Do we have enough for Early Retirement

settingsun

Congratulations to hubby.
So what will hubby do with his spare time, you are more busy than before. Might take some re-adjustment.

May12

Thank you. He says he will enjoy retirement doing as little as possible. It will probably take sometime to adjust ourself. I will send update after a while.

AnotherJoe

May12 wrote: »

Hello everyone, Thank you very much for all comments and advise.

Just give you some updates of our situation:

Hubby took the voluntary redundancy when the opportunity came up. So at 54 he just becomes a pensioner without pension.

I am still doing part-time art design from home, I try to do a few hours a day. My income has improved a lot (about £2000 to £3000 a month depends how hard I work .

So at the moment, hubby will not draw the pension, we will wait and how it is going.

I have not done the figure yet. I will try to update the figure soon.

All best.

Nice. Yes each year you delay starting his pension is a double win. Your job sounds intriguing though it's not something I could do in a month of Sunday's. What is it designs for ? And is your husband now the chief tea and biscuits provider as you slave over a keypad

Oh yes, your pension. How does that work if you are self employed and get say a commission for £2k worth of work can you save that whole £2k as pension ?

May12

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Nice. Yes each year you delay starting his pension is a double win. Your job sounds intriguing though it's not something I could do in a month of Sunday's. What is it designs for ? And is your husband now the chief tea and biscuits provider as you slave over a keypad

Oh yes, your pension. How does that work if you are self employed and get say a commission for £2k worth of work can you save that whole £2k as pension ?

I am a watercolour artist doing watercolour, graphic and digital design. Basically it is a hobby turning into small business. I encourage anybody try that.

I am self-employed. I understand that you can put 80% your profit (commission minus expense) into pension (not that I put that much into the pension).

Hubby does do tea duty only on voluntary basis.

atush

How much was his redundancy payment? Was it over 30K?

If so, he should whack some into a PP or Sipp to save on tax.

madeinireland_2

An update from me too. I didn't retire and I'm still working - but just waiting for the next vol redundancy scheme to appear at work. I will definitely be taking it this time as I regretted not taking it shortly after the date of application passed.

Good luck all!!!

kangoora

madeinireland wrote: »

An update from me too. I didn't retire and I'm still working - but just waiting for the next vol redundancy scheme to appear at work. I will definitely be taking it this time as I regretted not taking it shortly after the date of application passed.

Good luck all!!!

Best of luck!

I applied for the last one in March and got turned down as 'my skills are still required' Then made a dumb move and passed my PPM assessment 1st time - probably should have failed deliberately to get put on the bench but couldn't deliberately fail an exam/test........

Just going to bang in a request and hope each time they offer one but they are critically short on PMs - they let too many go. Typical this happens after seeing 10 years of offers just as I decide to take the plunge

kidmugsy

May12 wrote: »

We will certainly downsize. It does not make sense to me that to keep so much money in a property and we don't need 4 bed detached house for 2 of us.

4 bedrooms = own bedroom, guest bedroom, your study/design room, his study/hobbies room. If you're both around the house all day a bit of space is welcome. if you also expect visits from children and grandchildren it's even more welcome.

If you try to trade down to a two-bed you might clear less profit than you expect.


Anyway you're in good financial nick. Good luck.

madeinireland_2

kangoora wrote: »

Best of luck!

I applied for the last one in March and got turned down as 'my skills are still required' Then made a dumb move and passed my PPM assessment 1st time - probably should have failed deliberately to get put on the bench but couldn't deliberately fail an exam/test........

Just going to bang in a request and hope each time they offer one but they are critically short on PMs - they let too many go. Typical this happens after seeing 10 years of offers just as I decide to take the plunge

That's pretty unlucky - hope it works out for you. I have been a PM most of my career but about a year ago just after they started the assessment nonsense we all got switched to the systems and it job family and who are we to argue as we never had to go through the assessment process :-)

ex-pat_scot

kangoora wrote: »

Best of luck!

I applied for the last one in March and got turned down as 'my skills are still required' Then made a dumb move and passed my PPM assessment 1st time - probably should have failed deliberately to get put on the bench but couldn't deliberately fail an exam/test........

Just going to bang in a request and hope each time they offer one but they are critically short on PMs - they let too many go. Typical this happens after seeing 10 years of offers just as I decide to take the plunge

You will have a better guess than any of us as to whether there will be future rounds of redundancies, and the likelihood of you being eligible and being accepted.
All other things being equal, I'd certainly be willing to wait a while if the carrot was a large payout.


Where I used to work, there was a cycle every 18 months of restructuring - it was pretty reliable.
It does have the side effect of making long-timers reluctant to leave without the package though (just like those who are still part of a golden DB scheme and accruing entitlement).


One (admittedly extreme) tactic might be to coast or deliberately underperform, so that you would be a high priority candidate for the "next round".


Ultimately this falls into the same mind game as the "one more year" syndrome.
It's the hardest thing to decide what is "enough" and stick to it; to refuse to pad that out with a bit more just in case. Whether working for one more year, or holding on for a payoff, either would give a nice cushion.
(I can certainly see the attraction! A nice new car as a retirement present to oneself; a new kitchen / bathroom / workshop).