Early retirement , hints tips and any advice!

Nick9967

Looking for any guidance really, my situation is pretty good at the ,moment but not sure if I'm dreaming or not, I have every intention of enjoying my last good 20 odd years, I've seen too many not have enough time to enjoy their late 50's and 60's recently to not do this.
Own house £370k ish- 30k mortgage 8 more years
PP currently at £180k cos it dropped recently as you'd expect ( about 12% ish )
Currently paying £212 pm inc tax relief into this pension
I expected my penison , with a reasonable wind, to get somewhere close to £240? i doubt that now 
I'm 53 in 4 months, wife 8 years younger she'll carry on working as she enjoys it - that will be extra money , holidays eating our etc etc
I want to retire at 58!
I recently dropped from £100k career to a nice local £35k job and am fine with that.
2 kids likely to go to University 1 starting in 2 years and 1 starting in 6 years , i reckon £3k per year each to help them out. 
i own a second property worth £220 with a £110k mortgage but my father in law will live in that for as long as (he's 72)  
I have desperately tried to find a free calculator (excel based or similar) that can help me but clearly free doesn't exist as usual!
I will get a full state pension £8,797 i think !
I need around £2-£2,200 net (not including wife's income) to have a good standard of living. 
Anyone tried anything similar successfully in the bot too distant past? or planning to.
Any tips or don't do's?
Thanks guys and gals!

Nick9967

Thanks for your negative input , last time i looked i have nearly £240 in 5 years as i said (may not quite make it but close ish) the 240 / 10 (58 years to 67 years is only 9 by the way) =  £24k gross so I'm about £300 p/m ish short after tax and NI I guess
Plus a house value of £350k etc etc ,
Why is it on forums where every you go the first person to post on yours is always negative, usually hasn' t read the post fully and can't bring them selves to be helpful, nice , anything but unpleasant!  
Bloody know it all's make me mad as hell , 240+350 is 600 grand you can certainly get 24k out of that i was simply asking for positive advice ! so go back in your hole and come out when you are more pleasant!

JoeCrystal

Sorry, but what post are you referring to or was it deleted?
I always find it better to do all the calculations on my spreadsheet so I can see all the possibility with a range of outcomes.

EDIT: This pension forum is I believe is one of the best places in the country to get good opinions and comments with helpful posters. 🙂 Especially those who got in-depth knowledge of various / specific schemes and state pensions.

NoMore

First off I deleted my comment before your response, and it wasn't that negative, I just pointed out you may meed a re think as you would run your pension down very quickly at that level of income. I actually deleted it because I thought I had read your post wrong and you actually only needed 2k  a year , which is of course doable. Seems I was right in my first reading!
You also didn't ask for positive advice , you asked for advice and any do's or don'ts. 
But its a open forum, when you post you can get both positive and negative reponses with no choice in the matter.
If your happy to use all your pension money up in less than 10 years then that is of course up to you.
Value of your house(s) is irrelevant unless you sell, rent it out or remortage, a house on its own doesn't generate income.

Albermarle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6019383/its-time-to-start-digging-up-those-squirrelled-nuts#latest
Could be worth you reading this long running thread.
A couple of other quick points
I've seen too many not have enough time to enjoy their late 50's and 60's recently to not do this.
Statistically you have a 50% chance of reaching 84/85, so a 50% chance of getting older than that.

Your PP looks a bit low considering you had a £100K a year job. Most high earners put max they can in their pension to get the tax relief.
State pension can be checked here https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

wjr4

If that is your only pension & investment, I think you will need to try save a LOT more every month from now until the age you wish to retire. 

Yankee24

hi.  I’ll leave pensions to the others but I have just put 2 thru uni.  One up north, one in the south.  My friends have all had different situations—-, single parents, wealthy, illness, lower income etc and we all agree most end up contributing 5k minimum per year on top of the minimum grant..   Books, rent, cars —. Everyone has something different to fund 

  My kids both worked summers and during term for beer money.  

Nick9967

Thanks all the £100k career was my last few years, and that’s where most of the pot came from, I’m seriously considering downsizing taking another £100+ and adding that to the pot so come 5 or 6 years time the total pot My look a little better £350/375 using this and then state pension maybe a little job in between didn’t seem impossible to me which is where I was looking for some direction really , so I think there are options, perhaps not perfect and maybe a little short etc but none the less not totally impossible , or are they?

justme111

You can Google drawdown calculator and play with it 

fred246

I find it strange that you say that you dropped from £100K to £35k and you are fine with that. Earning £100k and spending £35k or even better £20k is the easiest route to early retirement. I always find it sad when poorly paid people want to retire early. Sadly it's usually impossible.

Nick9967

Why would you find such a dramatic drop in salary strange, I know quite a few people who have done it, 20 odd years commuting to London, up at 5 back at 8 , knackered at weekends, i took the opportunity, leave home at 8,  home for dinner with the kids at 5.30pm, dinner at the table chatting,  almost never stressed, live to my means now , no debt to speak of ,  quit spending £8k travelling and "needing " nice cars and smoking after 40 years! that was all hard but the stress has disappeared from my life, i would advise more people to review and reconsider! life has far more in it than cash and material things, i like stuff but now i save instead of whacking it on a CC like i always did, quite possibly the best thing i have done in my entire life! this was the point of my post really, looking for advice of what best to do with the situation i have in order to quit or almost quit around 58.