Early-retirement wannabe

ggmf

Aged 59 and had enough. I had felt the job stress, deadlines and hours for a while, the lack of support and pressure was now impacting on my health and well being. I guess I have been lucky, I never really thought too much about pensions until approx 1 year ago and found that I now had a number of pots, not massive in value (compared to some) but combined could they be enough? I did the calculations, included uplift for inflation and some investment growth. Nobody knows their numbers for sure they can guesstimate how many years they will need to plan for, and what real level of income will be required in those years including extra’s replacement of big items, building maintenance, holidays etc. I can adjust my simple spreadsheet to track investment growth against my ‘expected’ figures and outgoings. With help from reading this and other forums (there is so much I still do not know or understand), and with help from my IFA, I decided to consolidate my pots, this has enabled me to ‘retire’ from the beginning of June this year. I have some savings before I take my 1995 NHS pension in January 2018. In 2019 I plan to start taking an amount from my drawdown until my further pensions kick in at age 65 and the SP at 66 years. As somebody who was in a managing/organising role I was always busy, with many out-of-hours calls or txts. So far I have not done anything, I’m not bored (yet) but my smile and laughter is on its way back. I’ll give it a while and then start to think about a local part-time role, something completely different, but no idea what just yet, just to keep my NI contributions ticking along. The 3 month notice period was hell, having made my decision, I just wanted to go.

gallygirl

Good luck to all those retiring soon. Two years in I can safely say I have not missed work at all :T. Particularly glad to be out of the politics of it all - today several of my ex-staff members have been made redundant but another Dept. Head has managed to wangle less redundancies, as per usual :mad:. Let them all get on with it .

melanzana

Three years in now went a good few years early.

What a blast!

I regularly meet up with different groups that I worked with over the years. Now when they talk about work as they inevitably do, my eyes glaze over with gratitude at not having to deal with the many more layers of bureaucracy, paperwork, meetings and management that have crept in.

I was one of the lucky ones. I had planned for an exit, and didn't dither. Best decision ever.

I have also done as much travelling as I want to do for now. So it's my plan to really discover the delights my own country has to offer! Well we will be going to Sorrento and Amalfi Coast for my special birthday this year, just a blip though, it has to be done!

Best of luck to all. You will not regret it. I guarantee you.

Marine_life

This article really spoke to me:

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/retirement-is-squishy/?print=print

Particularly the line "Some people have even tried to define the term “retirement.” I think, “Why bother?” It’s just life and what you do with it"

paulpud

I am another early-retirement wannabe and reading many of the posts in this thread only serve to make me even more determined to finish work early.

I'm 50 years old and have worked for the same company since I left school, progressing through the ranks and now holding the esteemed position of the 'do anything that my boss doesn't fancy doing' person. I've worked opposite him in our little office for 15 years but he has become progressively more shambolic/idiotic in his methods of running the business which leads to much frustration for me.

It has always been the intention of my partner and I to retire abroad and after saving hard for the past few years, but relying solely on interest as our reward, we finally got a financial adviser on board to sort out our finances about 18 months ago. We keep about £80k in savings as a rainy day fund but had everything else invested in pensions and S&S ISAs. Our plan is to eventually sell our mortgage-free house then downsize and relocate to Portugal to take advantage of the better climate and a lower cost of living.

As I'm now finding my job such a chore I'd like to do it as soon as possible but, as I'm sure it is for most, it's a case of finding the balance between what we think is a large enough pot to sustain us and how much longer we want to work. We're aiming to do it when I'm 55 when, with continued pension contributions and quite modest growth, we should have a total pot of around £750k.

Having finally convinced myself that this could really happen I now find I'm counting down the months remaining to our potential retirement date.

justme111

paulpud wrote: »

Having finally convinced myself that this could really happen I now find I'm counting down the months remaining to our potential retirement date.

Don't you realise those are 5 years of your life that you are wishing away?

gfplux

paulpud wrote: »

I am another early-retirement wannabe and reading many of the posts in this thread only serve to make me even more determined to finish work early.

I'm 50 years old and have worked for the same company since I left school, progressing through the ranks and now holding the esteemed position of the 'do anything that my boss doesn't fancy doing' person. I've worked opposite him in our little office for 15 years but he has become progressively more shambolic/idiotic in his methods of running the business which leads to much frustration for me.

It has always been the intention of my partner and I to retire abroad and after saving hard for the past few years, but relying solely on interest as our reward, we finally got a financial adviser on board to sort out our finances about 18 months ago. We keep about £80k in savings as a rainy day fund but had everything else invested in pensions and S&S ISAs. Our plan is to eventually sell our mortgage-free house then downsize and relocate to Portugal to take advantage of the better climate and a lower cost of living.

As I'm now finding my job such a chore I'd like to do it as soon as possible but, as I'm sure it is for most, it's a case of finding the balance between what we think is a large enough pot to sustain us and how much longer we want to work. We're aiming to do it when I'm 55 when, with continued pension contributions and quite modest growth, we should have a total pot of around £750k.

Having finally convinced myself that this could really happen I now find I'm counting down the months remaining to our potential retirement date.

Hopefully Britain leaving the EU will not interfere with your Portuguese plans.

paulpud

justme111 wrote: »

Don't you realise those are 5 years of your life that you are wishing away?

That's exactly what my other half says to me and it's something I often think about. The consolation is that it is only when I'm actually at work that I find myself counting down, and I guess I'm not the only one who is not particularly happy in their work.

I have considered leaving my current job and doing something else for a while, but my current job is pretty secure and quite well paid so I would be risking delaying my planned retirement date if it didn't work out. It's also not beyond the realms of possibility that I could finish a little sooner or cut down my hours if the financial side of things went particularly well. So the dilemma is to be unhappy at work for a shorter period of time, or do something else for potentially a longer period of time - it's something to which I devote quite a lot of thought!

gfplux wrote: »

Hopefully Britain leaving the EU will not interfere with your Portuguese plans.

Something else to which I've given some thought and spent some time reading up on. The general consensus from those in the know is that Brexit could make things a little more complex but shouldn't ultimately stop a UK resident from becoming a Portuguese resident.

If it did seem that it was to become prohibitively complex it would be another reason to try and bring forward a retirement date.

justme111

I suppose if work does not continue bringing you down after 5 pm that is not that bad and you can dedicate free time to something enjoyable.
You wife would be happy with 2/3ds or half of what you would like to have in your pot , would she ?

Marine_life

paulpud wrote: »

That's exactly what my other half says to me and it's something I often think about. The consolation is that it is only when I'm actually at work that I find myself counting down, and I guess I'm not the only one who is not particularly happy in their work.

I have considered leaving my current job and doing something else for a while, but my current job is pretty secure and quite well paid so I would be risking delaying my planned retirement date if it didn't work out. It's also not beyond the realms of possibility that I could finish a little sooner or cut down my hours if the financial side of things went particularly well. So the dilemma is to be unhappy at work for a shorter period of time, or do something else for potentially a longer period of time - it's something to which I devote quite a lot of thought!



Something else to which I've given some thought and spent some time reading up on. The general consensus from those in the know is that Brexit could make things a little more complex but shouldn't ultimately stop a UK resident from becoming a Portuguese resident.

If it did seem that it was to become prohibitively complex it would be another reason to try and bring forward a retirement date.

I think the issue is not necesarily whether they would allow you in, its a question of (free) access to healthcare and whether your pension rights would remain unchanged (e.g. those pensioners in Australia do not get COL increases on their uk pensions).

The way the discussions are going at the moment it seems like you might already be too late as the UK government is only talking about rights being available for those who were already overseas on the date Article 50 was triggered.