Early-retirement wannabe

atush

Everyone should be able to handle deferred gratification.

gadgetmind

kidmugsy wrote: »

Not everyone has had your advantages in life (as my father used to remind me).

True, nor my disadvantages.

As I say, we're all adults and we all need to understand and accept that some subjects will take tens (or hundreds or even thousands!) of hours of study to master.

Personal finance and retirement planning are examples of such subjects. Saying "it's too hard!" without having done this work just shows that you can't be bothered.

I have little time for people who can't be bothered.

OldBeanz

The next changes to pensions are to ensure that if you do save into one then it will not be taken back £ for £ by the government. Anyone not putting money into a pension now will only have themselves to blame.

geelamch

Ah so,
You live in the land of utopia ,the gov will always take the willing to pay as the easy target.votes over realism.

OldBeanz

No the unsustainable Utopia was created by Broon which meant that it was not worth saving for a pension for a great deal of an ageing population.

bugslet

gadgetmind wrote: »

Yeah, and I want a pony, a private jet, and an end to world hunger.

Sorry, we're adults and should be able to handle difficult things including deferred gratification.

I agree. They should. But the reality is that people don't delay gratification and don't pay into pensions for other reasons.

I suppose being forced to do so is a step in the right direction. We are a small firm and I'm curious to see how many of my drivers will want to contribute to the scheme and how many will want to opt out?

On a personal note, my pension is significantly higher than the average, so I can do the whole smug thing, but I don't forget there are multiple reasons that others may not have gone down the same route as me, some more valid than others.

Re the comment by OldBeanz that saving for a pension was not worth it for many, I can recall hearing a pensions expert on the radio about 8? years ago, saying that if you don't earn £20k a year, then it isn't worth paying into a pension. I suspect a few people heard that, don't earn 20k and there goes another reason for them not to pay into one.

ermine

gfplux wrote: »

Not only retirement is vague and confusing, life before retirement is also. In other parts of this website I see postings by people who don't know how to live a proper and balanced life in their 20's, 30's, 40's and older.
It is only by asking questions do we even come close to getting a rough estimate about what to do about anything.
Many of us are too busy bailing the boat to think about what course to steer.
As I have said before, until you are retired you have no proper idea of what your life can be, even without the variables that life throws at you.
Some contributors on this thread have large pots and imagine a life in retirement of travel and Luxury. Perhaps I might have been one of those people.[...]
A lot more changes when you retire than you can ever imagine.

+1 many times to this

I fixated far too much on money, while working. My image of retirement was all about what I wouldn't be able to do, 'cos I didn't expect to be able to afford it. So I saved like a nutter - AVCs, pumped my (S&S) ISAs, NS&I ILSCs, heck even a couple of Cash ISAs though it's a totally mad thing to keep these days. And I scrimped and saved and didn't go on holiday for three years to do that.

You can never save enough to feel you have enough to make the jump. And guess what I discovered, on retiring? It's not all about the money! In the last year I didn't spend anywhere near as much as I anticipated I would. I now have to work out how to invest the difference, outside my already maxed ISA allowance. After about six months of recovery from working, I ended up doing more than I had anticipated - because life is cheaper when you own your own time.

Opportunities also show up when you are in control of your own time. I shot some photographs in France for someone's project. I didn't get paid for it. But I watched spoonbills fishing in a French equivalent of Minsmere, storks overhead, drank wine and sampled cheese with some French organic experts. I camped in the gardens of a castle and ate various things unrecognisable but delicious in town squares by the sound of church bells.

When you control your own time and an opportunity comes up, you can go 'hell yeah' and just do it, and even better if no money changes hands. I got to see interesting stuff, all I had to do is turn up, get in and go along with their schedule.

While I was working I imagined I'd have to pay to use my passport when retired. Leisure time is expensive when you're working because you have to pack it in to the times you aren't working, it's cheaper if you can be opportunist. gfplux's taps remind me there's reward in repairing and creating things, all the stuff Matthew Crawford described in Shop Craft as Soulcraft - I've felt this too in the electronic bits I design/create and even a starter motor I took out and got serviced.

It's interesting that of the three recent voices of the already retired that I can identify in this thread the common theme seems to be that you may need less money when retired than you thought while working. But I didn't believe that either while I was working, and it's probably just as well, because if you're going to get that estimation wrong then rather too much than too little

It may not be a universal experience - as gfplux observed above it's not just retirement where people find it hard to get balance. If you haven't managed to live within your means before you retire you may find the problems stay with you or magnify. Getting that right isn't anythng to do with retirement and is probably down to gadgetmind's deferred gratification...

atush

It's interesting that of the three recent voices of the already retired that I can identify in this thread the common theme seems to be that you may need less money when retired than you thought while working.

I really really really hope this is true

mgdavid

+1 ...

gallygirl

+ 2 .......

+ 3 for El as well to save her posting!