Early-retirement wannabe

atush

greenglide wrote: »

@atush

You can't find frosted LED candle lamps? Look here http://www.megamanuk.com/products/led-lamps/decorative/candle/

B&Q sell a wide range but probably not the cheapest, even on an "old people's Wednesday".

WE have a B&Q, but no frosted LED just coiled, fat CFLs.

thanks for the link. Will see if they deliver here

atush

edinburgher wrote: »

Good God, I found one a chore! :rotfl:

I bought my twins one. The goldfish didnt last long lol

Marine_life

jamesd wrote: »

Congratulations!

Nothing really wrong with that, even if it's a delay of sorts. If you're enjoying it or gaining from it enough it's fine. After all, some people choose to work until they die of old age and are happy with that choice while doing it.

I think that's a pretty good part way step. Though it does seem that you could get lots of five day weekends out of it if you wanted to, by having three days at the start of one week and four at the end of the next. Might be a bit of a challenge for colleagues to keep up with where you were in the fortnightly schedule, or for you if you didn't want varying weekend durations.

I've been pondering RV'ing in the US but that first requires half a million Dollars invested to get the relevant investor visa and legal permanent residence, unless I want to buy and put into storage a lot of the time and maintain two homes, or spend much of the year outside the US. Having the funds to do this if I want to is my excuse for still working. That and a job that I generally find good to fine.

Trust and actually working can be issues but things like having to be online in a virtual workplace can help with that, if the company is truly set up to have lots of people doing it. One of my places ended up with an article in Fortune some years back due to its successful use of worldwide remote workers. In one way or another I've been doing the work at home thing full time for around fifteen years now. One thing you can't beat is the commute...

The five day weekend think is a definite possibility although practically speaking might be difficult.

I am a little bit from the old school that says those that work from home are probably skiving! However, in every thing it publishes my company is very much about flexibility of work places and styles to suit the individual but you still can't help thinking that actually they want to see you at your desk 10 hours a day (and possibly longer).

I fully expect to be treated a little like a second class citizen now but I'm not sure that worries me at all.

Marine_life

greenglide wrote: »

Would that be a years salary at the part time rate or taking into account just the short period of part time?

My employer is paying me what is a year's salary to "go away" even though I am just over State Pension age and the normal retiring age of the pension scheme as well.

I suspect the sums of money are a lot less though!

I suspect it would have to be at the full rate. The rules regarding part-time working are enshrined in law in Germany and say that a) You can't refuse someone who asks for part time working and you can't give them lesser rights than someone working full time. but unless an economic disaster befalls us they almost certainly will not lay me off. so my best hope is to apply for early retirement in two years time (which comes under the same terms as redundancy) and while it normally only applies to those who are 56, there is track record of them paying at 54.

tiger17bear

Can I have any thoughts from folks on the idea of planning to use equity release to fund retirement. ie to plan to use up pension pot by say our 80s and use equity release after this point. We have no dependants, nephew and godsons are well provided for. In years to come both they and us may well inherit money from older relatives- we are talking enough for university fees not vast wealth. This could allow us to retire a few years earlier.

jamesd

atush wrote: »

Not seen a single frosted LED candle, let me know what shops you see them in?

All I did was check online with a Google shopping search like this. Worth taking a look at the suppliers which gadgetmind has had good experiences with. You can probably experiment with a few makes and suppliers to try to find the ones you like best or dislike least.

atush wrote: »

I have 3x gu10s in the hall. They never last more than a year, sometimes last less than 6 months. ... Maybe my house is haunted?

The mains voltage varies a bit depending on how far you are from the local substation/transformer. I'm close enough to mine to get a little over 240 volts and you might be as well. That would presumably put a bit more heat load on the LEDs and hotter LEDs are expected to fail faster. But not so much faster that you should be able to easily notice it as you have. Only presumably because I'm assuming that they are engineered for cost, not to keep their outputs constant with the small voltage variations.

jamesd

tiger17bear wrote: »

Can I have any thoughts from folks on the idea of planning to use equity release to fund retirement. ie to plan to use up pension pot by say our 80s and use equity release after this point.

Have a look at The New Case for Reverse Mortgages from this post because one thing that the variable drawing and replacement option equity release does is let you pick a higher withdrawal rate under income drawdown.

justme111

Good luck with reduced responsibilities, op. From what I seen reduced time often ends up with responsibilities not reduced proportionately. You still did not reply the question why you intend to reduce your time.

atush

The why was clear to me- more time off to explore hobbies such as skiing

Marine_life

atush wrote: »

The why was clear to me- more time off to explore hobbies such as skiing

That is very much one of the reasons but there are a few others.

I remember some years ago someone commenting on the high stress nature of the job that I do and that "we" will probably be the first generation to have done this for our whole working lives. He then said something which stuck with me which was "we need to find strategies for dealing with that". This is part of that strategy in that I don't think I can continue to deliver 100%, five days a week. There is another job also on the horizon which is much less stress but same pay that would likely open up in a year. I've been told to apply for that.

As I mentioned dropping work completely might also be a bit of a shock to the system so this feels like a good way to avoid making a difficult decision