To those who retired early, what made you take the plunge (and any regrets?)

Terron

I miss how my job was before 2001 but from then on it declined. I plodded along, saving a lot as I realized it could not last for ever. There were the odd good bits but they got rarer and rarer. I was made redundant in 2013 and was forced to look at my position. I realized I could retire then at 54, and that I was unlikely to get a good new job in the area I worked in (IT).

I went into BTL to put my savings to work which avoided my needing to live frugally once I was established. As for getting bored, there are far too many interesting books for that to ever happen, now that you don't need physical copies.

FatherTireseus

I have been retired for almost 4 years now.  The catalyst for me was a reorganisation at work which meant having to reapply for jobs (again).  I had expected to go through the process of applying for roles and my boss, who was a good sort, had more or less written a job description for a role that was tailor-made for me.  We were in a fairly small, specialist team and I didn't expect much interest in the role from people in other teams.

Then we were told we didn't have to apply for roles if we didn't need to, and we would get redundancy.  I had to double and triple check this as it sounded too good to be true, but the company were looking to lose roles and figured a willing volunteer was better than forcing out someone who wanted to stay.  

For me, I was of an age where on leaving work I could take an immediate pension (which was subject to enhanced terms of redundancy) and on checking the figures I realised financially I would barely be any worse off.  OK, I lost the company car (which was fairly heavily taxed) but I figured that was a small price to pay for getting a similar take-home pension compared to my take-home salary.  Our pension scheme was just about to put up employee contributions and I didn't have to pay National Insurance so the big loser was the Treasury as I was paying much less tax and no NI.  Yes, I'm a little short of the maximum state pension but I figured I have a way to go before I get my state pension and it's not impossible I might work between now and state pension age.  I will consider paying voluntary NI contributions nearer to my state pension age if there are still gaps in my record.

I did 'worry' about whether I would get bored in retirement as I worked long hours and had little social life outside of work.  But I'm lucky that in my local area, we have a large and thriving University of the Third Age (U3A) group for retired folk.  I joined and found a number of groups I was interested in and pre-covid, I was probably busy for at least one day a week in meetings and outings.

I should also mention I lost my mother and mother-in-law within six months of leaving work so the first year of retirement was largely taken up with probate, estates, selling a house, etc.

I also have more time for 'proper' holidays and a few former work colleagues also left at a similar time to me so I meet up with friends occasionally for walks (and lunch when restrictions allow).  And (in normal times) I join a walking group once a week, and occasionally go to museums, art galleries, exhibitions etc. All in all I think leaving work was the best thing I ever did and remain grateful for the opportunity to go when I did.