Aibu to take my work pension early? What age/point did you decide that's enough for me?

@LornaDuh ”Were you not living your life prior to packing in work?”

not really no. I mean, if you look at it it’s taking about 50 hours a week then adding a commute maybe. Call that 60 hours.

It is quite literally the majority of your week. Of course there is some stuff you can do but plenty of stuff you can’t.

edit - spent half the day in the garden definitely can’t do that if you’re at work! And the other half studying.

Just retire. Life is too short (ex teacher here!)

A friend thought something similar & worked until she was 65. Had 3 months of retirement, diagnosed with terminal cancer & was dead just after 66

She was very unlucky. If a woman gets to 65, she has (I believe) a life expectancy of 89/92.

I'd hate to have retired in my 50s. Plenty of time to do the stuff I enjoy in the evenings, weekends and holidays.

Why do people keep saying "life is for living" as though they're making a profound philosophical statement?

Were you not living your life prior to packing in work?

Is that before or after tax? Because most people are on over 35k but will have housing costs

Exactly.

£24k without a mortgage or rent (if that is the case) is more disposable income than most working people get.

Only the rich can afford £5k a month. And that is at the lower end of costs.

Hope you've taken your 95 pension if you're still working as that's just list money if you haven't

With a state pension that will eventually be 24k, which sounds great to me, as long as you don’t have a mortgage to pay. That’s my pension forecast, including state and private, from my advisor and I’m happy with it. But I wouldn’t retire at 55. I would definitely more to build it up if you can.

Sorry are you only getting £867 a month? Fine while you can top up with online tutoring but what happens if you’re too ill or old to do that. A nice care home is £5k a month.

Sorry, but it’s insane to retire at 56 unless you live on beans or your DH is a millionaire.

It was a combination of wanting to go and outside events for me. My role was disappearing due to an organisational restructure and it was start a new role or take the voluntary early exit package that had been announced. I was 59 and had been planning to retire at 60 anyway so it was a bit of a no brainer.

My teacher friend retired to £1500 a month after 35 years service.

I think also with retirement it’s good to go when you want to, not when an outside event determines it. So it would have been easy for me to stop when I got VR but I felt too young at 54, then when my one year contract ended, but it didn’t end well for various reasons so I wanted another job to prove to myself it wasn’t me. Now I have done that and reassessing what I want to do.

I think people are just surprised that OP has worked full time as a teacher for 30 years but is receiving less than £900 per month.

Based on averages one would expect it to be about £15k per year (£1,200ish per month) plus a £50k ish lump sum. Which would be equivalent to a DC pot of £400-500k.

I think most people who have worked their whole lives to provide for a comfortable (early) retirement, have plans, places to go, things to do, see & experience and are unlikely to be "fussing around the house".

I’m 48, my mums about to die of cancer and she’s lived the longest in the past three generations of my family at 68.

Cancer or a heart attack has taken them all out. Saving the government a fortune in not having to pay state pension.

I’m on my last legs with mum and corporate burnout. I’ve saved so much, no mortgage, no debt etc. I want to go as soon as humanly possible and I’d love to know how I can find a way to do it.

@Meadowfinch ”And yet I cannot throw off the feeling I'm skiving somehow, that I am letting someone down. It's ridiculous. I have 45 years NI paid, 41 years full time ”

i’m sure this is new. It didn’t happen when our parents generation retired.

Or did it I don’t know, I suppose

There’s always several posts on these thread saying “ you must do something”… I think the whole point is that you get to wake up without an alarm going off and do the stuff you always wanted to do.

I went through a phase where I thought I’d retired, I don’t think I’ve got enough money, so I’m probably going back, but I haven’t worked for ages and I’m not bored and I don’t feel the need to volunteer. Some people seem to think you’re going to wake up and face gaping black hole! I don’t get it or maybe they’re just angry that people who technically can pay tax aren’t paying it I’m not sure

now I feel as if a little bit of work would get me trapped in the other tax trap
I can’t remember what it’s called, but the one where you get an extra allowance for income from interest but it disappears if you’re earning other money.

I always thought I would keep working into my 70s.
I was a secondary school sendco, experienced and qualified but my bosses and I did not agree at all. And I have a neurological condition that is controlled by drugs but makes me very tired and also messes with my language at times. Brain fog dialled to the max!
If I had been younger I would have stayed to fight as I loved my job and didn't want to leave my kids or the lovely parents, and not lovely parents!
But I decided to go at 60. That was in May this year. It took a while to stop thinking I was off sick to be honest.
Im still recovering from the stress of the last few years. I have worked since I was 14 so stopping has been odd.
Everyone is different and folk have different financial situations but for me Im glad I retired. Im happier and much healthier. Its possible working keeps some people younger in spirit and more active but for others it kills them. I think it would have killed me for sure.

It’s incredibly personal - you need to work it out for yourself

some people spend more than when they were working at least in the early days of travel and some much less

I’m 60 and very ill with cancer and I work full time. I don’t want to not work, in general. I think it’s psychologically good for me, and I need the money. I have wondered about going part time but it’s only allowed with stringent conditions at my workplace, which I don’t want. I can’t take early retirement, and ill health retirement is not a thing. I have bought two weeks extra annual leave, so that helps. DH retired a year ago at 63, more due to the fact that his freelance work dried up. I actually don’t think it’s good for him.

I agree. Doing nothing is not a waste of time if that’s how you want to spend your time.
I have my eye on retirement at 60 if all goes to plan - I’ve worked FT since 18 and I think I’ve done enough. Time to shove over and leave my job for
someone younger and a lot more enthusiastic than I am currently about it.
I don’t want to retire and be too old and tired to enjoy it. I deserve some time to myself doing what I want to do - even if that is just to get through my massive to be read list!

I retired at 54, DH retired at 56, he is 2 years younger than me. We both enjoyed our work, DH especially. Also education but higher education and the change since Covid, it just was not the same plus all the redundancies it’s just miserable. We know 3 others that have left and taken their pension in our sector.

We climbed up Carrauntoohil this week, Irelands highest mountain. Took ages as I have a bad back and haven’t done anything like this since an accident 2 years ago. But that sort of life is what I want for as long as possible.

We are the other type of early retired pensioner, like your neighbour no mortgage but travelling extensively and doing the opposite of nothing.

Two of my close friends from school died when we were all 54 and my DD also died. That’s why I retired very early. One of those women was an avid climber when I was scrambling up rocks I could hear her telling me off. She said scrambling was way worse than climbing

I retired at 58 on a workplace voluntary early exit scheme. 7 years in and it’s absolute bliss. Best thing I ever did.

I was fortunate enough to be in a job where I could retire on the full pension I could accrue at 55 and did. I’d really had enough by 50 but didn’t want to lose a substantial sum by going earlier, like OP, originally loved the job,thought nothing of stopping back, working extra etc,but over the years it became more and more of a thankless target driven job where working extra was simply expected and never thanked, really glad to have got out and have never once regretted the decision