Dh has announced his retirement date and I feel irritated by it

And yet when I said "tell him" you treated is as impossible.....

I completely understand how you feel. My husband worked and I was a SAHM. I decided to go back to work when my youngest was in year 3, then my old profession was not for me so retrained. This was very hectic and I did all of this whilst also being a SAHM and my husband was away for four days per week. Now I have a small business and my husband is talking about retirement, saying now you can take care of me - he is 50! Our youngest is 10 and I feel angry. It’s like I did all the tough years with the children, then retrained listening to moaning from him, and now he wants to put financial responsibility on me too. I took onboard all the family stress so he could have the financial responsibility- we were both in agreement on this. I feel your pain - I have made it clear to my husband that I don’t want him to retire. It felt to me like an insult, like he let me do all the hard years and now was happy to see me slogging away when older. I know it’s not calculated like that in his head but it really did upset me. That’s why I did not go and get a full time job, and working for myself gives me flexibility and also allows me to cope with peri-menopause

this. The problem is not the problem.

He could have stayed on for another 3-5 years, dumped all additional cash in your pension / ISA so you could bring forward your retirement too. That would be tax efficient too.

His being a rubbish husband/father seems irrelevant to him retiring. Be annoyed at that. What’s it got to do with retirement?

My dad did shiftwork all his working life. 3 week rotation. It is hard on families but used to get paid well to make up for it. Think that may have changed nowadays. My mum didn't work but others in our town did as they were midwives who also worked shifts. Was a small town with very little opportunity for women and no childcare but these days families seem to make shiftwork work for them.

I can see it’s difficult if he’s never been expected to share the load. That’s a shame as even if he worked shifts he would still have had non working days.
Can he really be so naive and selfish to think that he can retire from work and just do nothing at home?
Surely somewhere in his brain he realises that he has only got away with not pulling his weight domestically as OP facilitated this because he worked more hours.
I couldn’t respect a man who thought it was acceptable to do literally nothing except what he wanted to do whilst expecting me to work and be default parent and housekeeper. If I couldn’t respect him I couldn’t stay with him.

I meant age, not agent.

this. This is another post where "the problem is not the problem" If this husband has been someone who can't be talked to and there hasn't been a shared partnership for all of the marriage then of course its going to be harder now....not impossible but harder.

I always knew I had a wonderful marriage to a wonderful man....I just didn't realise how low the bar was elsewhere.

She should have been topping up her pension fund weekly with her inheritance at the time or put a lump sum in to compensate but hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

I agree with this. I have worked all the way through, my choice, same as OP chose not to work and live off her inheritance for a few years. Flip side of this is that I am retiring next year at 55, and have a pension that will provide generously.

OP doesn't seem to have even had a conversation with him about his expectations when he finishes work. This entire thread is based on the assumption that the man is a lazy arsehole. My experience is that forces type personalities do not want to sit around, they want to be kept busy and will take on as much of the load as someone is willing to release to them.

Surelybaftervthecage ofv10 DC should be able to organize their school bag anyway.

The issue I think is not necessarily him retiring him now, but the fact you resent you didn’t push for him to be more hands on as a parent during their primary years. You can’t change what’s been and gone, so the retirement issue is separate. I think it will take pressure of you, as the next stage of their childhood can often be even more difficult to navigate. And how lucky your family is to be able to have a parent/husband present to take off potential future pressures. It’s a luxury many can’t afford to do.

Possibly, though I have to wonder whether he'd have understood that OP working earlier than she did would've required him to take on a larger, proportionate share of family stuff too. OP mentions him doing shift work, at times unreliable, and not being able to be the default parent. This would of course have had to change, possibly to the detriment of his pension pot.

Sounds like an old fashioned man enjoying the spoils of a modern marriage (can't tell him what you want but separate finances). Would be interesting to hear his side though. Maybe he was disappointed with you using your inheritance to not do paid work rather than putting a lump sum on the mortgage etc.

If your youngest just starting secondary, how old are your other kids?

Has your DH factored uni expenses into his retirement calculations?

If he’s retired then he is responsible . Lifts, dropping off forgotten items, meetings, school events, keeping track of things etc.

You drill it into the kids too. I’m at work can’t see/answer my phone. Ring dad. Make him primary contact for the school.

Of course they can be. Was the norm in past generations. Why would you think otherwise.

It absolutely isn’t. Make sure all family members know who’s responsible for what. Even if your DH is a little incompetent, you have to turn yourself into a broken record and don’t be tempted into stepping in when things aren’t running at your level of competence. They’ll soon learn. Either that, or you sit down with DH and divvy up everything - what jobs that you currently do can be offloaded? For teens, the mental load gets a lot heavier!

To be fair he's probably more excited about leaving work, not having a boss and if still shiftworking being able to live his life without a roster. Most men who retire still consider themselves husbands and fathers. OP just needs to let him know what jobs she would like him to take on as he's not a mindreader.

Well we can't help you then because you clearly intend to martyr yourself.

My dad was a military man (navy) as a first career and retired when I was about 12 (I’m the youngest). He went from doing almost nothing at home to almost everything while my mum continued her part time job. Afaik there was no laying down the law from her and no “obvious course of action” for him to do nothing - he just was at home more so did more at home things. We know he did because he used to tell us and we would take the piss that mum had done it for years without fanfare. I have 2 retired police officer dad friends, one of whom nearly went crackers at home and now works at Tesco part time and the other who is fully retired and they are both the “default” parent to their teens. I see them all the time at school things and dropping kids at social and sports events. It’s ridiculously unfair to say military and police dads are shit dads who avoid their kids. “Just tell him” doesn’t mean bark orders, it means having a conversation with the man you are married to about how you feel, how you think it’s unfair that your role as “default parent” has impacted you so negatively, how you need him to step up, how you want his retirement to benefit both of you the way your sahp time did. If you can’t have these conversations then you have bigger problems.

Yes. It really isn't the obvious course of action for anyone looking at the situation from the outside. It's the obvious route to you having a breakdown and divorcing him!

Well... don't?

It's not the obvious course of action at all if you're working and he isn't.

Should have been doing his fair share anyway.