Plotting for an early retirement - anyone want to join me?

JoeEngland

crv1963 wrote: »

I have a friend who retired before SPA, he doesn't like the idea of being "a pensioner" so tells everyone he's either "a gentleman of leisure" or "a man who lunches"!

I would just call myself a free man!

JoeEngland

I'm 52 and planning to retire, or possibly drop to some PT work for a little while, when I'm 53. Financially I wanted to wait till 55 but health problems have made that unrealistic. In theory I could retire now, especially as DW will work FT longer than me, but holding on another 8 months or so will help the finances. In the meantime I'm planning to move my DC/personal pensions into a SIPP and getting the house decorated and repairs done. Mentally I've been ready for retirement for many years, if only the finances had been too! Actually, I had a few months of semi-retirement at 49 before going back to FT work because the finances weren't sufficient at the time to stay semi-retired.

barnstar2077

SuiDreams wrote: »

I'm 43, would like to retire at 55 and start reducing working hrs from age of 50. Have a DC pension at work and the pay up to 10% matching contributions, I have also started to increase AVC's. My 10% contributions are paid via salary sacrifice, but the company does not allow you to do this with AVC's. Started a S&S's ISA a couple of years ago, but balance is still quite low, going forward I will no longer be increasing Cash Savings, but putting any additional cash into the ISA instead. I have a few things ongoing at the moment which unfortunately may mean my retirement plans get delayed.

Sounds like we are in a very similar position. I put 10% of my salary into my works pension, and my company does the same. 5% of mine is an AVC which I don't get salary sacrifice on. I also have a SIPP which I started at the end of last year. I too am aiming for 55, but as I won't be 55 before 2028 I won't be able to take my pension before I am 57 I am putting an extra bit away every month to cover these couple of years but may go part time for those years instead, I will decide when I get there. I live quite frugally so retiring at 55 is achievable for me.

I have decided to do it based on four things. Firstly people I know are dying in their seventies having not enjoyed more than a few years of retirement. Secondly, I have an above average chance of developing an unpleasant condition which would not make working fun. Thirdly, the place where I work is getting worse and worse. They are trying to run the place like it is a military installation and there is a war on! While all the time telling us how lucky we are. Lastly, I seem to be hitting my head against a brick wall in the dating department at the moment so I am going to put my money to better use for a while!:rotfl:

Mickimus

Been on the same journey as most of you since the recession in 2008 when staring in to a weak, limp, lifeless, dull pension pot and a threatened redundancy had me vowing not to be caught that way again! Response was to cling on to the job by agreeing to work away from home during the week and save like fury for 10 years. Now at 53 counting down to a likely 2020 retirement and the freedom that will bring......

Don't get me wrong there is a potential huge cost in terms of lost family life by working away - my kids grew in to adults while I was away and my wife had to field the domestic burden all that time (the washing machine always floods when you are away lol); all of which puts a strain on life. However I'm sure there is a rich harvest just round the corner - I just need to be brave enough to believe the numbers and give up the security of being a wage-slave - so bring on 2020 - can't wait!

Doglegger

I'm same age as the OP and plan to retire in 2023 whatever the markets bring. The recent tragedy of a co-worker dying on the job on Christmas eve, 2 years before his own retirement, has hammered home that we have no idea when our time is up so make the best of it while we can.
Good luck with your adventure and I'll follow this one too.

Terron

Technically I am not retired, but I stopped full time work when I was 54, involuntarily, This was not unexpected and I had been saving quite a lot including into a pension. I had also inherited some money. I went into BTLand it has been working fo r me, providing a pre-tax income of £25k+ for less than 1 days work per week. I am both self-employed and employed (as the director of my own company). This year Iturn 60 and plan to take some of my pensions (2 with GARs and 2 DB) which will add about £20k. I plan to do some travelling in style.

Techno

I love the early retirement threads as they are so motivating

OH is 57 and I am 56. We had planned to 'go' when he reached 55. We work for the same company and although we get long holidays, our working day was 7:30am until 10:30 pm (if we were lucky) plus then being on call overnight for 10 out of every 14 days just got too much - everything has a shelf life so we did hand our notices in. However, the boss offered us a very good deal, him on 3 days per week and me on 2 which is bringing in in more than enough money to live off.

Done this for coming up for 2 years now and will definitely do one more. We say this as by the end of the longest holiday we are getting bored and the joy of being at home almost every night and having every weekend plus 2 days for me and one for him to do whatever we want still feels grrreat!

We want to travel but like the OP, have an elderly pet so we make the most of travelling in the U.K. so we can take her with us.

Look forward to following your journey :T

Triumph13

Mrs_Z wrote: »

:T Huge congratulations! Any tips you can share with us? I'm sure the achievement was not down to plain luck!

The biggest tip I can share is that, for anyone with decent salaries coming in, being able to retire early is much more a mental / behavioural thing than a financial one. The one hard fact is that the longer you work the more money you will have. Society keeps hammering home the message that the more money you have the happier you will be. This is not true. You have to break the shackles of consumerism and really understand your personal money/happiness curve. You also need to understand your work / happiness curve and then work out how those two curves interact to find the point where the utility of more money is less than the utility of more freedom / less work stress.
What really helped for me was experimenting with living to different budgets. Starting from 2015 my plan was to try living on what my likely income would be if I retired at that point, expecting it to be too low and a struggle at first, and then, once I reached a point where I was happy on that level of spending, I could stop. I learnt an awful lot about my own money/happiness curve from that experiment - mainly that I didn't actually enjoy spending money anyway but love the buzz of cleverly cutting costs!

ex-pat_scot

JoeCrystal wrote: »

Very impressive, so so you are planning to retire at 56 years 191 days 19 hours 22 minutes 47 seconds.

Roughly, yes

bugslet

I'll be 55 in June.

I have run my own Company for the last 28 years and enjoyed it up until around 2 years ago, when there was a culture shift within my main customer, which essentially went from feeling like a valued part of the team to something that was stuck on the bottom of the corporate shoe.

Last year I told them I was winding the Comapny up, they came back and said we can fix this, we can make it work and then went back to petulently demanding the very thing that made me decide to step away.

We finish operationally on the 30th April, probably 3rd May as that's the Friday and it would be a bit weird finishing on a Tuesday. Then I expect a week or two of being busy and followed by six weeks of doing everything that needs to be done when winding down.

Hopefully 1st July will see me sitting in the garden trying to relax (whatever that is).

I always feel a little bit out of these threads. I have wanted for a long time, the option to retire early. I read Your Money or Your Life about 15 years ago; it may seem a bit dated now, but the principles hold true and it really did change my way of thinking. However, I'm not a spreadsheet type of person. I jump and worry afterwards.

I know I have a minimum of 250k in cash when I leave tax free, then I expect some more, hopefully around 150k which will be taxed (discussions with accountant and IFA on how best to approach that one to be had for year 2019-20). After that, I will have around 400k in the pension, which in theory I can take at 60.

Now I'm simple, I don't want complex, so my little brain tells me that I can live comfortable for ten years on 250k + interest. Then my own pension kicks in at 60, followed by state pension at 67. Depending on what the IFA says, I may not take the pension till a few years later, I may do some drawdown. So I have my base line figures and anything else is a win.

I have < 20k to pay on my mortgage and have spent the last 3 years future proofing the house. I'm not that fussed about travelling, though I have a couple of holidays in mind. I do have dogs, down to two which is about three to few, so travel is prohibitive with them around anyway.

I think I will probably find some work to do anyway, though I don't want to be tied to anything.

So my tip, is sometimes you just have to jump and see what happens. I've done it a few times over my life and it's always worked out OK.:o