DH surprising me with possible (very) early retirement

Unless there is a massive dripfeed and the children are not the OP’s husband, then this post is exactly correct.

I dont get this growing trend for married couples with mutual children to maintain “separate finances”. It doesn’t work when your biggest expenses are necessarily child-related. What happens is women end up being essentially financially abused by having to fund their maternity leave out of their own savings. And childcare costs being treated as wholly the mother’s cost to fund out of her salary. Or, as here, the mother sacrificing earnings to raise the children and then having to scrabble around to make up deficits in her pension fund.

It’s like married women have to be as financially independent as single mothers - all the while cooking their husband’s tea and washing his socks (and allowing him to be a father with zero lifestyle impact) . And, as so many pp have pointed out, legally your finances are joint. She would likely be entitled to 50% of his pension if she left him so why is the husband trying to peddle this fallacy whilst theyre married? I do think it verges on financial abuse.

!!!! Why on earth aren’t you asking him to equalise your pension/ lower earnings for your years of childbearing and caring?!! Didn’t he want children? Were they conceived by donor?!!

It depends what the figures are surely?
But talking about zero takeaways sounds like his pension wont be much...or can his lump sum pay off the mortgage?
Will he going from 5k a month to 2k or 2k to 1k? Or 10k to 5k? Investments and other property? Etc .

I didn't think you could draw from a pension until you were 55, soon to be 57. If my DH did this without talking it through with me first, I would be livid. I'm struggling too with the 50/50 share of the bills. Throughout our marriage my DH has earned way more than me and he pays the lion's share of the bills.

Sorry, OP but your husband sounds very selfish! Call his bluff and tell him you're going to retire too and see what his reaction is then!

I suspect that's our WFH IT neighbour. He's an arrogant ass.

Early 50s, IT, refused management? Hmm. I wonder if he’s planning to jump before he’s pushed. DH works in IT and so much of what staff used to do is now 2 minutes work in ChatGPT. Unless you’re keeping up with AI, quantum and a whole lot of other things, you’ll be obsolete in 6 months, never mind years.

Time for a serious chat.

Exactly. Is he married or not????

Of course you can. I’m early retired and still have mortgage…investment returns are higher than mortgage rate so pointless paying it off.

The problem lies in the very first words of your OP “I know it’s his decision”.
It really isn’t.

Complacency, that's our neighbour. He's in IT preventing hacks in gambling sites. His wife had four children, his idea. She and her mother cared for them because he's very important ya know.

Well we suspect he's got lazy, because now granny looks after the kids, mums out working, he's still working from home but finds time for long cycle rides in his lycra.

He's living the dream with two women doing all the grunt work.

and who gets to say what’s a luxury you don’t need? I’d rather have a takeaway on Friday, than one holiday in the summer per year - if you’re cutting back, it has to be something you both don’t value that much.

I am doubting his financial nous at this stage…

Also OP, if he’s planning on maybe travelling a bit more, how does that fit with you still working if you aren’t self employed/freelance ( and even then it’s not always straight forward-clients/deadlines etc)
what’s he thinking- golf weeks? Does he have loads of mates who could go away at the drop of a hat? He doesn’t exactly sound likes back packing round South America on his own kind of guy - !! And all this takes serious money, not the kind of money where he’s factoring in dropping a few takeaways etc - otherwise it’s the middle aged bloke version of stopping Netflix and avo on toast gets you a house in the south east etc- ask to see all the figures and have a sniff around if you suspect separate investments/accounts you were totally unaware of - and whilst we are at it ‘why’ are you paying all the mortgage and half the bills? Leaving him it looks like to overpay on pension and possibly sneak money away - I might want to see his bank statements too if you can - get a feel for what’s going on

What a selfish fxxker you are married to.
I really hope you will take no prisoners here as you deal with him.

If you suspect that he has separate savings, not unheard of, a forensic accountant will be money well spent.

He thinks you are dim financially, let him see you are not.

Calculate what you need to put into your pension to compensate and if he barfs at the idea, seriously look at what splitting will look like.

The amount of people that I have heard that retired a bit early, just pre covid and have returned to jobs because the CoL crisis made being retired no fun at all.

Being retired and living comfortably costs serious money.
So many simply don't get that until they are in it.

Is he 55 yet OP? You can’t take chunks out tax free till then? Has he got a full NI record for 35 years? I would want to see all the figures in great detail. I think a lot of men who haven’t had an odd few years off for childcare or doing part time become desparate for a break without thinking it through properly - and what looks like a lot suddenly isn’t , if he was 58 or so with a very big pension pot and not reliant on me carrying on I might think differently , - I suspect this isn’t the case and a bloke giving up to do nothing to me isn’t that appealing - although I guess some women wouldn’t really care about that if they were not doing much either- I honestly think some men would be better asking for a 3 month unpaid sabbatical , have some holidays with you and then see how they feel about it

And no sign of you and your needs on the spreadsheet, what a prince 🙄

I’m probably being unduly alarmist, but given OP’s mention of her DH’s low opinion of her financial nous, I think she has to ensure she’s comprehensively informed on how his salary has been spent over the years.
He might be banking on a lack of acumen, certainly of scrutiny. (Engage a forensic accountant?)

Has he been salting away a portion of his salary before the rest hits the joint account, for example, and would these ‘private’ savings cushion him in enjoyable early retirement, while he pleads the poor mouth and demands that his 50% contribution to the household be reduced?
Nothing would surprise me where such a chap is concerned.

Just a thought but is there any chance he could be being sacked or made redundant and is sugar coating it?

But actually an excellent plan in what to talk about.
He is clearly wanting to retire expecting that his life will stay the same - him doing little in the house, still enough spare money for HIM to travel (and yet not enough for ‘futilities’ such as a take away together).

He needs a (strong!!) dose of reality check.

Brilliant, and a great blueprint for the conversation / plan.

This is absolutely correct. I was in a similar situation to the op, having being persuaded to stay at home as my ex was a high earner. He offered a pitiful amount of his pension but court awarded me virtually half.

i suspect the op’s DH is winding her up here unless he has significant investments on top of his pension. You cannot access pension funds until age 55.

Unless he is financially very savvy, the best advice on retiring is always take advice from a financial advisor who will draft proper plans detailing likely retirement income and the optimum time to start drawing on your pension. If he doesn’t have this type of planning in place then he’s probably not serious.

Whilst your situation is unfair what are the actual numbers? Has he actually fully calculated and costed current living expenditure and the projections of him retiring early? I doubt that very much. Get your own projections. They are also changing the age at which anyone can access their workplace pensions from 55 to 57 from April 2028 because too many people retired early. He may not even be able to do this when he wants. As much as MN may be deriding him for being selfish and rightly so he is very obviously a bit thick and has not researched it properly.

Amongst myself and DH friendship group 8 of us have taken early retirement in our fifties since 2021. But all of us did the sums, we are couples in long marriages and it was all mutually agreeable.

Excellent idea!