Turning off the tap

Sea_Shell

Really interested in this thread.

My part time job is enough to "keep the tap dripping", so we're at breakeven point at the moment, so not actually adding to the pot, but not drawing either.

Our "OMY" is more about not having to start drawing yet, rather than adding to the pot. I enjoy my job, but I can see me maybe doing another couple of years and seeing how it goes.

We've got cash/investment pot of approx. £220k, and DC pension pots of £250k. So if that can grow overall by approx. 3-4%, then we should be fine. Tracking of this years spend looks to be on target for £13k.

Triumph13

michaels wrote: »

Currently I am working 70% hours which adds another year to when I could afford to retire but means I work 2.5 years less in the next 8 so a net gain of 1.5 years less work.

Would others chose to work for more years but fewer days a week or less years but full time hours?

I spent a lot of time struggling with this question. Every time I went round the loop I came back to the fact that I didn't want to delay getting to FI and the freedom that brings any longer than I had too. Partly driven by an irrational fear of losing my job and not getting another so needing to make hay while the sun shone. Now that I am basically FI I am leaning much more towards this and thinking of asking to go to 4 days a week next year - and I've told me employers that I'd be interested in 2 days a week, term time only after my planned retirement date to keep a little bit of flow on the tap as I'll still have kids in school.

Stubod

Providing you enjoy you work I think going "part time" is a good compromise. I had a job which I did not like so finishing "early" was a priority for me. It's always a problem as to when to pull the trigger as it's always easy to justify "one more year" as another years salary (assuming you don't technically need it) could be used to (eg) buy a new car..or have a super holiday etc.

Although I did not enjoy my job I still miss "work", more from the "having a purpose" point of view. I am therefore still looking for some sort of job but would only be for 2/3 days per week max. (And now the actual amount earned is largely irrelevant as any "new" money would be considered surplus to requirements so could be "wasted". Although finding this difficult after a lifetime of saving.

Linton

Working 3 or 4 days a week at your original job doesnt seem the best option to me unless your work was stress free. The danger is that you end up doing 5 days work in a shorter time and continue to think about it at night.

Stubod wrote: »

...... It's always a problem as to when to pull the trigger as it's always easy to justify "one more year" as another years salary (assuming you don't technically need it) could be used to (eg) buy a new car..or have a super holiday etc.
......

One way to avoid this ongoing "one more year" problem could be to put your minimum wish for a new car and major holiday as regular expenses in your plan say every 5 or 6 years. Then once the planned pension pot has been achieved you have no great reason to carry on. If your plan is sensibly pessimistic you could well have the option for further luxuries later or conversely you have some slack in case things dont work out.

Dorian1958

Whether or not working part time suits just depends on the individual and their working arrangements. I take the point that there is no value in doing it if you have a stressful job and you simply have to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. I reduced to 3 days a year ago, and as I work with clients on an appointment basis it is impossible to do in 3 days what I used to do in 5. However, challenges remain - I still get the same amount of email traffic, the same level of working relationships to maintain, CPD to complete, meetings to attend, but with less time to do all that in. The three days fly over.

Snakey

Michaels - the only fly in the ointment is that your continued employment (at least, at your current salary level) isn't entirely up to you. You are also at least somewhat at the mercy of the industry, the state of the wider economy, technology/offshoring, the continued solvency of your specific employer... different worries for different jobs, but I bet at least one of them is a potential flag. I would not assume that I'd be able to work part-time for as long as I wanted. I'd rather stay full time and get it in the bank as soon as I could, so that nobody can pull the rug.

Also, the whole point of giving up work is that it frees me up to do stuff. Having to be back here to go to work every Monday and Thursday doesn't cut it I'm afraid!

Dansmam - it is an interesting thought experiment to imagine what would have happened if you and your spouse had taken that attitude towards working starting in (I'm going to guess) 1991. Would your kids still be able to turn down jobs until they find one that's just right for them? That's a relatively privileged position which must have taken some serious parental investment to achieve.

Snakey

I should add that what I mean is, I don't think Generation X were any more delighted about working somewhere that didn't inspire them and where they weren't valued. I doubt that's ever been any young person's dream. But we were expected to just get on and do it. I wonder whether kids today are less realistic about the fact that most people do not end up in their dream job?

Or perhaps they're less motivated, due to the double whammy of a) increased rents/house prices, and b) "living at home" being more tolerable in 2017 than it was in 1987 due to different parenting fashions. Being able to move out maybe isn't the reward that it was for us, or is no longer sufficiently short-term to be a motivating factor.

jerrysimon

Stubod wrote: »

Although I did not enjoy my job I still miss "work", more from the "having a purpose" point of view. I am therefore still looking for some sort of job but would only be for 2/3 days per week max. (And now the actual amount earned is largely irrelevant as any "new" money would be considered surplus to requirements so could be "wasted". Although finding this difficult after a lifetime of saving.

We could do a whole thread on "having a purpose" though I bet there is one already.

I always "worked to live" and thus saw work as a means to an end rather than some who have work as their main focus. Nothing wrong with that, I just had a family and hobbies that were more important to me. There were times though were work took over my thoughts, even when not there. That took a few years to sort out and get the correct balance for me. As I said when that balance started to change in the last 18 months or so that is when I knew I had to act.

Thus when I retired 6 months ago I thought I would never worry about having a purpose so to speak. After the first few months of elation I found a stranger feeling crept in of having a daily structure, some might call it purpose.

Fortuantely just before I retired I started training as a Samaritan and this was a blessing in disguise. I sort of knew I should do something and had looked around for voluntary work before I left full time work. I don't miss my old job in fact as many have explained here it was the changes and management B!!!!! that made me retire early or at least contributed to the decision to turn off the tap.

What the voluntary work has given me is a structure in terms of shifts and a rota I have to sign up to each week (I can do as much or as little as I want) and gave me a focus for a few hours a week. I never realised how important that would be after I left, even though as I said I was not fully work orientated. Maybe after 40 years (16-56) of working it becomes ingrained ?

Anyway I am not sad I turned off the tap so to speak and realise even now I could turn it on again a little if I wanted. This is not something I will actively seek right now though and certainly, I promised myself at least a year off before we make any other further radical changes i.e. move, travel, get a part time job etc.

As I said I am enjoying this new phase/adventure called retirement but it has raised a few feelings/emotions I was not expecting.

ermine

ewaste wrote: »

Although I would think that any run of hyperinflation would be somewhat covered by the state pension which should still exist or would otherwise require a Government to act? Is there any historical precedent or were most DB schemes uncapped in the past?

There is historical precedent. It was Weimar Germany and you ain't gonna like it. Other examples include Argentina. It doesn't work out well. You fight hyperinflation by owning hard assets outside the country's financial system like gold and property, but the trouble is you get to wait twenty years for the crisis to be resolved before you can deploy those assets without them being confiscated by the government or the starving hordes of your fellow men. In the meantime you have to eat like anyone else...

There's not much that can be guaranteed in finance but I'd guarantee that the SP isn't going to protect you from hyperinflation For a modern-day cautionary tale see Greece and its pensions, and they aren't even fighting hyperinflation.

jamesperrett

I'm now officially 2 weeks into early retirement at the age of 55. It is a strange feeling after having worked for the same organisation for nearly 37 years. I'm still feeling my way into it and having a 6 year old home educated son makes things very different.

Work was great up until a couple of years ago when I was transferred into a new team without any warning and I found myself working for a very inexperienced manager who had little idea of what our job entailed. Fortunately (from a retirement point of view) this meant that I had to take on a certain amount of extra work which boosted the pay taken into account for my final salary pension.

Almost immediately after the transfer I was considering resigning but realised that sticking it out for another couple of years would make retirement a possibility - especially once my lump sum covered the outstanding mortgage. If I had gone OMY 9or two) my pension would have actually reduced thanks to the way the final salary is calculated.

I'm now planning on indulging in my sound recording hobby more seriously and running it as a small business to supplement my pension - we could probably just about manage on my pension alone but an extra little per month would take us closer to our previous income. Our local council have also just started a programme of courses for people wanting to start a business which given me a good excuse to get out and meet people that I wouldn't otherwise have met.