AIBU to retire significantly before my husband

We are in a similar financial set up as Op. I ‘retired’ early, ended up continuing to work PT for a further 6 years. Fully retire in 2 weeks. DH fully retired a year ago after being made redundant, having done serious health scares and just not loving life. Honestly, iIt was the best thing that we did.
It’s not about who earns what, it’s about quality of life. It’s only since he stopped working that he’s really had a weight lifted off his shoulders. Looking back, he was so anxious, unhappy and generally hating his life. Now it’s like he’s 10 years younger.

As a breadwinner I think you plan more holistically for you both. It sounds your plan comes from a sense of pressure rather than a desire to punish your partner for not earning as much as you. The best plan would consider you both more centrally but it almost certainly hasn’t been made yet. On a good wage with good savings I would be looking to go earlier for both of you. Have a big overhaul - house, finance, lifestyle and listen to puts of pension podcasts then plan together.

How is he selfish paying working longer hours than she does, outside the home while she works from home and paying for family outings 50/50?

He's not asking her not to retire, he's disappointed that she doesn't want him to retire at the same time but to continue working. It sounds as though they could afford to both retire but she wants him to keep paying 50/50 from earnings rather than use his private pension and ETAs.

Will you have protected retirement age of 55?

Put more into your pension now - you’ll get the tax relief and will give yourself the best chance of retiring at 57 (or it might change to 58). If you are feeling burnout now in your job you’ll really appreciate having the choice when you get to that age

Or even make sure you’re putting into Isas in your name each year to give yourself the chance to retire even earlier than 57/58

If he is earning much less then it might be that you can both retire early and not miss his salary so much?

it would annoy me slightly that he doesn’t take on more stress to get more money but if you have an otherwise good relationship and don’t feel resentful of it then enjoy early retirement together!

YANBU No doubt you would have been able to retire even earlier if you hadn’t had to prop him up financially. He is being very selfish.

So you earn 3 times more than him, you’ve had children with him (dealing with pregnancy, birth and maternity leave), and you are in a very stressful job that is probably having a long term impact on your health. While he is happy in his low paying, low stress job?

He has just told you exactly what he thinks of you OP. He doesn’t care about your health and is happy to ride on your coattails.

I don't think consultancy is necessarily easier. I say this as someone currently sitting at my consultancy job. You have to be super flexible and adaptable and able to hit the ground running and pick things up really quickly. It's very stressful. You have to learn new systems and where things are stored and quirks of the business frequently. Generally companies get you in because they are under pressure and struggling for resource so they don't necessarily have time to bring you up to speed as thoroughly as you would like. I think its far more stressful than a regular job where you know how everything works.

It's fine for you to retire whenever you want to retire.
It's not fine for you to tell him he has to work an extra five years beyond that.

Can he take his private pension at 55? There must be a lot in pensions and investments from what you described.

It'd be soul destroying to have most of your low wage from a job you'd rather not be doing going into paying 50% of living costs when you have enough in savings and investments to retire at the same time as your spouse, who has retired but essentially told you to keep working because she (or he, makes no difference) earnt more so gets to decide that you can't retire yet.

As a first step, I think I'd work on helping him to better understand the amount of stress your job brings.

He's being unreasonable.

@Iampondering are you sure he's "very happy in his low paid job" rather than just plodding along?

If it's actually low paid surely it will be a drop in the ocean and not make much odds when he retires?

Could you put more into his private pension from the joint pot (no, of course you don't have to, but it's one option).

If he did more of the childcare and kept things running domestically (or moved around the country/ world) to facilitate your career I'd say putting money into his pension pot to recognise that he's sacrificed his earnings and pension for you to maximise yours would be morally the right thing to do, and not doing so if you can afford to would be pretty shitty. However if everything domestic has really always been 50/50 and he genuinely hasn't enabled you to work as much as you do by being very flexible and carrying extra domestic and child duties then this doesn't apply.

It's up to you what you do with your time.and energy. I wouldn't be feeling pressured to keep going if you're burnt out snd feel like you've out earned your partner during your career. Sadly, that's where the issue is. You have earned significantly more this more in a pension etc. If you can do it. Do it. Personally I'm older than my partner by six years. I work in property development. He's a teacher. I have passive income to replace a salary from property. And do one project a year which pays me five time his gross salary. Massive disparity. He likes his job. I don't pressure him to retire. But also don't see why I would continue to work for both of us while he did nothing. Do things on your own terms and if more income is required due to you reducing hours or income then it's a shared challenge. Not yours alone.

As long as you’re not on any ‘final salary’ type pension then I think if you’re stressed now then you should do something a lot sooner than 10/15 years away!

You plan by getting a good pension in place and building up as much savings. You can’t plan for health. There’s no sense in having an argument 15 years before when you have no idea how you’ll feel physically or mentally at the time.

My husband (high earner, 3.5 yrs older) retired at 54, I plan to retire at 60 (part-time teacher). I had/have absolutely no problem with it at all - in fact encouraged it. His hard work and stepping up into higher paid/more stressful roles over decades has given us a comfortable life and meant I could justify long-term part time and not bother taking on more responsibility. I was worried he wouldn’t make it to retirement if he continued much longer…high pressure jobs can take their toll.

I totally understand this!

I've had a similar experience - after a few years in the corporate world (not eligible for the employer pension scheme) I retrained into a vocational career with good potential pension, but moved moved abroad for dh's job when the children were small (and had another child abroad). Initially very difficult for me to work with multiple small children and not speaking the language but always worked a bit, mixing tutoring, and part time, low skilled jobs that fitted around the children.
Made a real effort with the language and retrained again (but sponsored by employer so some money coming in whilst retraining, which took years as vocational degree equivalent).
Finally earning an okay (just above average salary again and had to return to the UK for various reasons - hard to find a job at 50 and at nowhere near the level it would have been if hadn't done so many different shuffles.

Meanwhile DH earns steadily in increasingly high paid roles and his pension is 5x mine.

It's not as if I've had it easy, it's had it's highlights and the kids are fantastic, best things in my life, but he has the kids too! It's generally been a struggle again and again and I've always found a way through.

I do a just above average salary job still and being low paid compared to my husband doesn't mean I've taken some "lazy girl" (tiktok thing adult child was outraged by the other day) route!

Being less well paid in a vocation that is rewarding in non financial ways doesn't magically mean you actually love your job and aren't exhausted and ground down as much as someone earning more. The flippant assumption that the lower earner should be grateful to work til they drop is depressing.

Your 40s is definitely not too early to have these conversations! People saying so are wild! But this isn't a cut-and-dried conversation that strangers on the internet can really comment on. You both have to sit with your pensions advisor and work out what is right for you both - in terms of affordability, fairness and your potential for burnout.

I don't think the retirement is the issue here. The problem is that you're already feeling burnout. It's a long way till retirement. You need to look at reducing stress now or you may not have the choice but to retire early due to health issues. Your dh isn't thinking of you, unless you haven't explained how you're feeling of course.

All money goes into a joint pot, there is no mine vs his.

Is your pension sufficient to replace your salary OP or do you mean you will start living off the shared money before him?

You have to plan well ahead for retirement!

You need to have a conversation with him about the here and now if you're starting to feel burnt out. If his job is significantly easier and less stressful than yours could he not pick up more of the household tasks and childcare? You might need to retire or go part time a lot sooner than you think. (Are you fully insured for loss of income due to health issues?)

If butn out is the problem the OP would do better tackling that now than on planning for retirement.