Early-retirement wannabe

Marine_life

Deneb wrote: »

Image Gallery is spelled Image Glallery as well ;-)

Got it - thanks

gallygirl

Deneb wrote: »

Image Gallery is spelled Image Glallery as well ;-)

Well if we're being picky..... scenery not scenary. And I'm sure there's an its instead of it's somewhere but 2nd bottle of wine says 'who gives a........' .

Marine_life

gallygirl wrote: »

Well if we're being picky..... scenery not scenary. And I'm sure there's an its instead of it's somewhere but 2nd bottle of wine says 'who gives a........' .

ok, so now I've learnt to type my posts into word before entering on my blog ;-)

Now all I need is some decent content

atush

Start with a link for the associated website for your rental property?

Marine_life

atush wrote: »

Start with a link for the associated website for your rental property?

We will once we actually move in!

atush

you can be dreaming it up with photos even before lol. Working out the text (using spell check) using the photos from the sale etc.

I bought my house in FL and had it advertised before I even got the keys lol.

Marine_life

I'm going to pull a quote from Simple Living in Suffolk (itself quoting another blog) which says:

"The most common motivation for this behaviour [wasting your life] is fear – fear of change, (irrational) fear of poverty, fear of loss of status, fear of their spouse’s reaction etc. Its not enough just to make a life-changing amount of money, you still have to change your life. Don’t just load the gun, pull the trigger.

The last three words really rang true in my head "pull the trigger" bringing with it all that entails, and it got me to thinking about how I will feel when i pull the trigger and I can boil it down to two things:

1. Nobody in my position does it. I know of nobody in our organization who has retired at 50 years of age. I know plenty who could but choose not to - why? For me it comes down to this - once you've pulled the trigger, there's no going back. You don't just walk back into a high paying job at 50, which means your spreadsheets need to be pretty damn accurate.

2. A fear of loss of purpose. You went to school, you (maybe went to university), worked your way up the corporate ladder but i guess we never really thing what might be at the top of that ladder. should a "career" be truely satisfying? Should it have a natural end point once a goal has been achieved? Maybe it does for some people it does but the longer i am in work the more frustrated I become with inefficiency, insincerity and corporate back biting to the point where I begin to feel genuinely stressed - not becaause of overwork but because there is a sense of hopelessness about being able to influence ot any great extent my environment. Once retired I will have full control and that I believe will be very satisfying indeed.

On a lighter note my wife asked me the other day what will I moan about when I no longer have work to moan about? I was able to deliver a very long list of things that I will be more than happy to moan about ;-)

By the way, my days to go dropped below 30 and my work days to less than 20. so much to do, so little time. :j

hugheskevi

I know of nobody in our organization who has retired at 50 years of age. I know plenty who could but choose not to - why?

I am always very open about my plans with work colleagues, and chit-chat about them quite often. They all know I am an analyst by background, and very much like playing around with spreadsheets and carefully planning. Despite this, and even having shown the spreadsheets to a few folk, several still didn't (and perhaps still don't) believe I am being serious when I say I intend to retire* at age 44.

*retire here meaning leave my job and career, financially independent for life, but I will certainly be doing more work, although probably voluntary work mostly

A fear of loss of purpose. You went to school, you (maybe went to university), worked your way up the corporate ladder but i guess we never really thing what might be at the top of that ladder. should a "career" be truely satisfying? Should it have a natural end point once a goal has been achieved?

At the start of my career I used to think work progression was key, but over time I came to view other things as more important.

Now my main goal I look forward is being able to travel the world for at least a couple of years whilst still in decent physical condition (hopefully!) doing lots of interesting voluntary work with wildlife rehab centres for a few months at a time in a variety of different countries whilst travelling more generally.

Looking back, I am very glad I spent 3 years of my twenties travelling - there were effectively retirement in many ways just brought forward, in that they were years spent enjoying myself and consuming rather than building wealth. Now I in the second half of my thirties I can already look back at what I did and know I wouldn't either be able or want to do a lot of the things I did, so very glad I did it back then.

By the way, my days to go dropped below 30 and my work days to less than 20. so much to do, so little time.

My spreadsheets say I have 1,889 work days (net of leave, week-ends and bank holidays) to go...:eek:

Do quite like looking back over this thread, the years do seem to go by quite quickly...

AlwaysLearnin

I think it's a side effect of capitalism that many people now see money (and/or 'power') as the priority, sometimes even over family. It's the lucky ones amoungst us that have some sort of foresight, for whatever reason, that enables us to see a bigger picture (and that ther's never enough anyway...) and reallign accordingly. That reallignment doesn't necessarily conform to 'the norm', but I see that as everyone elses problem!

Footnote: I appreciate those others though, as they contribute to the performance of my investments!

ermine

Marine_life wrote: »

The last three words really rang true in my head "pull the trigger" bringing with it all that entails, and it got me to thinking about how I will feel when i pull the trigger and I can boil it down to two things:

1. Nobody in my position does it. I know of nobody in our organization who has retired at 50 years of age. I know plenty who could but choose not to - why? For me it comes down to this - once you've pulled the trigger, there's no going back. You don't just walk back into a high paying job at 50, which means your spreadsheets need to be pretty damn accurate.

You will do fine. The fear is a paucity of imagination (I assume your co-workers are equally competent with spreadsheets) I had this very worry too. I actually spent less over the last couple of years than I thought, so I will take advantage of Mr Osborne's kind offer and buy a SIPP to defer my pension longer Interesting stuff and self-actualisation trumps spending

2. A fear of loss of purpose. You went to school, you (maybe went to university), worked your way up the corporate ladder but i guess we never really thing what might be at the top of that ladder. should a "career" be truely satisfying? Should it have a natural end point once a goal has been achieved? Maybe it does for some people it does but the longer i am in work the more frustrated I become with inefficiency, insincerity and corporate back biting to the point where I begin to feel genuinely stressed - not because of overwork but because there is a sense of hopelessness about being able to influence to any great extent my environment. Once retired I will have full control and that I believe will be very satisfying indeed.

^ +1000
Yup. Look at the RSA video and take heed What trashed working for me, indeed was micromanagemet, stupid objectives, and corporate BS. I was lucky that my last project with London2012 at least had meaning

BTW I was quoting from this excellent post by The Escape Artist, and TBH his post made me think too.

I came within a whisker of damaging my health by simply failing to lift my eyes to the distant horizons of what the hell is life all about - I loaded the gun and pulled the trigger under pressure. I was an absolute numbskull. I had a decent job for a reasonably long time, I do not have any outrageously expensive tastes and I derive satisfaction and entertainment largely from learning new stuff and honing the art of living. I should have done it 5 years earlier. There's an RSA short on Youtube about research into what motivates people

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

You, and I, are lucky enough to be in a first-world country and have enough earnings under our belts to be financially independent - you are a fellow of finer tastes and greater commitments than I so your requirements are several times mine but not an order of magnitude. But T.E.A. who worked in finance I believe and became financially independent in his early forties did something that I very notably failed to do. He asked himself the very simple question

what is the point of doing all this?

and he lived intentionally. The manager who stiffed me in 2009 did me the greatest favour, I have come to see. Although the path was harsh - in three years I saved roughly half of my total pension savings to date, and cost me five years between the start and recovery, let's take a look at the alternative - I could have been a corporate zombie for the next 6 years from now, finished work at the prescribed age and then started to live. I'd be richer in cash, but with fewer years to live...

It was a desperate failure of imagination - thirty years of working for a living does that to a chap, it's just too easy. But it didn't happen. I was forced to think - about what I wanted and how I wanted to live. That RSA short is so true. I didn't really need the salary I was running, I didn't need more consumer crap, I didn't need an iPhone. It's the people in your life, it's who you know, it's helping them realise their potential and in doing so realising some of your own. As T.E.A. so eloquently said,

When we look after ourselves, we can then help others.

I start getting red spitting letters from the TV licence people, because I didn't renew it. Not out of some deep religious reason, and definitely not because I can't afford it - I could. It's because I took my TV up to the city dump because I don't watch TV any more - I don't need to do such things to dull the pain of working any longer. The only way I got to hear about stuff work watching is from other people, and that's what iPlayer is for.

Just as life is too short to watch TV without recommendations by people you know, it's too short to flush your life away working for The Man once you have enough. It's people who lend meaning to your life, not Stuff, and I say that as an extreme introvert compared to most

The old saw about nobody wishing on their deathbed that they had spent more time at the office has some basis in fact. I bet there are a lot of people that wish they'd spent more time with the kids, and with their partners. I despair that we are building such a beastly economy where we are locking up more and more of our earned capital in the stones that make up our houses and making people spend more time earning money than spending time with their children, their partners or simply thinking, like the people in Keynes' Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. But that seems to be the way we are going

In six months you will most likely look back and kick yourself for not doing it earlier! How many early retirees do you hear on here who moan about how dreadful it is, assuming they got the overall financial planning right and live within their means?