Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

Cheery_Daff

Tescodealqueen said:

I can’t believe it’s nearly 24 days since you said It’s your last day at work before your holiday😱😱😱😱😱

I know!! 😱😱😱 Where does the time go?! To be fair, on this occasion I do feel like I've been off for a good while 😂😂 but I'd quite happily have another couple of weeks off! 😂

Cheery_Daff

Queen_of_the_Hive said:

Cheery_Daff said:

So. I often get a bit frustrated at pottering round the charity shops every weekend, going to cafes etc - things i love dearly, but sometimes I get a bit grumpy because I'd like to stay home more and Get Stuff Done. 

However, I had a bit of a revelation today. 

As you know, we have a bit of an age difference (18 years) which means that if I wait to retire til I'm 68, Mr C will be 86 😱 As such, we won't be getting the 'conventional' retirement together. (I do realise that's never guaranteed anyway, and any number of ailments and accidents may carry one or the other of us off at any point, but the balance of probabilities is definitely against us here).

So I only work 4 days a week, and plan to drop to 3 days at some point. I **KNOW** all this, and yet it hadn't really occurred to me to think of that extra time off as being technically our 'retirement' together. 

I can't really tell you what difference it's making, other than a bit of a shift in thinking today, away from wanting to cram all the jobs in, to just appreciating each other's company in a more gentle way. I don't know - at this point I've had nearly 3 weeks off work and I'm quite mellow and things might change when I go back 🙄😂

Anyway, it got us to thinking about plans. Mr C is eligible for the state pension in just over 3.5 years, and the current mortgage fix ends a couple of months after that, so that seems like a good time frame for planning. 

By that point, we'd like to have finished all the big house jobs. Not saying we'd look to move then, but if we did want to consider moving at that point, we don't want another 2 years of DIY before we go, like we had last time 😱 

At that point, I will also definitely drop down to 3 days a week. The plan really is to get promoted (or find a new job, I suppose), which will allow me to to 3 days earlier than that, but we can't do it until there's that extra influx of income. If I do get a substantial enough wage increase, I might do another year at 4 days to build a bit more of a cushion, as things do feel a little precarious in terms of savings at the minute, but as we do have that guaranteed increase in 3.5 years anyway, I'm not sure. Let's see if and when that happens. 

I'd like to plan to retire altogether with 10 years - I'll be 55 at that point, and Mr C will be 73. I won't be able to claim my works pension until 58 (I don't think) so it'll need a bit of planning. 

If & when we do move, it's VERY likely we'll go back to the city where we lived before, and we'll buy somewhere where we don't need a mortgage. We'd paid off the mortgage on the old house before we moved, so that's doable - we certainly don't need somewhere as rambling and ridiculous as this 😂 I want to be able to walk to places, and be within easy reach of a bus. We could ditch the second car (we only had one until we moved out here). Our expenses would be MUCH less in a smaller house, and we wouldn't be spending £300 a month on diesel for a start 😱 

So. Nothing really radical, but it's the first time I've really thought of this time, now, as being an early extension of my 'retirement', and the first time we've both together really thought of a proper plan for Mr C's official 'state retirement' (I've previously thought of chucking his state pension at the mortgage, but this feels more of a concrete decision point).

Anyway, not sure where I'm going here, except a bit of light rambling and possibly a new diary with some kind of plan for actually retiring myself at 55. Whether I'd actually want to do that remains a mystery - I think yes, Mr C thinks I'd choose to stay on 😂 - but it would be good to work out the actual numbers, and an estimate of how much we'd actually need to live on if we moved and I left work altogether... 🤔

Hey Cheery, 

Myself and OH are similar to you but our age gap is 22 years, OH is already retired (March this year due to ill health & had reached state pension age) and my job is normally part time 3 days a week. I totally got what you was saying about thinking about this time as 'part retired'. In my case I live in an area that has quite a retired population and sometimes it really bothers me as im no where near retirement age but can feel like i've retired. Due to our circumstances we don't have the buffer you described and a home with no mortgage and not a lot of upkeep makes a lot of sense. 

In our case our mortgage was 10 years due to OH age at the time but this will be a benefit to me as we will be mortgage free now in 8 years time, way before my official retirement age. I don't see me stopping work, I do like working of some sort so see 3 days a week is realistic. Maybe at a different company, not too sure yet. New diary sounds interesting! 

Thank you for sharing 😊 Always interesting to see how other people are doing. Our mortgage, if we don't pay it off early, runs til Mr C is 80 😱 Which was allowed because his pension income was always going to be more than he earned at the point we took the mortgage out (he left his actual job at 47, and has been mildly self employed since, with a pretty low income). Claimed his works pension at 58 - the lump sum paid for a lot of our building work. 

I hear what you're saying about being surrounded by retired people! Although we tend in the opposite direction - our friends are really mixed ages, with a lot of Mr C's friends more in the middle of us two. In some ways I act older than him in my habits 😂 But there's a definite difference in pace now we are 45 & 63, compared to earlier in our relationship when he was 45 and I was 27.

Well, I have done nothing in the 2 hours since I came in, except watch Beechgrove and think warming thoughts 😂 I've just about defrosted, and it's reached that point where I need to either cave and have a nap, or get off my backside and potter around for a bit. I think pottering might win, and perhaps an early evening bath 😁

EssexHebridean

Really glad to hear you escaped the worst of the snow Cheery - I was hoping you had! 

Cheery_Daff

Thanks @EssexHebridean Yes, although it's still been blinking cold! We did get out this morning - our drive had little drifts across it. I was cursing myself for not clearing it yesterday while I was out in the garden, but I didn't go that far up and didn't realise Still, the car made it out. The snow plough had been down the lanes so they were cleared, but not gritted and so still slushy this morning. 

I went for a lovely walk round the block (well, 3 miles round the lanes) this afternoon in the sunshine. Utterly glorious, I'll try to post a picture later. The slush had thawed and was re-freezing though, so it was quite a workout. Some had frozen into pointy stone-like shapes where it had been churned by tractors - it was actually quite sore on the old feet despite heavy duty wellies and 3 pairs of socks By the time I got back to our closest lane, my footprints from the way out had weirdly frozen again - you could actually see the footprint with below with the recently-frozen ice on the top. 

I was meant to be going out to a local wildlife lecture tonight, but having seen all that ice this afternoon I'm going to stay put. It's a shame, I did really want to go, but it really is very icy here now and not worth the risk. Hey ho. 

Not much financial to report. Went to slimming world (stayed the same - really must focus!) We had our final cafe breakfast of my holidays (in fact I think it's the only time we've had *breakfast* in a cafe since well before Christmas), popped into the library, and then I walked 3 miles while Mr C made a goulash in the hay box. Very tasty. I've been quite wiped since I got back and have just sat around watching Beechgrove (my current obsession). 

Got some rice to fry up for tea and I think it's just going to be a lazy, cosy evening, maybe with a film

Cheery_Daff

Ooh, looks like the talk I was going to has been cancelled anyway because of the weather, so hopefully I'll be able to go make the rescheduled time

Right - fried rice, or else I'm going to be glued to the sofa for several hours...