Early-retirement wannabe

Marine_life

Anyway back to the topic in hand and the title of this thread namely the "early retirement wannabe".

After months (and some might say years) of pontificating I've taken a major step and begun negotiations on moving to a part-time contract. It might not seem a big step to those who have been in the "for god's sake just do it man" but I guess that at 51 I am still not psychologically ready to take such a big leap in one go.

At the moment the plan is to reduce to 70% and see where we go from there. The thinking behind the 70% is that it effectively means a four day week followed by a three day week with the idea being that every other weekend will be a four days off.

I had said that I needed to spend more time away from the office and originally thought about asking for more flexibility to work from home but at the end of the day that isn't going to benefit anyone (as i would always be tempted to not work and they would be suspicious I would not be working!), so this feels like a useful compromise.

Of course i would be lying if I said there wasn't a financial aspect to this. while i think we've become fairly frugal in some respects there are some fairly chunky potential expenses where more money would definitely come in handy (I'm fancying buying a camper van at the moment)

I think this is going to be for 12 months and then we will see where we are after that.

Happy days

ex-pat_scot

is this a temporary thing - can you go back to 100% if you find the 70% isn't working for you?


I like your plan of getting the chunky expenses out of the way.
I'm quite a few years behind you - I envisage another 8-10 perhaps - but I would expect that the chunky pre-retirement costs would be stuff like:
- camper. I'm with you on that one.
- car (tend to buy nearly new and run until they die)
- big ticket house items such as kitchen / bathroom
- a nice big workshop / garage extension


Actually, when I write the list, that little lot looks like a couple of years' worth of extra work...

gadgetmind

atush wrote: »

Which they dont (not even twice an incandescent in my experience).

I've had a couple of LEDs (out of dozens) fail early and they were replaced under warranty. The rest are still going strong 4-5 years later even for lights in heavy use.

Add in the lack of decent 60-100w equivs,

I replaced a number of 60/100w bulbs, including some critical downlighters over a food preparation surface and a cooker, and my wife (who notices these things) didn't even notice!

(they are worse for the environment than incandescent which negates th energy savings) they'd be a fine idea.

CFL might have been (I didn't bother with these) but LED aren't. The UK has already passed peak energy consumption for lighting and now we just keep on winning.

greenglide

and "decent" LEDs are dimmable as well for those who are bothered by these things.

If incandescent bulbs were still available in the shops (especially 3 for £1 in the pound shops etc) then people would still buy them because they are the same / they are cheap.

We are really poor at understanding just how much energy we waste and the cost (both financial and the environmental) of this.

edinburgher

Another early adopter for LEDs here, reducing our energy use significantly was always going to be one of the legs of our early retirement plan. The first couple of batches (2011-2012) weren't very reliable, but we were in an old building and that may have been a factor. We've had no dead bulbs in the last 3 years.

When moving to our new place we repeated the plan (100% LEDs bar the cooker hood) and also bit the bullet and went for solar panels. Our combined energy bills went from £150/m in a tenement flat to a record low of £16.16 for last month in our new home. Aware that's a combination of things like better insulation and different appliances, but very pleased regardless.

gadgetmind

We could get our energy bills to £150pcm if we halved them!

atush

gadgetmind wrote: »

I've had a couple of LEDs (out of dozens) fail early and they were replaced under warranty. The rest are still going strong 4-5 years later even for lights in heavy use.



I replaced a number of 60/100w bulbs, including some critical downlighters over a food preparation surface and a cooker, and my wife (who notices these things) didn't even notice!



CFL might have been (I didn't bother with these) but LED aren't. The UK has already passed peak energy consumption for lighting and now we just keep on winning.

Where I live they are still selling CFLs in the main esp for candle. There are some lower watt LED candles but they hurt the eyes if they are strong enough as they dont do them frosted.

The CFLs dont last any longer than incandescent, and the LEDs are not good for more than 2 years where I use them. You guys obv have better suppliers. Tell me where you buy and i'll make a pit stop when I am across.

I can special order bulbs but then they would quadruple in price.

This brave new world of lights costs me more money. To not any better effect. And my electric bills havent gone down.

Thrugelmir

atush wrote: »

Not being a citizen of the EU/UK I had no vote

Many people never apply for new nationality. Their choice.

justme111

Op , why do you want to reduce your hours?
Curious to see how it will go. My bet is that it will not work because you will be able to do better job in 5 days than in 3 days and you will be distressed at doing not so good a job.
But it depends on why you want to reduce your hours. .

Marine_life

justme111 wrote: »

Op , why do you want to reduce your hours?
Curious to see how it will go. My bet is that it will not work because you will be able to do better job in 5 days than in 3 days and you will be distressed at doing not so good a job.
But it depends on why you want to reduce your hours. .

Its relatively simple.

I'm not sure that I am ready to retire fully - despite what some might say, 51 seems quite young to step out completely. Of course there will always be the fatalists who say "you could get run over by a bus tomorrow" but with average life expectancy I could have another 30-40 years left i.e. more time than I've been working.

Secondly in an era of historically low returns I want the money!

I could have asked to spend more days working from home (and that is one of the options I discussed) but i think that might have make me feel like a fraud so this feels like the more honest option. There are some other complexities that I will now have to deal with so lets see how sustainable the situation is.

One thing i am not worried about is whether I will be able to do a good job.