Over 50 and not working by choice. Would a ‘mid-life MOT’ tempt you back?

[PuzzledObserver]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64083802

The phrase “not on your nelly” comes to mind.

There are reasons - good ones - why I retired early. They still apply, I’m not bored, I don’t feel my life lacks meaning, and finances are OK. So I’m finding difficult to think of a reason to rejoin the workforce.

How about you?

If they could fill the vacancies with low paid foreign workers they would. Hospitality, NHS, teaching all have had poor conditions for years and over and over the posts are the same about being forced out having had enough. As @SerendipityJane said you will be targeted for not working and helping the country. Look at King Charles. A man of his age about to take on a new challenging role. A fine example to us all.

Also retirees "volunteering" is another way to reduce spending on public services. Why pay someone if you can get a volunteer for free ?

As with womens rights in reverse, the era of the disenfranchised women finding volunteering a worthy cause will only accelerate.

You don't pay NI once you are past retirement age on employment or self employment income either. Your payroll department will be instructed to use a special NI table number for you which results in no employee NI deductions.

I thought the NI had been changed?
Although since I started working full time at 16 I will have paid more years of NI than younger generations will.

You do not pay NI on any income that is not salary or self-employment. So anyone receiving a pension does not pay it on their pension income, neither does anyone receiving income from any other source such as rents.

Amongst my ageing , all female Book Group members, I am the only one to have worked full time until I retired. The great majority of my female friends only returned to work part time and then drifted into retirement in their fifties. In every case their husbands worked on for much longer.
I taught full time until I retired. It was and is hard work. My daughter is a Headteacher and finds it so hard to attract staff. She would be delighted to have older employees but few want to do it.
There are job vacancies in all the people facing jobs. Who wants to be a teacher or a nurse or a care worker or a nursery nurse when there is no flexibility in the job? So many posters on here boast about working from home in flexible jobs.
No one in the future is going to suddenly decide to work in traditional jobs when you can have a cosy job at home with lots of flexibility. The government is calling to retired workers in the hope of filling these vacancies.
So many people moan about the lack of staff in the NHS, in education etc but none of them want to do difficult customer facing jobs. It will be interesting to see how the governments all round the world ( and it is a world wide problem) persuade people and particularly women young and old to stay in the work force

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow
You ask why on earth you would want to work. People work because it helps society function. In the past the generous work place pensions resulted in a many people opting out of work early. It simply didn't benefit them to work. Undoubtedly in the not too distant future the government must make early retirement much harder and less financially attractive. There is already hostility towards the baby boomers who have had life so easy . A feeling that many older people are not pulling their weight.
Feeling valued, respected and in touch is important to me. I still work part time in my seventies ( and do a lot of child care.) I don't want to be treated as a drain on society and I want to active as long as possible

I don't have DC and work full time. I don't care if people think I am a 'drain on society' when I retire early as I haven't had any career breaks nor worked part time. In fact one of the reasons for continuing to work full time is that I want to work shorter than I would have to if I had dropped to part time hours many years ago when the mortgage was paid off.

People work to help society function?
Let me think about that

1: many people help society function in other ways - caring for family , volunteering that they would not have the energy to do otherwise

2: society is going down the shithole as a direct result of decades of Tory and pseudo Tory government. It's not society I support by working - it's a system that favours the rich and destroys our planet with society getting the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table

I have worked for decades and seen things for normal people get progressively worse - when I started out yiu could get nhs dentists and free degrees and council homes.

In that time these and many other things have been taken from normal people ( aka society ) whilst the rich get even more wealthy and the wealth gap soars

They want us to help with their idea of society but it's not something I recognise as society and unless they start to change how they manage things then I will remain disengaged

Bully for you.

l pay taxes so I’m not draining society. This government has destroyed all our infrastructures and public services. They are the one destroying society not the early retirees who are paying tax.

l did my service to society as a teacher in spades. But it broke my mental health see?

Yoy can be active without working in an overstressed macho workplace. Again the destruction of our rights at work rest with no 10. Not that Rishi is included as ge doesn’t actually do anything g….

And I’m not a Baby Boomer either.

And then there are those who want to work but who are shafted by the agism in this wonderful society

Again the government and capitalism can take the blame for some of that too

This is a very interesting read. I'm a lone parent which significantly limits what I can save. I did, however, work 80-100 hour weeks all through my 20s before I became a parent so I have worked my way up to a well paid role. I work full time but it's flexible and even pre-Covid mostly from home. I'm now in my late 30s.

I am doing absolutely everything I can to ensure that I retire the day I hit 55.

I'm also disabled so know my health won't hold out indefinitely, especially with me having to do the domestic and earning work of two parents.

Fortunately my work have a robust insurance for permanent disability, so once my mortgage is paid off and I no longer have enormous childcare bills, if I did get do sick I can't work at all anymore I'd receive 50% of my salary until retirement age. Given that the upper 50% of my salary is taxed to death far more than a couple with the same household income - despite me having to do the work of two people on my own - this would leave me significantly better off than I am at the moment!

I have had zero help and do everything and have worked since I was 13 years old. Worked full time alongside doing A level and my degree and my professional qualification. So if my health is pushed past the point where I can continue full time work to a sensible retirement age because despite paying higher rate tax since my early 20s I've had NO help when it's been needed (disability, disabled children) I will feel no guilt whatsoever for using this insurance and stopping work even earlier than 55.

I'm 54 and will be financially able to retire next year, as I have saved hard all my life, always worked (no kids, so no mat leave etc, no husband so no second income). My job is totally futile.

I'd actually quite happily go into teaching for a few years once I don't need to think about my pension any more. But one can't just "go into teaching", can they? I presume I'd have to do some kind of relevant degree and a teaching certificate of some sort. And I'm not interested in doing that, I've done enough studying in my life.

But I most certainly don't work for the benefit of society, I work to feed myself and pay my bills.

They seem to be quite happy to have unqualified teachers now or even people without a degree in the subject they are supposedly teaching!!! But from friends who do teach, I understand the pay is so dismal it's barely worth showing up. So certainly not worth considering for a career change when presumably at this stage you have an established career in which you have experience and can earn far more to top up your funds faster to reach a situation where fill retirement is possible.

I'm quite happy to take a significant pay cut (and I know how much teachers earn, it's a matter of public record, plus I know a few) to do something worthwhile for a few years.

Your post is an odd response to mine. I thought I was clear that my funds no longer need "topping up"?. Retirement is already possible from next year. I have half a million pounds saved between pension and other savings.

I did an OU degree whilst working a few years ago, as I didn't have a degree, with a view to going into teaching higher education, but having looked into it now, I can't. Because I don't have a maths GCSE. And I'd need to do a teaching certificate. I'm not sure where you're hearing that you can be an unqualified teacher, that's not been the case when I've looked into it. But it's always been normal for teachers to teach in topics that are not the same as their degree, doesn't seem so outrageous.

Absolutely not. Been retired for a while now, and, although I'm fit and well, I can't see myself getting back into the workforce any time soon. I'm too busy doing all those things that I never had time for before, finances are OK (not lavish, but we're managing OK), DH isn't in great health so I need to make sure he's looked after. All in all - no plans to go back to work.

To all those planning to retire early, I hope you have factored into you plans the ways in which a desperate and spiteful government could scupper them. There seems to be an awful lot of folks who naively imagine 2032 will be the same as 2022 with ten years added.

Removing the exemption on paying NI for people over a certain age would be trivial. Not just to do, but to explain. After all we will all have seen the stories of how 99% of NHS resources are going to the "retiristas" as they could be known.

Taxing homeworking is pretty easy to do as well - that would have the added advantage of snuffing out this remote working fad. That would also end free prescriptions. We may as well axe bus passes too. Probably time for a(nother) poster of Farage looking over the Channel with a picture of some retirees shopping for patio furniture and a strapline "They're inviting them over"

Most of the above would also be covered by the narrative that it's these nasty retirees that are sucking in the immigrants in small boats.

People forget that UK has already shown to the world it's quite willing and able to sacrifice it's economy for ideology. So it's getting to be a full time job second guessing what "da feelz" will be in a years time. Much harder than working facts and figures based in reality.

When I say it's gearing up for a culture war it isn't an exercise in hyperbole. It's how it's happening. You just need some history or age (and I haev too much of both) to see it unfolding.

Merry Christmas, by the way.

To all those planning to retire early, I hope you have factored into you plans the ways in which a desperate and spiteful government could scupper them. There seems to be an awful lot of folks who naively imagine 2032 will be the same as 2022 with ten years added.

Yes I suspected when it was muted a few years ago that the government would put up the minimum pension age and I am just young enough to be impacted (by one month 😡) so now it's 57 not 55 when I can draw my pension. This is why I have savings outside of a pension to cover that type of change.

But also I have seen far too many people keep working when they want to retire because they are afraid they will run out of money. And all to often seen people die before retirement age so it's important not to be afraid. Ultimately if you own a house you can always release assets if desperate.

I’d love to work ,I’m stuck with 2 dc with disabilities at home full time.
I’ve not worked in 25 years because of this
I feel so useless to society,I’ve a degree I’ve never used ,and I’ve so much to give
but the dc can’t be left home alone together .
we have social services and camhs involved,but that’s support for the dc ,not support to get me in to work ..
to be honest,I’ve no idea what I would do ,if I was free to work ..
it feels like the world moved on while I was caring at home ,like there’s no place for me now ..
so yes I’d love to work ,I’m 50 by the way

Taxing homeworking is pretty easy to do as well - that would have the added advantage of snuffing out this remote working fad

It's not a "fad". Depending on roles, it can work very well. My workplace have allowed people to largely work from home for many years pre-Covid. It's always resulted in higher overall productivity, each time they've allowed more flexibility. Why on Earth would anybody want to tax one of the only sources of increasing prodcutivity in the UK economy. Perhaps you're someone who's cross that other people WFH because they chose a career path where it's not practical/ possible. But suggesting that because some can't others shouldn't when the benefits for both workplaces and employees are well substantiated is silly. The only time it's a problem is when it's not appropriate for the types of roles or management are so useless they don't implement it properly, but the solutions to those things are not to try to tax it/ discourage it. 🙄

As many on this thread have said, more flexibility etc is likely to reduce early retirememt, so curtailing this would be utterly stupid.

To all those planning to retire early, I hope you have factored into you plans the ways in which a desperate and spiteful government could scupper them. There seems to be an awful lot of folks who naively imagine 2032 will be the same as 2022 with ten years added.

This, however, I agree with. No doubt they'll try to move the goalposts and screw over the younger generation yet again.

@VanGoghsDog sorry if I misunderstood. More teachers are definitely needed so if you want to do that then that's great. You can easily do an adult maths GCSE course if you want to.