Early-retirement wannabe

justme111

westv wrote: »

If the cash isn't already easily accessible don't you risk having to sell more volatile assets at completely the wrong time if a major expense comes along? Yes, you can defer slightly with a credit card but not for that long.

we are not talking about the whole year expenses where if taken in downturn it could geopardise the total; we are talking anout a bill every now and again which is bigger than everyday stuff. I myself do not do it either way because I am not retired yet. I think both ways are valid and have pros and cons.

gallygirl

melanzana wrote: »

No more Sunday night angst is one of the major advantages!

The benefits of that cannot be overstated!!!!!!!!

Anonymous101

I've been working on my Financial Independence plan recently. I'm forecasting about 10-12 years until I'm FI. Which would put me in my late 40's and Mrs Anon. in her early 40's.

Its amazing that immediately having got a plan in place that we both feel a little better about getting up in the dark mornings again. I enjoy my job to a point but detest being tied to something I feel I HAVE to do. 10 years doesn't feel too long to have to do that though especially if you consider the potential benefits of not being tied to a job.

OldMusicGuy

gfplux wrote: »

Fitness and health!

I retired when I was 52, that was 21 years ago so at 73 I have some insight into fitness and health.
While working I had no time in every way to think about fitness and health.
In fact if you have good fortune to be healthy in your early 50's it does not and did not get very high on my agenda.
Luckily when I retired I did a lot about it. Of course my lifestyle changed dramatically no longer on a plane 2/3 times a week, eating and drinking too much. High stress levels and terrible sleeping patterns.

I agree with this 100% and health has been a main factor in deciding to retire now at 60 rather than carry on for another 2 to 4 years (during which time I would have been able to save significant amounts). I am in good health generally but my health suffered once I reached 55. My body just couldn't keep up with the demands of a stressful job, 10 to 12 hour days, late nights, early mornings and lots of travel. My blood pressure was getting high, my weight was creeping up and I wasn't getting any exercise.

So a drastic change in lifestyle was called for and part of that was to set an earlier retirement date than planned. I am already doing more exercise, eating better and now I am 12 weeks away from retirement, my stress levels have gone down considerably. I can sleep at nights now. I didn't just get Sunday night angst, I had it every night of the week!

I saw a comment on another thread recently, along the lines of "I don't want to run out of life before I run out of money". Although it's a difficult balancing act, it's all too easy to keep chasing money and "security" at the expense of health and longevity.

Terron

westv wrote: »

If the cash isn't already easily accessible don't you risk having to sell more volatile assets at completely the wrong time if a major expense comes along? Yes, you can defer slightly with a credit card but not for that long.

OK there is a small chance of selling at a bad time, but then there is the certainty that cash is not keeping up with inflation. The former seems better to me,

If your emergency fund is sized for the worse case then normally when you do need to draw on it the amount would only be a fraction of the fund anyway,. I have drawn on it once this year, when I was faced with a £1500 repair bill for my car..My fund is several times bigger than that,

hugheskevi

Anonymous101 wrote: »

Its amazing that immediately having got a plan in place that we both feel a little better about getting up in the dark mornings again. I enjoy my job to a point but detest being tied to something I feel I HAVE to do. 10 years doesn't feel too long to have to do that though especially if you consider the potential benefits of not being tied to a job.

One of my favourite parts of the plan is having a range of points ranging from the earliest possible date of retirement assuming every reasonable positive financial shock, the central estimate assuming everything goes as expected, and a backstop date, which assumes that a few bad things happen so is a worst-case scenario.

For me, that produces a window of retirement of around 4 years, ranging from April 2020 through to mid 2024, with a central (but cautious) estimate of mid 2023. It is very nice to know that in about 2 and a half years retirement will be viable

atush

westv wrote: »

But if you pay sudden large bills by cc that will still need to be paid off pretty soon after I would have thought so I don't really see the benefit of using them rather than directly from a cash float.

Now, i have 12 months outgoing in cash.

At retirement, it will be 2 or even 3 years.

I have at least 5 CCs and enough credit to pay for a years outgoings if not more. but I am not willing to pay the interest.

I am also not willing to sell equities when markets are down.

So if they are down I will stop taking income, and possibly switch some dividends/income units to accumualtion to buy more units during a recovery, I would expect this to be a min of a one year cycle if not more- hence my cash for that scenario.

Right now, 1 year does me as we have income, cash for emergencies and CCs for 30 day borrowing.

westv

atush wrote: »

Now, i have 12 months outgoing in cash.

At retirement, it will be 2 or even 3 years.

I
g.

I was referring to cash in retirement.

westv

Getting back to the wannabe part of the thread, my company has made redundancies but I'm not (currently?) one of them.
If I was, I've calculated I'd get around £25k net including PILON. That'd then bring my current cash fund to £110k (large chunk of that was a recent sold property) and an estimated £300k pension pot come next March when I'll have my 16th 39th birthday.
Added to that is a PPF rescued DB annual £5k 5 years after that and then SP for the full amount in 12 years.
In addition my wife has a lot of years of Civil Service pension but none of that starts for at least 7 years minimum.
Quick back of a fag packet calculation gives me about £1,700 net a month in 2018 - with mortgage paid off in 2020 (when current fix ends) when it'll be 75k or so.
I currently earn £2,500 net after pension contributions but another £1k (eeek!) or so comes off of that with expenses for Monday to Friday in London and getting there and back. That expense would go if I got the chop.
Wife gets around £1,500 net but she would like to work less days. This would reduce her net to £1,200 or £1k
So I think it all looks doable if I do get "the call" otherwise I'd probably wait until 2019 or 2020.

gfplux

OldMusicGuy wrote: »

I agree with this 100% and health has been a main factor in deciding to retire now at 60 rather than carry on for another 2 to 4 years (during which time I would have been able to save significant amounts). I am in good health generally but my health suffered once I reached 55. My body just couldn't keep up with the demands of a stressful job, 10 to 12 hour days, late nights, early mornings and lots of travel. My blood pressure was getting high, my weight was creeping up and I wasn't getting any exercise.

So a drastic change in lifestyle was called for and part of that was to set an earlier retirement date than planned. I am already doing more exercise, eating better and now I am 12 weeks away from retirement, my stress levels have gone down considerably. I can sleep at nights now. I didn't just get Sunday night angst, I had it every night of the week!

I saw a comment on another thread recently, along the lines of "I don't want to run out of life before I run out of money". Although it's a difficult balancing act, it's all too easy to keep chasing money and "security" at the expense of health and longevity.

Very sensible.
I just want to come back to dental work. We probably all know that Britons have a reputation for "bad" teeth.
Any problems anyone has at 40 or 50 will only get worse. Money spent at those ages can create a foundation that will last a lifetime.
I say this from my experience of not only neglecting my health before I retired I rarely had time to see a dentist. Luckily I finally did and although £££ costly it turned out to be one of the best investments I could have made in the quality of my life.
Boring but true.