Early retirement , hints tips and any advice!

Brewer20

fred246 said:

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.

What do you consider poorly paid and why is it so sad? 
Impossible, well I've managed it, I must be considered poor, 66 yrs old and never been so happy. Retired 7 years ago, I've never really had a vast amount of money and don't need a vast amount of money to enjoy life, I would say I'm comfortable.

Anonymous101

Nick9967 said:

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. 

I don't find it strange at all. It fairly common for people of work hard and early a large salary for a short period of time to build a decent nest egg and then scale it back. Life is a balance and operating at the £100k+ level certainly tilts the table too far in the direction of work for it to be sustainable for the long term. Especially without home or family life suffering too much.
I'm on that same path now. Working hard and saving hard. Hopefully it'll give me choices in a few short years that I wouldn't have had otherwise.

Albermarle

Nick9967 said:

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. 

I wouldn't overreact to posters comments . It is an internet forum so you have to expect the rough with the ( mainly ) smooth.
As you can imagine similar questions to yours have been asked many times in the past . If you go to the search box at the top of the page and search for 'Early retirement ' you will have many happy hours of hopefully useful reading.

doingitanyway

Nick9967 said:

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. 

Really interesting to read. Thanks for posting it and good luck with your plans.

Clive_Woody

This is quite a good calculator to play around with to get a basic understanding of what you might be able draw down from your PP. You have mentioned the value of your house a couple of times, were you considering selling and moving into rented accommodation?

https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/options-for-cashing-in-your-pensions/income-drawdown/income-drawdown-calculator-making-your-money-last-awvp49g8uq6l

Durban

Nick9967 said:

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!

I don't think that you should include the value of your house even if you are going to downsize. After the costs of buying and selling , unless you downsize dramatically you won't get much out of it.

Also , are you going to run your personal pension right down till 67 and then just live on the state pension? 

kinger101

I'll be blunt.  Your plans of a £2,000 - £2,200 a month income after tax in retirement are completely unrealistic based on the state pension on PP alone.  You'd need a gross income in the region of £27K.  Aside from the fact you'd have to wait to SRA to get the state pension, that leaves £18K a year.  You cannot draw that every year from a pot of around £250K, which in itself would need an optimistic growth rate to achieve based on current value and future contributions.  At a 4% drawdown rate (which some would argue is unsafe), that would provide £10K a year.

In all reality, it looks like you've passed up the opportunity for an early retirement already by not putting enough away when the net costs of your contributions would have been much cheaper.

Nick9967

Clive_Woody said:

This is quite a good calculator to play around with to get a basic understanding of what you might be able draw down from your PP. You have mentioned the value of your house a couple of times, were you considering selling and moving into rented accommodation?

https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/options-for-cashing-in-your-pensions/income-drawdown/income-drawdown-calculator-making-your-money-last-awvp49g8uq6l

I was actually thinking of downsizing into the same village , freeing up another 100-120k , which is easily viable, so yes sort of ,  

Nick9967

I know this is really really simplistic for some of you guys, i class my self as reasonably intelligent (not what my wife says but!) 
These figures are as basic as it gets but it does seem to stack up to some degree to me at least, if not full retirement then 16 hours a week would do me nicely i think!  My wife loves her job and is 9 years younger so that helps, we own another house that will likely become hers somewhere around 15-20 years from now perhaps! so that will give her another 220+ for her older age! 
feel free to pick holes in may figures that's why I've posted them!   

Bravepants

Each of your figures should be uplifted by 2% to account for inflation each year; 2% is the government's target, but whether that will stay consistent over the next few years, who knows.