Early-retirement wannabe

uk1

Karmacat wrote: »

Thanks Jeff! Thats a lovely post, much appreciated. I'm pleased for you that your own risktaking paid off so well!

I took a risk similar to the one you describe, when I was in my mid 30s, and it worked well - but I had no concept at all of saving, no one in my family had ever had enough money to save at that stage, it took quite a few years before I upped my expectations of myself, unfortunately.

I don't want to live the life of a pauper, but I do want to live! Part of that is writing for profit, through several different ventures. I love writing, and retiring from my profession means I will hopefully recover my health, gradually, and also have time and energy to write more. And profit more

I could easily go down the "ooh, I don't have this ... or that ... and that person does" route. But the truth is a close friend only 18 months older than me died 3 weeks ago, and a close family member has just lost absolutely everything in a catastrophe of the first order. I'd like more, but I have enough, and I have a few ways to *get* more, including regaining my health :j which is what really matters to me.

Save

Thanks for your post ... praise from a writer about my post is praise indeed!

For what it's worth I have found out quite a lot about wealthy people that intrigues me. I worked with many wealthy people who were both clients and became friends.

It is a commonly held belief that money makes you happy, but I think we all know that it doesn't make you happy, it simply reduces or removes many of the things that make you unhappy. What I think that I found which I find interesting is that the vacuum left when wealth removes some of those money problems is often replaced by other problems. One of the main shocks I have seen as a common problem is the surprise that many wealthy people find when having always believed that if they were rich then they would be happy, they subsequently discover it not to be the case and they become a bit confused. They basically ask themselves, "I worked so hard to achieve all this, but I am still unhappy, was all the sacrifices all worthwhile?" Often the process of becoming rich causes relationship problems and being rich makes making new genuine friendships more difficult. Wealthy people often find themselves more isolated than their poorer friends and are suspicious of new people they meet. Many yearn for the past when they had less cash. Some genuinely start to think of their good fortune as a burden. I sometimes wish I had their problems ....:D

I have had many conversations over the years where I have said to friends "Now that you can do anything you want, what do you want to do" and very often they decide simply that they want to carry on doing the same to make more money. And in a way wealth can be as much liability as an enabler. Many wealthy people spend a fair amount of their thoughts in being worried about losing it all, or what is it they can buy that will give them some short-term gratification. To a very much less degree, I experienced some of that when around ten years ago, my wife suggested I bought the car I had clearly been admiring, around £100k and regretted it straight away. I still have the car, it has done virtually no mileage and the good thing is that I enjoy it now, but mostly because I have lost all the money I could have lost in devaluation and so I need regret no more because I cannot change anything.

I have very firmly concluded that the luckiest ones are not the very poor or the very rich, but those that just have enough and know it. Having enough and not knowing it is a tremendous loss. And as long as you can do things you really want to do .... not everything but enough things ..... then basically you should dwell on that and be content.

This is a whole topic on it's own. But not one for this thread.

Jeff

uk1

edinburgher wrote: »

Who is Aunt Sally?

In language it is a phrase to mean a person, or thing, or in the case an internet post subsequently used simply as an excuse to target criticism. The person basically is a "dummy" as in the game of Aunt Sally.

The most common use however is to describe when someone puts up an argument that no one has made, or distort an argument, simply to disagree with it.

An example might be calling comments made by Nigel Farage xenophobic, so that you can disagree with them, the principle being that everyone agrees that xenophobia is bad and that therefore what he has said is bad. It is a wilful misrepresentation that you then more easily disparage.

Hope that explains,

Jeff

bigadaj

Una Stubbs!

saver861

Does Aunt Sally have a husband?

If so, does he post on here?

Just curious don't ya know ...

Thrugelmir

gfplux wrote: »

However I retired at 52 nearly 19 years ago.

Pensions (i.e. annuity rates) are very different to those available 19 years ago. Nor are pensions on the whole RPI linked.

cathybird

Goldiegirl wrote: »

Oh that post.

I took it a bit differently. I thought they were encouraging people not to be afraid of taking the final jump to retirement, and that it didn't matter if you didn't have so many new clothes or 'things'.

I'm not sure they were saying £9k was enough for everyone, rather that £9k was enough for them.

That's how I took that post as well and I felt some sympathy. I didn't think it was a judgemental post.

Wednesday2000

I do sometimes worry that we won't have enough when I read some of the posts on here, but I assume most of us are quite cautious by nature.

edinburgher wrote: »

Who is Aunt Sally?

Goldiegirl wrote: »

It's an old fairground game - a model of an old woman you throw things at!

I didn't understand what Aunt Sally meant either.:o:D

gfplux

Karmacat wrote: »

I haven't felt intimidated, so much as feeling that if I take part, I'd be setting myself up as an Aunt Sally for no purpose. I don't need that in my life, there's enough going on.

I'm retiring in 10.5 weeks and compared to an awful lot of posters on here, I have very little, in fact I'd be looking *upwards* at £10k a year. I do like what you've stressed about being happy and safe, and knowing that not much can derail you.

However, the unexpected (and ignorance of the territory, oh and a bit of Peter Pan syndrome too) has already derailed me. Long term chronic illness, caused by the stress of my work, and the fact I didn't know anything at all about creating investment income - that was Jane Austen territory to me (as in "Mr Darcy has £10,000 a year").

I have to retire now, because frankly my health is permanently at risk if I stay. It's 4.5 years till I can get any pension. If I run out of money at any stage, I can live in a van, rent a studio flat in a cheap part of Spain, or maybe take in trainee aircrew, who rent for 3 months at a time at my "local" airport before flying off to work. Or sell the house and downsize to a flat.

There are other plans, but I'll leave it there for now, and see what the response is.

Good luck with your retirement and hopefully your health will improve.
I like it that you are considering so many options.
Do keep posting as we all can learn from everyone's experiences.

Karmacat

Absolutely agree with UK1's last post from yesterday - money *really* doesn't make you happy much past the basics. My work as a psychotherapist has taught me that, if nothing else has - several long term clients of mine have had pension pots of seven figures.

Being ill makes me pretty unhappy - I've had to decline a wedding invitation for 8 days time, as I'm not well enough to travel but at least I expect to recover.

I think contentment/happiness does have a place on this thread, actually, even if its a minor one - because thats what people are really aiming at. And if they aim at a much-touted stereotype of retirement that doesn't fit them, they might hate their life and be working too long into the bargain. Just a thought ...

Anyway, back to calculations for retirement. I'm about to start on my tax return, as I'm hoping to have it done before I actually retire. I'll come back with some figures

Save

knightstyle

knightstyle wrote: »

Well I 'retired' at 50 when made redundant for the third time. We let our UK house and bought a wreck in France, did it up, sold and bought another, did this five times and then retired properly back to UK.
Points to note, before retiring decide where you want to live, some popular spots are full of very old people, is that what you want in your 50s?
Next ignore the bit where people say you have to pay of your mortgage, we have an interest only one, never paid any capital in 25 years and I am now over 70 and as long as we keep paying the interest there are no problems.
Others have given good advice on pensions, I am not an expert so I will just say that we, a couple live very comfortably, run a three year old car etc. on £25k.

Just want to add that when we first went to France we had no income, we bought an old cafe for under £10k, the rental only just covered the mortgage and insurance on our UK house.
Later we lived for several years on under £5k.
It is still very possible to live on very little, it just takes planning and some work in the garden, if you haven't got one ask an elderly person if you can use theirs in return for looking after it.
Even now we almost never buy full priced food, had asparagus and fish tonight, the asparagus was 20p a bunch and the fish 75p for enough for two. You will be retired so have time to go and seek the bargains.