Everyday Ordinary Man Approaching Full Retirement at 59.

pollypenny wrote: »

One boy said I was 'emergency back-up.'

One boy was so impressed with my morning's supply, he stayed behind at lunch time and told me I should consider getting a proper teaching job and a class of my own.

"Out of the mouths of babes....."

P.S. Sorry, I thought I'd written my story here, but on closer examination, I find I haven't, yet. Maybe later....it's rather involved!

excelpaul wrote: »

Davesnave
Would be great to read your story!

Last day for you today! Well done.:T The new adventure starts here!

OK here's my story. Not sure I'd do it again, but we could have done worse:

I'm yet another ex-teacher who decided to retire early, mainly because I was juggling with a small business and the early dementia care for my father. Although I left full-time at 52, I was lured back for a 2/3 job share, and several years supply on a fairly predictable basis followed.

I finally put down the whiteboard pen at 57. Knowing I'd miss the children, (juniors in my case) a staged withdrawal helped.

I tried to hang on for the full pension, but the plant nursery business my wife had been developing with me was so limited by lack of space, we couldn't survive on it alone. We'd planned to move and expand the business when the mortgage was paid in 2005, but in that year my father died, leaving us with his property to renovate and a debt to Allied Dunbar. He'd taken out an annuity, the same size as our paid-up mortgage, so we just re-mortgaged.

We spent 18months refurbishing and selling Dad’s small house, putting ours on the market just in time to fall foul of the Northern Rock debacle and the Crash that followed! Our first buyers had a self-cert mortgage arranged with NR. Long story short, we found and lost three ‘buyers,’ finally selling for £60k under the original agreed price. However, with the youngest set for uni, we were free....

Our plan to restart our business in West Wales foundered twice when we lost buyers, so 2009 saw us in rented accommodation. Finding suitable work/live premises was difficult, and vendors in Wales seemed in denial over the Crash, so we were surprised to find an affordable, run-down smallholding in Devon. Our vendor turned-out to be a head teacher, starting a new life/new identity for complicated reasons. Despite a gazump attempt, she stuck with us; she was moving to a school in the area we were leaving.;)

This smallholding needed much work to reach its potential. For the first few years we concentrated on running our business, taming acres of unkempt land and making local contacts. As it’s an agriculturally-tied property, we felt obliged to earn some of our living from the land, until we realised the local authority wasn’t interested. As the ‘farming’ began to overtake horticulture, we decided to close the business and focus on the house, which was in urgent need of refurbishment. By then I was 65 and time seemed to be running short. At least the state pension meant we were no longer in deficit every month. My wife is younger than me and won’t receive hers till 2026.

By a stroke of luck, a family friend with building experience moved to a nearby village, so in 2014 we hired him to begin work on our refurb, offering ourselves as labourers and using friends/contacts with other skills, as appropriate. Now, 3 years later, we’re coming to the end of this project, which has cost most of our savings. However, we have a ‘new’ house, which is much more energy-efficient, and we’ve stayed within budget. If we had to sell to down-size, we’d not lose-out.

A 68, a property like this might become a burden at any time, yet developing and maintaining it has kept me fit. Unfortunately, my OH has more health–related problems than me, and these haven’t been helped by activities like the complete re-roofing we carried out last year. We do have flexibility; recent changes in planning legislation meaning that we have an agricultural building which could now be sold for conversion, and none of the land is tied to the house in a legal sense.

So, a somewhat odd retirement adventure here, based not on exploration far afield, but mainly focused on the locality, which is picturesque and still largely unchanged, being off the main tourist trails. Village life is simple, but ours is a sociable one, with little of the ‘us and them,’ sometimes found. Here, you either take part, or you don’t, but nobody cares where you’re from. I would say it’s around 50:50 locals and incomers.

With a somewhat reduced teachers’ pension + the state one, we’re living on around £17k a year, but it’s do-able and there’s useful bartering too. For example, last night a partner farmer arrived with over 15kg of beef for the freezer, all of it much better than the usual supermarket fare. We might be in tatty clothes, but we never go hungry!