What made you 'pull the trigger'?

chubsta

To say I am 'planning' my retirement is a bit of an understatement - I have multiple spreadsheets dealing with historical and future outgoings, projected pension income, inflation rates etc. To be fair, I often have a bit of spare time in the morning so often spend an hour or so adjusting figures and making small changes to prospective dates so it doesn't get in the way, and whatever happens I want to be able to say that at least I covered all the bases when I make my final decision on when to leave work.

I dislike the place I am working at but have been there for over 38 years(!), the job has changed a huge amount recently though so I just want to leave, the plan is to then get a part-time, minimum wage job for a few years just to keep me busy for the two days a week I will have spare.

But as my prospective date gets closer and closer it is actually becoming quite scary - I have had the safety net of doing a job for decades that I can do easily so the idea of not doing it any more, as much as I dislike it, is very unsettling. But I am definitely going to leave in the next year or so, so my question to others is, what made you settle on a date to retire?

Was it:
I have enough money
I am fed up with my job
I want more spare time
a significant birthday (60 etc)
health

I would imagine for most people it is a combination of the above, but which was the actual one that made you think the time is right? I am at the point where I am working out whether I should go on X date, or 5 weeks later but perhaps I am going into it in such detail as a form of delaying tactic, as I can always think of a reason why I should go slightly later, then I work out that actually, sod it, I may as well go a month or two earlier!

I am guessing this sort of anxiety is recognisable to a few of you?

Nebulous2

I worked in care. During the pandemic I was working from home and spent much of my week talking to people who had been directly impacted by Covid. 

At Christmas 2020 I was quite unsettled, calculated the actuarial deduction from my pension, looked at our lifestyle and decided I could afford to stop. It wasn't the master plan you appear to have - more back of a fag packet. Gave 3 months notice and left end of March at 59.

I found though - as you have identified, that the finances are only part of it. I concluded I wasn't ready to retire, and quickly took a part-time job as a nurse. Pay is considerably less, but I'm enjoying it, and only do 1 day most weeks. 

The psychological adjustment, after working above and beyond for 40 years was difficult. Part-time helps. I liken it to jumping off a cliff. I've gone to a ledge halfway down, as an interim step, rather than throwing myself off. 

gerdo

I'm nearly 62 and have always planned to leave at 63 (40 years working so have had enough). Iike you I have all the details worked out and have projected my pension to be worth X amount when I hit 63. Problem now is that my DC pension is down 20% over the last 8 months so is not projected to reach the X figure I had hoped to retire on so I'm currently working on a  plan B.

When the time comes, I won't have any doubts about pulling the trigger, that time can't come soon enough.

Albermarle

Getting close to pension LTA levels, so benefit/attraction of 40% tax relief was waning.
Having enough money, having probably already worked a couple of years more than really necessary ( although after 2022, turns out that  was maybe not such a bad idea)
My job involved quite a lot of travelling, in UK, Ireland and on the Continent. However after being  at home with lockdowns, customers not wanting visitors etc,  the thought of starting again with hanging around in airports, stuck in motorway jams, staying in hotels, was what tipped me over the edge.
Plus encouragement from the family.

Linton

I had decided perhaps 20 years previously after an IFA raised the question that I would like to retire at 55 so started making the then maximum permitted contribution to my pension as well as saving significant amounts of cash (the commercial internet did not exist and investing in funds or shares was not a mainstream activity outside a pension).  By 55 my work situation at a large computer company had made my wish to retire a real need for my continued sanity and spreadsheet models showed that both of us retiring was affordable..  So it was simply a matter of waiting a few months for the next round of voluntary redundancies and jumping.

garyelder

My dad always said to me retire around my 60th birthday but prior to that I got Covid bad so that was it I asked for redundancy which I got plus a lump on top 
I sold a flat which gave me a lump sum to last me 7 years plus I have another flat I rent out
not touching my personal pension until 5 years time but I’m having second thoughts and I m thinking of taking 4% a year from April 2024 20k

Pensions_matter_2

For me, work stopped giving me joy or a sense of achievement. I had reached as far as I wanted to go. Work politics and stress also played a part, but were not the main reasons for wanting to leave. I took a part-time role in a similar area (lower paid, not in management) to help avoid the cliff edge, and build up my SP to full amount. I think you just know when you have had enough and want a different life.

Silvertabby

We had always intended to retire at 60, and that's what we did. As Mr S is a couple of years older than me,  he took on all of the household chores for those two years when I was still working and he wasn't, so that was almost like going part time for me!

Finances are a little different for us, as we have 80 years of public sector DB pensions between us.  May have been different if our pensions were all or mostly DC, especially as annuity rates were so poor when we retired and the concept of juggling investments/drawdown would have been an alien concept to us.

quirkydeptless

In my twenties, my ambition was to retire at 40

This was never realistic for me, and although very comfortable in my job, at the start of my 50s I was gettng bored, and not being able to think of something else I could do as work, I started to think about early retirement. Over the next few years I worked out that retirement at 55 was a possibility, so I began planning for it. 55 for me was 2020, and when it arrived, the Covid locked down world didn't feel a good time to resign from work, so I kept going. By 2021 I was really wanting to leave work, but unable to commit. I was safe but bored and I needed a push. As chance would have it, in 2021 I got accepted for volountary redundancy which worked out great all round

Brie

Unlike you I hadn't made anything like a real plan to retire.  I knew that at 60+ it would happen eventually but I just couldn't imagine not working.  And I liked my job well enough - it was getting a bit tedious but it was still ok.  There was a change in management and things started to change in the department and my role was morphing into something a little less within my control and I did finally start to think about throwing in the towel.

And then I remembered in my previous role that I had a colleague who was still working at 67 when we were both listed for redundancy.  I found my new role but she was really happy to be given a lump sum and her pension.  I began to think this was the perfect scenario and then hey presto! it happened to me!!!  So at 64 I was being made redundant.  I did consider getting another full time job as I did still want to work but then was lucky enough to find a pleasant part time role that uses my experience, is stimulating, has a good group of colleagues (all older than me for a change!!) and leaves me plenty of time for other things.

It occurs to me that this is much like most of my life where I've done very little real planning of anything but just drifted and grabbed opportunities that presented themselves at the right time.  Things just seem to work out ok without a lot of obsessing but that's because I'm a low anxiety individual I think. 

GSP

Bet everyone has a different story to tell.

I worked for just one company in the City. Started when I just turned 16 until new management tried to performance manage me out after strong ratings year after year, and I walked out of the office one afternoon in February aged 53.

From there for the next nine months I was on mental health programmes, my salary was cut to half pay after six months, then to nothing with a mortgage and family with two kids.

Then after a grievance failed but my appeal won, that November I was offered redundancy and took it. I kept the £30,000 tax free and amount up to my personal allowance, and put the rest into my pension.

After having travelled to the City for 37 years, I tried to get work locally. I had interviews at an airport, broken home charity, two supermarkets, a parking attendant but nothing until Argos took me on a year later.

I lasted just 7 days in that job when my back gave way aged 54. Christmas came and went and I attended a wedding at the end of February. One woman worked for the same company as me and told me to look at transfer value’s as a lot of people were taking these up they were so good at the time (2017).

I could gain access to the system which produced the figure on a daily basis. I found to my joy my value was just over £800k, and my wife who worked at the same company for 8 years was £150k. If I had took my DB pension from the company when I reached 55 it would have been £15,000 a year taking it 5 years early. My wife’s was £2,000 p.a.

So at the time thought it was a no brainer to transfer out.
I did intend to work until 60 (which I have just passed that age) with that company, but like many plans have been scuppered outside their control.

We have really enjoyed ourselves these past five years, but the 20% drop in our pension funds has been a real wake up call in 2022.
So much so with still 6 years to my state pension and 11 for hers, I am now looking for work because I want to try and protect our fund.

So this is where I am. With a pension that’s volatile and have no control over, and concerns it’s dwindling away too fast.

That word hindsight, what I would have done differently was still to seek work past 55 as it was too early to retire and given the volatile pension I have to rely on. I needed a steady income with only light withdrawals perhaps from the pension fund.