retiring (properly this time!) when I hit 55. We've recently bought a cottage in the Cairngorms and will probably sell our Edinburgh place and move up there full-time when we retire again (given Brexit has killed, for now, our option of retiring in the Dordogne). I've also been maxing my contributions to my pension in the last few years, partly to grow it but mainly for tax efficiency reasons. We've still got our motorhome and it's ready for an extended trip (as we did all the work to get it ready for the previous trip) so we might also do a long motorhome tour when we retire - although it's a bit more complicated post-Brexit due to the restrictions on time spend in the EU.
 
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tones said:
From talking to other folk, it seems that it very much depends on the person you are and whether you have other interests.
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I’m definitely in the latter camp. I’ve always detested conventional employee work, just as I hated school before it. Six to eight hours a day plus travel time just gone five days a week. All I’ve ever wanted is the space to pursue my own interests in my own time and to do so without being a financial burden on others. I have no time for the arbitrary rituals and authoritarianism of a conventional workplace, the fixed hours, the office politics, the dealing with people I have nothing whatsoever in common with or respect for. This kind of worked for me as an IT contractor as I was pretty good at it for a while so after the first week or two fixing other people’s mess that caused the issues that got me the contract I could usually get everything done within the first hour or two of the day, and then just ring up the £xx an hour for the next 6 hours they insisted I be there whilst browsing the internet, playing Quake, reading a book or whatever in the server room where I lived. They tended to like me as stuff worked whereas previously it hadn’t, I liked it as I was largely left alone and being a contractor had no connection or reason to care about the business. Even so I’m really pleased to be out of that and I’d not want to go back (even if I’d stand a chance of making some pretty crazy cash contracting now if I brushed-up my long-dormant COBOL skills!). I’ve always valued free time above cash so I’m very content where I am. Being entirely independent is fine, I don’t need the fancy trappings beyond that.
 
I retired at 60, what surprised me at the time was the number of well meaning folk who repeatedly said '..but what are you going to do?'. 'Stop working' was my answer. My working life has involved shift work, weekend working, plus a few unbearable bosses so I'd had enough, I just wanted out. I'm a runner so train pretty much every day and find enough stuff to do keep me happy. The wife is now retired too and it is a blessing to be able to go places and do things when you want (covid permitting!).
 
I think, too, that whether a person works for someone else or runs their own business makes a difference regarding attitudes to retirement (always presuming running a business isn't dangerously pressurised).
I have a great many interests - I love travel, and although I do no sports I love walking. I'm also lucky in that some of my interests - books, film & listening to music - are sedentary pursuits, so as I get less able to get around, I should still have plenty to enjoy.
Chap who cuts my hair is 71. He can't see himself ever retiring. I've lost count of the number of times he's asked me "but don't you get bored?" which tells me a lot about his way of life. I have too much to do and enjoy to ever consider boredom. His life appears to be cutting hair, popping out for a pint and watching tv (please don't infer I'm putting him down - I'm not. We all make different choices - his suit him).

Mick
 
Funny, I’m 50 today, and have been thinking hard about this over the last few months. At the moment I’m lucky to really enjoy my work, but I do find it very frantic. Ultimately I guess I’d like to carry on doing what I do, but a bit less. My current plan is in about five years time to see where we are, there should be a good chunk of equity in the house, and to see if I can’t find a way to go mortgage free. That would free up a good chunk of money that would mean I could start to wind it down, I’m hoping as I approach sixty I’ll be on a downward slope where the work I’m doing is the work I really want to do. Drawing on my pension and doing some part-time work might be good, especially if I can find something that really suits. The kids have five and seven years left before they might go to university (assuming that’s what they want to do), so I’m planning on winding down around then. I certainly don’t plan to work until the mandated 67, at the moment my pension would be about 15k. Hard to guess what it would be, but in another ten years I’d hope it would be nearer 22/23k. State pension won’t come until 67 of course, but I’ve always paid into that, so that should be healthy. I’m pretty certain with a small house, and no mortgage we could cope on those figures. Mrs L will also have a pension, although I can see a marathon running in my future to get me out of the house and give me some peace and quiet!
 
Happy birthday lord :)

God I hope to join the ranks of the retired soon. 52 now and have been thinking of it since I was about 19.

And the irony of having spent almost all of my working life in pensions and not having that much of one for myself makes it hurt that much more. Still, moving from job to job, taking the best part of 10 years out to travel and for many years just assuming it would all work out OK in the end didn't help.

<goes to check the crypto prices>
 
I know its not the done thing to talk about money but that's what occupies my mind most when I consider retiring. I guess it's different for everyone but assuming no mortgage or rent, what are your income expectations? I'm thinking about having to run2 cars, maintaining the house, saving a bit for car replacements, leisure travel etc etc.

Maybe people won't want to talk figures but for those of who are , what's your required figure? What would you be content to retire on?
 
JTC,

I'm 55 with no chance of retirement ever so if you can get on with it, do it today, I was seriously Ill a couple of years back, I view every day at work as a day of life wasted when I could be doing something useful, like playing Jazz trombone or watching the grass grow.

Ho hum

S
 
I had to wait until I was 65, wanted to go at 55 however things happened where I needed to stay.

The last 10 years between 55 and 65 you have to go to meetings, listen to the new kids in charge who are all target led and have no feelings of what proper team work is and don't give a sh*t about peoples feelings. Not to mention most are some of the biggest ar*e h*les I have ever met, what happened to experience, does that not count any more, why do young managers think they know it all and won't listen. I did work for a local authority so maybe that explains a lot :D

If you can afford it go, you will love it, as others have said as long as you can fill your day your stress levels will drop like a stone and you will find you enjoy just living each day as it comes around, even your stomach will say thank you for stopping rushed meals and endless cups of tea or coffee.
 
Ginger said:
I know its not the done thing to talk about money but that's what occupies my mind most when I consider retiring. I guess it's different for everyone but assuming no mortgage or rent, what are your income expectations? I'm thinking about having to run2 cars, maintaining the house, saving a bit for car replacements, leisure travel etc etc.

Maybe people won't want to talk figures but for those of who are , what's your required figure? What would you be content to retire on?
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It is not so much in terms of the cash income but more a calculation firstly of what your household costs to run each month/year and then, having budgeted for that, how much more you would need to do the other things you want to do.

So if your household costs £x you might want an additional 1x or 2x or whatever for discretionary spend.
 
Ginger said:
Maybe people won't want to talk figures but for those of who are , what's your required figure? What would you be content to retire on?
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I think it's a tricky one. Our household running costs are reasonably low - we're both fairly frugal by nature - but costs change over time, healthcare being the obvious one.
 
Ginger said:
Maybe people won't want to talk figures but for those of who are , what's your required figure? What would you be content to retire on?
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We live quite frugally, and always have done. We could just about manage on our combined state pensions, but there would be no 'slack' for one-off expenses (eg a new boiler), or for holidays.

Adding up unavoidable expenditure (food, fuel, Council Tax etc), plus something for non-essentials, I'd say £20k as a minimum; £25k would be enough to live on quite comfortably. But I'd also need a large 'rainy day' kitty that could be accessed quickly as and when needed.
 
I was in a stressful job, fast track high end fit-out. Coped till I was in my mid-late fifties, they wanted me to stay, offered reduced hours etc, but the stress bit still there. Jacked it in and took on local work back on the tools, suited me far better for a few years until 66y.o to await Gov pension as private one collapsed a few years earlier. If you can afford it retire and do something else a.s.a.p.

Bloss

IFBTJB
 
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