Bold leap into retirement

IamWood

huw01 said:

huw01 said:

That's it, laptop closed for the final time. Everything packaged up now to be picked up by a courier tomorrow. That is it. 51 years old and now retired. Lets see how this goes, now to start planning the rest of my life

Well it's been a full 4 months now and I can honestly say that I don't miss that laptop one little bit.
Been to Greece for 2 weeks and went walking in Portugal for 3 weeks
Started doing some family history
I am now swimming more regularly along with midweek long walks when the weather permits

I have even done a few days work as an "extra" on a film set - that was totally random how that was picked up by chance from someone sharing a post on facebook. Really enjoyable experience which I will hope to do again on an ad-hoc basis, I have a couple more dates booked in for December.

That will be paid work and I will need to set myself up for self assessment next year to declare it but I'll still be under the threshold for paying income tax.

I don't know where the time has flown to really and I enjoy having no set structure to my weeks.

The budget was good for me, no raises in fuel duty (although car tax will go up) and no changes to anything major on private pensions (especially the age I can take them - still planning on taking it at 55 in 2028 as I scrape in)

I've not skimped on anything but yet on average I find I am spending around £300 less that I have budgeted for.
Off to Krakow in a couple of week for a city break
And Microsoft Teams...... I have not missed you son

@huw01

Great to hear! IIRC, I’m a year younger than you and have been considering the same. I’ve decided to retire in about four years, once my two boys graduate from university. Unfortunately I was born in January and won’t be able to access my pension until I’m 57 ;(

If you don’t mind, could you share your numbers?

Cheers!

german_keeper

sgx2000 said:

german_keeper said:

I think I've probably mentioned this before but I remember when the first of our group at work retired about 10 years ago she said the first thing she learnt was that there are people who can keep busy doing nothing and people who can't. Two and a half years in I am so far definitely in the former group.

Lol..... Ditto...
Its very easy..
Find yourself getting a bit bored......
Get up and do something
Easy

Typical day for me: wake up when I'm ready to wake up, not when the flipping alarm clock goes off. Have a read for about half an hour, maybe more if my book is getting really good; I guess that's the beauty of being able to do whatever the hell I want.

Weather permitting, a nice walk for a couple of hours with my mate, home in time for dinner ( that's what we call lunch oop north). My MIL lives round the corner and she's not coping very well with FIL passing away last December so my wife is spending quite a lot of time with her. But we usually get out for a walk for an hour or so in the afternoon.

Big thing for us is holidays, we always got away for a week every year when the kids were young but money was tight and we were definitely shopping in the bargain basement!! It was difficult when FIL was ill and for the first year of our retirement we didn't get away but we have had a week in Lanzarote in March, 2 weeks in Turkey in May, 10 days in Rhodes in October and a week in Tenerife to come in January followed by a week in Fuerteventura in March. As Delboy used to say Lovely Jubbly.

So I suppose really it's just pottering around between holidays. We met a couple in Rhodes who were in their late seventies/early eighties and they said they had basically been doing that for 20 years. Sounds ok to me.   

sgx2000

Similar 4 months in
Been to Parga Greece and Nerja Spain
Got 3 more booked......

Potter between holidays...yep

huw01

huw01 said:

I am contemplating in August not renewing my contract and looking to retire and not really work again if I can. 
Currently 51, single, in good health, mortgage free. So many friends have been inflicted with health conditions in the last 5 years that it has changed my outook on life.

225k in cash savings
330k in General Investment Account
82k in S&S ISA

LGPS deferred pension which will pay 12k per annum if taken early at age 55 along with a 20k automatic lump sum
LGPS AVC worth about 10k
Scottish Widows Workplace DC Pension 62k present

My plan is for the first three and a half years is to live off savings, drawing down 1900 per month should be more than enough for me to live and also travel which I want to do.

At age 55 is to start taking the LGPS and alongside the automatic tax free lump sum and AVC as a tax tree lump sum - these would top up the savings. I have asked the LGPS scheme as I will be 55 before April 2028 and the answer seemed to be that as long as I had started to take the LGPS then the rule changes to 57 wouldn't affect me. So for 10 year live of the LGPS and topped up by savings. THE LGPS would take the heavy lifting away from the savings.

Age 65 is to take 25% of the SIPP as a tax free lump sum and then at some point in the future the remaining 75% as either UFPLS, drawdown or annuity. Then age 68 all topped up by the state pension. My state pension forecast is now nearly at the full state pension.

Each year move 20k from the GIA to the S&S ISA, then take chunks out of the ISA as and when I fancy a splurge on something.

That is my thinking at the moment, life seems to short and unpredictable to be sat down wasting my time on someone else's priorities. Health and time is the only commodities that now seem important

@IamWood

Here are the numbers from a previous post

SmokeysTravels

Both my wife and myself have recently taken the jump into retirement. And we are absolutely loving it. If anyone is thinking about it I would say just do it. It’s amazing how much better you sleep and have lower stress levels.

A bit of background into our situation. We are both 55, no mortgage or kids. I have decided to use FAD to access an old DC pot. I wanted to use UFPLS but Reassure don’t allow it, so you have to take £4190 tax free, they then move £12570 into your drawdown account and then I take that £1047.50 per month from that. So from next tax year I will be a nil rate tax payer. This will open up the starter rate for savings so I will be able to earn an additional £5000 of savings income without paying tax, which will help with the part of our savings that aren’t in ISAs.

For my wife we have gone for a different approach that doesn’t get mentioned on here very often - a fixed term annuity. This will give us the guaranteed income we need for five years until age 60. At 60 we both have DB pensions. I have a DC pension as well that has a link to my DB pension - this was put in place as part of the closure of the DB pension- that allows a transfer from the DC to pay the tax free cash from the DB.  And then full state pensions from 67.

One of the reasons for retirement is we have both had health scares recently and there is no point being the richest person in the graveyard!! We have already spent a wonderful month in Lanzarote, I am loving playing golf and we now volunteer at our local theatre / cinema. It’s amazing how busy we have been, it’s amazing we actually managed to fit work in previously!!!

nicknameless

SmokeysTravels said:

Both my wife and myself have recently taken the jump into retirement. And we are absolutely loving it. If anyone is thinking about it I would say just do it. It’s amazing how much better you sleep and have lower stress levels.

A bit of background into our situation. We are both 55, no mortgage or kids. I have decided to use FAD to access an old DC pot. I wanted to use UFPLS but Reassure don’t allow it, so you have to take £4190 tax free, they then move £12570 into your drawdown account and then I take that £1047.50 per month from that. So from next tax year I will be a nil rate tax payer. This will open up the starter rate for savings so I will be able to earn an additional £5000 of savings income without paying tax, which will help with the part of our savings that aren’t in ISAs.

For my wife we have gone for a different approach that doesn’t get mentioned on here very often - a fixed term annuity. This will give us the guaranteed income we need for five years until age 60. At 60 we both have DB pensions. I have a DC pension as well that has a link to my DB pension - this was put in place as part of the closure of the DB pension- that allows a transfer from the DC to pay the tax free cash from the DB.  And then full state pensions from 67.

One of the reasons for retirement is we have both had health scares recently and there is no point being the richest person in the graveyard!! We have already spent a wonderful month in Lanzarote, I am loving playing golf and we now volunteer at our local theatre / cinema. It’s amazing how busy we have been, it’s amazing we actually managed to fit work in previously!!!

Thanks for your post.  Just what I needed to read as I was oscillating once more between applying for redundancy or not!

Smudgeismydog

Such positive posts, thanks to you all for sharing.
If you have run and re-run your figures, and are confident in them, then honestly why wait?

mrs_slapshot

SmokeysTravels said:

For my wife we have gone for a different approach that doesn’t get mentioned on here very often - a fixed term annuity. This will give us the guaranteed income we need for five years until age 60. At 60 we both have DB pensions. I have a DC pension as well that has a link to my DB pension - this was put in place as part of the closure of the DB pension- that allows a transfer from the DC to pay the tax free cash from the DB.  And then full state pensions from 67.

Interesting that you mention a fixed term annuity as I’m seriously considering one at the moment! I’ve got a DC pot of £270k (once I take out the rest of my tax free cash to pay the mortgage off) and am considering using £80k for an 8 year FT annuity to take me to state pension age. The quote is £11.3k a year which would cover my fixed and regular expenses (I will then top up with the odd bit of work or maybe even take my two DB pensions early which is £5k a year). Can’t decide whether to do that or use flexible drawdown from my pot!!

How did you make your decision?

michaels

mrs_slapshot said:

SmokeysTravels said:

For my wife we have gone for a different approach that doesn’t get mentioned on here very often - a fixed term annuity. This will give us the guaranteed income we need for five years until age 60. At 60 we both have DB pensions. I have a DC pension as well that has a link to my DB pension - this was put in place as part of the closure of the DB pension- that allows a transfer from the DC to pay the tax free cash from the DB.  And then full state pensions from 67.

Interesting that you mention a fixed term annuity as I’m seriously considering one at the moment! I’ve got a DC pot of £270k (once I take out the rest of my tax free cash to pay the mortgage off) and am considering using £80k for an 8 year FT annuity to take me to state pension age. The quote is £11.3k a year which would cover my fixed and regular expenses (I will then top up with the odd bit of work or maybe even take my two DB pensions early which is £5k a year). Can’t decide whether to do that or use flexible drawdown from my pot!!

How did you make your decision?

Is that index linked?  If not, a repeat of the cumulative 17% inflation seen in the last 2 years and your money would be well short of your bills....

SmokeysTravels

So we wanted to have a guaranteed income to take us to age 60. My wife was a higher rate tax payer for 23/24 (and in all the years she contributed to this DB). We bought this in early 2014 when the rates were high. We went for 25% tax free and then the remainder paid annually in arrears (so four annuity payments) so that they fall in the following tax years when she will have no other income, taking advantage of the personal allowance and paying basic rate tax on the rest. Whilst we know there is a potential for a better return in drawdown, we were concerned that a huge crash would leave us short and we didn’t want to either go back to work or draw our DBs before age 60. As I mentioned earlier I am drawing income flexibly so we have a split strategy for these five years.