Will retirement day ever arrive?

kj*daisy

Yes I feel like this, I'm only in my early 40s but have health problems indicating I won't have a long and/or healthy retirement if I have to wait till I'm 68 to retire. So I'm saving now and will stop work for a period of time soon while my children are young, to enjoy the time I have with good health. This means I'll be reliant on the state more when I do retire - if I could have retired at 60 I'd probably have struggled on till then and not be reliant on the state - but having to wait till I'm 68 doesn't seem worth it.

Dunroamin

kj*daisy wrote: »

Yes I feel like this, I'm only in my early 40s but have health problems indicating I won't have a long and/or healthy retirement if I have to wait till I'm 68 to retire. So I'm saving now and will stop work for a period of time soon while my children are young, to enjoy the time I have with good health. This means I'll be reliant on the state more when I do retire - if I could have retired at 60 I'd probably have struggled on till then and not be reliant on the state - but having to wait till I'm 68 doesn't seem worth it.

Not being pessimistic but I wouldn't make plans for my future (particularly with health problems) based on what's currently available from the state. Nothing's set in stone and you could end up with far less than you expect. It's always better to be self reliant and to leave state back up for unforeseen circumstances.

kj*daisy

I know, but working is making my health worse anyway, the idea of doing what I do for another 25 years is awful. If I have a break I'll then hopefully be healthier to go back and do something else for a while. But I'm not wasting my life working in my current very stressful job to fund a retirement I may never get to see - a lot of people feel like that now they have increased the age so much. If I had a crystal ball it would be so much easier to make these decisions!!

I have also noticed that my relatives in their 60s were generally all in good health at 60 but the following 10 years has seen that decline - and they aren't working!! The idea of having to plough on with work in that decade scares the life out of me.

Person_one

Dunroamin wrote: »

Not being pessimistic but I wouldn't make plans for my future (particularly with health problems) based on what's currently available from the state. Nothing's set in stone and you could end up with far less than you expect. It's always better to be self reliant and to leave state back up for unforeseen circumstances.

This can be hard or impossible for some lower earners though.

I pay into an occupational pension but the terms and conditions appear to be changeable at the whim of the current government. I can't afford to pay into a private pension, which would be at the mercy of the shareholders and reliant on the provider's competency anyway.

The state pension should always be enough to survive on.

Person_one

kj*daisy wrote: »

I know, but working is making my health worse anyway, the idea of doing what I do for another 25 years is awful.

Some jobs do just seem to knacker people earlier.

People complain about the police retiring young but by the time they do they've done 30 years of shifts (which is terrible for your health and knocks years off your life) in a physically and emotionally demanding job where they risk injury and aggression every day from the people they set out to help!

Unless they've managed to manoeuvre into a slightly cushier role they tend to look 65 at 55 and personally, I think they deserve to get a few years on us.

Mr_Toad

kj*daisy wrote: »

I have also noticed that my relatives in their 60s were generally all in good health at 60 but the following 10 years has seen that decline - and they aren't working!! The idea of having to plough on with work in that decade scares the life out of me.

But what did they do in their retirement?

You often see healthy people decline in retirement simply because they stop doing things, it's as if their bodies just give up.

My parents are in their mid eighties and are still physically healthy. I put this down to the fact that they lead a very active retirement.

I too have plans for my retirement while some people I know have nothing outside their jobs and careers. Even their social life largely revolves around their careers. These are the people I fear will literally wither and die in early retirement.

I know you are in a difficult position due to health issues but there is just a chance that retirement will finish you off whereas working may just keep you going longer than you expect. That reads a little oddly, I hope you understand what I'm trying to say

HeatherintheHills

Your responses to this thread have been really interesting, thank you to all who have taken the time to post.

Dunroamin wrote: »

Our generation is set to live far longer than our parents, unless there's some inherited condition involved.

We don't know if that is true yet.

I was talking to my father (in his 80s) about our working lives and he was shocked to realise how much more stress my siblings and I have had to deal with than his generation. I personally have a life shortening condition now and years of stress contributed a lot to my ill health. I may live beyond 70 but my chances of being well enough to enjoy those years are negligible.

Some of us are saying we are semi-retired. How many of you use that term to mean that you have left your "career" job and taken something with less pay, shorter hours and as little stress as possible? That is certainly what I mean when I say I am semi-retired.

A word of warning to those planning for their futures by putting money aside to pay for their retirement. I did that too, I really struggled to put a decent % of my salary into retirement pots and a property, whose eventual sale was meant to give me security in old age. I'd never expected to need benefits other that the state pension. In my 50s I had a period of unemployment and, as I had savings, qualified for nothing after the first 6 months. My life savings vanished so quickly when I had to use them to pay bills and eat. At 55 I had to take a capital release from one of my pensions to help me exist and I got no more out of the pension fund than I'd put in, it was literally worth just a few pounds more than I'd contributed. It was a virtually worthless investment! The property had to be sold in a depressed property market.

I was unemployed for less than 18 months but it effectively destroyed 30+ years of planning and saving. So please, be careful what you do. Private pensions are stock market driven, yes, you will get back what you put in, so they are protected in that sense, but if I had my time again I'd put the money into premium bonds, I might have done a lot better than I actually have done with pension funds and certainly wouldn't have done worse.

I've done the best I could with what I had left and, although I don't have the life I had hoped I'd have, I'm reasonably content. But I really, really object to having so many years added to my working life at a time when it is a struggle to find even minimum pay jobs.

If you work hard and save hard it can't be right that your ambitions are thwarted when you have reached an age when it is too late to go back and re-think your plans. Moving the goal posts once for equality purposes was tough, but I accepted it. Moving them again and having no guarantee that they wont be moved even further away is just plain cruel. I can no longer do the higher earning work I used to do so the extra years will not enable me to save much at all.

Those of us now over 50 surely deserve to be assured that the goalposts will not be moved again for us?

kj*daisy

Masonn - they have been active in their retirement, but now at 70 are a lot less fit and healthy than they were at 60. But have been able to enjoy those years, if they were only just retiring now, it would basically be for a life of hospital and docs appointments. I do know someone whose 68 and still working and is fine, but it's not a commute everyday, spend all day trying to deal with an unrealistic workload type of job at all.

If people build there life around work and want to carry on then that's great, but I personally want to live some of my remaining healthy life without that stress. Which is now looking very unlikely.

Mr_Toad

kj*daisy wrote: »

Masonn - they have been active in their retirement, but now at 70 are a lot less fit and healthy than they were at 60. But have been able to enjoy those years, if they were only just retiring now, it would basically be for a life of hospital and docs appointments. I do know someone whose 68 and still working and is fine, but it's not a commute everyday, spend all day trying to deal with an unrealistic workload type of job at all.

If people build there life around work and want to carry on then that's great, but I personally want to live some of my remaining healthy life without that stress. Which is now looking very unlikely.

Is there nothing you can do to get a less stressful job?

I can understand what you are going through as I have health issues as well. I have a neurological illness that has no cure.

Basically my brain is trying to kill me. I'm hoping that it'll take 30 years but there's no guarantee.

When my symptoms first appeared 18 months ago I had to take almost a year off work. There were times when I thought I'd never work again and after some time in denial I came to accept this and started to put my life in order. No sooner had I started preparations for a medical retirement the doctors got my medication adjusted and almost overnight I was back to normal. While there is no cure it can be controlled.

I've had to make changes to my lifestyle, my brain is producing antibodies that inhibit the signals that control muscles. The more I do something the more antibodies it produces so I have to take things easy but I have found a very happy medium and can do anything in moderation. A good indicator that I need a rest is talking, talking for more than 30 minutes or so causes loss of control of the muscles in my mouth and I start to slur and lose the ability to say certain words.

My employer has been terrific, I have worked from home since 1999 but my job included a lot of travel to Europe, India and the USA. Something I'm no longer able to do.

I now have a new role and no longer travel as this is too tiring and aggravates the condition. I've gone back to being a database techie and love it. I no longer work 12 hour days and I'm loving having a social life and no stress in my job.

I've been lucky but it does show that there are things you can do. It's not always easy but it can be done.

You are right to want change, there is definitely more to life than career and money.

That cliche that 'life is too short' is not a cliche to some of us. One day my brain will block the chemical receptors that control my chest muscles and unless I'm next to ventilator when it happens it'll be good night Vienna.

I now live every day as if it's my last because one day it will be.

Dunroamin

Person_one wrote: »

This can be hard or impossible for some lower earners though.

I pay into an occupational pension but the terms and conditions appear to be changeable at the whim of the current government. I can't afford to pay into a private pension, which would be at the mercy of the shareholders and reliant on the provider's competency anyway.

The state pension should always be enough to survive on.

The state pension has never been enough to survive on, unless you take the word "survive" quite literally.

Some people, as you say, don't have a choice; my comment was aimed at those who do.