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Early retirement… who did it?

I plan to retire in 3 years time.

However, I like working in IT so when the time comes around it isn’t certain I’ll go through with the plan.
 
To John, it is not a clear cut decision and everyone has different outlook, so the decision is purely down to you and there is rarely a right answer.

I took an early retirement plan which was forced upon me at the age of 55. I had invested in topping up my public sector pension plan because it was a no brainer. I left with a few weeks short of a full 40 year pension and a good redundancy lump sum. I was now set up for life. However after a couple of weeks I felt guilty about doing nothing and decided to return to work on my own terms. I was heavily involved setting up PFI and energy supply contracts and used that knowledge to go freelance. I was lucky that there was a shortage of younger people who knew anything about these subjects and I could walk in and demand my own price and I did this for six very lucrative years. Also I enjoyed the work which was keeping me mentally alert but as the years rolled by I found the daily commute to London more tiring due to age. This was a time when meetings across a desk was the norm, there was no windows for virtual meetings back then.

I called it quits at the age of 61 when the wife decided to stop working and we spent nearly 6 months touring the world and it was great. We have two houses in Spain (one is up for sale) and we are currently soaking up the sun. We had a damn good retirement of 11 years until last year when the wife suffered a stroke but she is slowly recovering and we can now fly out to Spain but long haul flights are now a thing of the past.

I employ gardeners and tradesmen to do the usual maintenance, I don't want to spend my final years fixing non flushing toilets or digging up weeds etc. Also we enjoy eating out and flying forth and back to Spain and all this does take money, so please make sure you got the means to retire comfortably.

To me the enjoyment of retirement is doing what you want when you want and not doing the boring stuff that a tradesman can do for you. In other words, let others do the work whilst you enjoy life.

My overhaul view is that retirement comes to us all but until you decide what you want to do, carry on working. Also what you want to do today may be different to what you want to do when the day finally comes.

Good luck with it all.

Regards

Mick
 
I suspect the record shop won’t survive that much longer (it’s getting far too hard to find stock now - unless I’m offered good collections its not viable).

Even for CDs? I've been buying loads of used jazz CDs for buttons - feels like a golden age to be a CD listener. I'm even looking at getting a better CD player!
 
Even for CDs? I've been buying loads of used jazz CDs for buttons - feels like a golden age to be a CD listener. I'm even looking at getting a better CD player!

I’ve been buying a lot of CDs, but mainly for myself as the sale price is down too. In fact I’ve received a fair amount of CDs as donations so those obviously do ok! My suspicion is that market will definitely pick up once nostalgia kicks in, but it likely won’t be for half a decade or so. I’ve got a house full waiting…
 
I went part time (3 days per week) in April 2018 at the age of 60 after discovering that my final salary pension was based on the best of the previous ten years and not on the actual final salary. After 20 plus years of commuting between West Berkshire and Northamptonshire, I had had enough of the time spent travelling. I fully retired in April 2020 at the age of 62. My wife retired a few months later at the age of 64 as I calculated we could afford it. Even though I do sod-all now, I’m glad I no longer have the daily commute.
 
Actually, for me, the major plus for retirement was never having to attend another meeting in my life about anything, ever.

Its only comparator is when I walked out of the school hall after the maths O level exam, thinking 'I'll never have to do algebra ever again'. (Fortunately our elder daughter was a whizz at maths so I never had to help her with maths homework).
 
Algebra was easy, Log tables, Slide Rules and Zeus Tables were easy. Calculus was a bitch though. I gave up after that. Just couldn't be arsed with it.
 
Actually, for me, the major plus for retirement was never having to attend another meeting in my life about anything, ever.

Also e-mail Directives, e-mail consultations about proposed Directives and yes, meetings about whether to launch an e-mail consultation about a proposed Directive ...

All gone when I got the bus home on the last day .... euphoria :):):)
 
Also e-mail Directives, e-mail consultations about proposed Directives and yes, meetings about whether to launch an e-mail consultation about a proposed Directive ...

All gone when I got the bus home on the last day .... euphoria :):):)

The very last meeting I attended was about a controversial office relocation, which was to take effect after I'd left. For some reason, possibly child-care related, I arrived about 30 minutes after the meeting had started. Two of the participants were in tears when I arrived, and another stormed out of the room when she felt her views were being ignored.

The knowledge that there would be many more such meetings, none of which I would attend, gave me a smug, yet slightly guilty feeling.

But the very worst meeting I attended was one where several hours were spent thrashing out the terms of reference of a new sub-group. There was much long-winded discussion about whether a colon or semi-colon should be used, and the meeting closed with no decision having been made. One bloke, who had travelled down from Manchester for the meeting, was almost sobbing with frustration by the end.
 
The very last meeting I attended was about a controversial office relocation, which was to take effect after I'd left. For some reason, possibly child-care related, I arrived about 30 minutes after the meeting had started. Two of the participants were in tears when I arrived, and another stormed out of the room when she felt her views were being ignored.

The knowledge that there would be many more such meetings, none of which I would attend, gave me a smug, yet slightly guilty feeling.

But the very worst meeting I attended was one where several hours were spent thrashing out the terms of reference of a new sub-group. There was much long-winded discussion about whether a colon or semi-colon should be used, and the meeting closed with no decision having been made. One bloke, who had travelled down from Manchester for the meeting, was almost sobbing with frustration by the end.
You were a Handforth Parish councillor?
 
The very last meeting I attended was about a controversial office relocation, which was to take effect after I'd left. For some reason, possibly child-care related, I arrived about 30 minutes after the meeting had started. Two of the participants were in tears when I arrived, and another stormed out of the room when she felt her views were being ignored.

The knowledge that there would be many more such meetings, none of which I would attend, gave me a smug, yet slightly guilty feeling.

But the very worst meeting I attended was one where several hours were spent thrashing out the terms of reference of a new sub-group. There was much long-winded discussion about whether a colon or semi-colon should be used, and the meeting closed with no decision having been made. One bloke, who had travelled down from Manchester for the meeting, was almost sobbing with frustration by the end.


My all time favourite meeting started at 2:00 PM with the distribution of papers to be considered at the meeting - each individual package was 3 inches thick. By 6:00 PM we had worked though 2 inches of them; the Chair thought it best not to have a break and just 'plough on' to get the job done.

I left at five past six ..... :D
 
There was much long-winded discussion about whether a colon or semi-colon should be used, and the meeting closed with no decision having been made. One bloke, who had travelled down from Manchester for the meeting, was almost sobbing with frustration by the end.

Thankfully the internet exists for this now.
 
Thankfully the internet exists for this now.

Bizarrely, the sub-group was about sorting out the (uk academic) part of the internet. Another meeting, at which I wasn't a participant, but which was in the building where I worked, had been dragging on for several hours. There was an urgent phone call for someone in the meeting, so I popped my head round the door, to hear the immortal, if rhetorical question 'So, is the internet the plug on the end of the hoover, or is it the socket into which the plug is inserted?' On the whiteboard was one of those baffling charts with boxes and arrows all over the shop, designed to illustrate something or other.
 
My all time favourite meeting started at 2:00 PM with the distribution of papers to be considered at the meeting - each individual package was 3 inches thick. By 6:00 PM we had worked though 2 inches of them; the Chair thought it best not to have a break and just 'plough on' to get the job done.

I left at five past six ..... :D

A mate of mine produced a similarly bulky set of papers for a meeting. To his horror, just as the meeting started, he realised that in one paper, only every other page had been printed. Nobody noticed.
 


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