I feel like retiring at 60 - 65 is too old

[Deleted User]

Mentioned it on here before but.. if you get a small annual pay rise put that into the pension - you won't notice what you don't have, if you get a promotion, use the extra money to change lifestyle.
As everybody has said, compounding is the key. I am retiring in November at 55, but then I have been lucky with my career (or you make your own luck, worked hard, taught myself new work skills and also worked away from home for 27 years during the week)

Sailtheworld

Should be a doddle retiring at 60 if you make the decision at 31 and do something about it.

CreditCardChris

Sailtheworld said:

Should be a doddle retiring at 60 if you make the decision at 31 and do something about it.

I don't want to retire at 60, I think it's too old. I'm aiming for 50 - 55 and I worked out if I save 50% of my salary I can retire at 50 IF the stock market plays ball and gives me an average 7% return like it has done for all previous generations but knowing my luck now's the time we head into a 20 year bear / sideways market

carpy

CreditCardChris said:

Sailtheworld said:

Should be a doddle retiring at 60 if you make the decision at 31 and do something about it.

I don't want to retire at 60, I think it's too old. I'm aiming for 50 - 55 and I worked out if I save 50% of my salary I can retire at 50 IF the stock market plays ball and gives me an average 7% return like it has done for all previous generations but knowing my luck now's the time we head into a 20 year bear / sideways market

saving 50% is definitely possible, i think i've saved this as a minimum most years for about 20yrs even on a very low salary!
living at home until 35 definitely helps!

Sailtheworld

CreditCardChris said:

Sailtheworld said:

Should be a doddle retiring at 60 if you make the decision at 31 and do something about it.

I don't want to retire at 60, I think it's too old. I'm aiming for 50 - 55 and I worked out if I save 50% of my salary I can retire at 50 IF the stock market plays ball and gives me an average 7% return like it has done for all previous generations but knowing my luck now's the time we head into a 20 year bear / sideways market

Maybe your maths is off or you want substantially more disposable income in retirement than when you were working.

Say you earn £50k and save 50% of that it would mean you're saving £25k a year. Assuming inflation is zero and therefore so are your wage rises by the time you're 50 / 55 you'd have pots of £500k and £625k respectively - and that's assuming an investment return of zero above inflation. Take 4% out of your pot to live on and you'd have an income of £20k at 50 and £25k at 55.

i.e. at age 55 you'd have the same amount to live on as you've been living on for the previous 20 / 25 years and, because you trained yourself to live on only 50% of income, you could retire early with exactly the same lifestyle. Pay off the mortgage along the way and you'd actually have more disposable income at 55 than when you were working.

The advantage of a high savings rate is that you learn to live on less, the savings rate does a lot of the heavy lifting and you have the potential to take less investment risk to achieve your goal. If you can beat inflation by just 1% along the way your income bumps up to £22k & £28k at age 50 & 55. Say you achieve 4% ahead of inflation which is close to historic stock market returns you hit the £25k target by the time you're 48.

Anonymous101

Sailtheworld said:

Should be a doddle retiring at 60 if you make the decision at 31 and do something about it.

Absolutely. Taken from the Mr Money Moustache article, to retire at 60 you should be looking at investing around a third of your income if starting from 0 at age 31.
 https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/

Sapphire

CreditCardChris said:

cfw1994 said:

CreditCardChris said:

(a bit of a rant)

Did you have a question for anyone here?
Only there are a bunch of helpful smart people here to ask....
Your life is in your hands.  Be super frugal if you want....earn lots, spend little, you can retire in 10 years.   

Enjoy life along the way though: so far as we know, we only get one chance!  

Not really a question, just voicing my thoughts with the hopes of receiving some feedback from the elder folks here. 

And as far as enjoying life, for me enjoying life is waking up every morning whatever time I feel like, not having to answer to anyone, going for drives in the sunny weather, hitting the gym, going on hiking holidays, playing video games for hours on end etc.

Kinda hard to enjoy life properly when you have work 6 days a week.

Not true. There are people who love their jobs (like me). But I realise I'm lucky working on books and constantly learning … Not particularly well paid, unless you are jumped up to some sort of 'corporate' position, but that never appealed to me, hence why I went freelance working from home, from being a senior manager of c. 30 people. Now I just work on books. 😀

cfw1994

Work on books?  Sounds great....
A bookkeeper/accountant?  Librarian?  Writer/Author?   Eternal student?!

Thrugelmir

CreditCardChris said:

Sailtheworld said:

Should be a doddle retiring at 60 if you make the decision at 31 and do something about it.

I don't want to retire at 60, I think it's too old. I'm aiming for 50 - 55 and I worked out if I save 50% of my salary I can retire at 50 IF the stock market plays ball and gives me an average 7% return like it has done for all previous generations but knowing my luck now's the time we head into a 20 year bear / sideways market

There'll be things that you'll want to do at a younger age. All about balance. Long term returns aren't as exciting as 7% after charges and allowance for inflation. 

Ceme3000

My own early retirement "lightbulb" moment happened at the age of 35 in 2001 when stakeholder pensions were introduced.  I was already in a DB scheme and could afford to save 50% of my salary, so I thought that for every month I could save that would be one month I could retire early.  The reality was actually better than that as I didn't appreciate compounding at the time.

Since then I have paid as much as I could into an ISA or pension, not always 50% admittedly. Then with the help of a fortuitous redundancy I stopped working at the age of 52.