To retire at 42?

[milkandcrisps]

Obviously not actually retire. Here is my situation. I have no family at all and no partner and few friends.

I am considering having a child. Because of my age I would have to do this with fertility treatment.

I have thought and thought about how I might be able to work with a child and I’m not sure it’s possible. Nursery costs are too high. Plus sometimes I have to do anti social hours.

So - I am considering retiring aged 42. If I took even five years out it’s unlikely I’d get back into my line of work. I don’t think I care as I hate it but am I mad??

So ignore the name calling and focus on the useful financial information.

I have not RTFT OP just your posts.

You absolutely should choose a life that you want and go for it!

You have probably been planning/saving to make this life changing move for a long time and I think it will work out well for you.
You are a mature individual and you know what you so go for it and have a happy life doing it.

Good Luck OP and best wishes for a happy future

I still don't understand what the problem is with living on £450 while baby is small, and then finding part time work during school hours once the child is at school. So not retiring now for good, only for as long as there actually would be childcare costs?

I don’t think it takes intricate knowledge of employment statistics to know that part time school hour jobs are not easy to find and also tend to be poorly paid.

I have found this thread a very uncomfortable read.

Approaching your fourth decade single and childless (when this is not what you would personally have wished for) can be distressing in the extreme.

The OP is not being particularly selfish as far as I can see.

My understanding is that at present her job is well paid but this is offset with anti social hours in an expensive part of the country, where she is renting a property. She recognises - probably correctly - that she would not be able to afford rent, childcare and bills. If she went back to work and had to pay for those she would find herself on less than 450 a month. I know because I earn a similar amount and after pension contributions and tax and NI I get 2400 in my bank account. Rent in an expensive part of the country can easily be £1000 a month. Easily. Childcare the same. Leaving £400 for council tax, nappies, clothes, food, petrol/train/bus fares, broadband. This is approximate of course. The rent could easily be more or less. The point is still that very little would be left over.

The op recognises this is not tenable so has considered her options and will be moving into a property she owns outright and live off a small amount of CB plus the income from a second property. This totals around £500 a month which has to pay for council tax, electricity, phone and food nappies and clothes HOWEVER the two huge costs - rent and childcare - are reduced to nil.

That seems pragmatic enough to me. It is very tight indeed but OP says she can do some freelance work which would up her income level but that she is not relying on it - again, I see that as sensible. I am similar and work on a minimum amount and then anything extra is a bonus.

I think that having a baby is hard, I have done it. I also think it is selfish. I have done it, I may yet do it again, that is for me, the planet doesn’t need my children. I do not think it is as hard as posters claim. I do think and I will risk a flaming this is where your life thus far and expectations come into it. I have friends who have led really rather pampered lives - school and university and a backdrop of a loving home and supportive mum and dad and nice job and nice boyfriend who became a nice husband and nice mortgage and then WHAM a baby and the baby cries and they can’t go out as easily with the nice friend and the nice job is that bit harder.

For me I didn’t have the loving home and I didn’t have the nice boyfriend and I didn’t have the nice job for a long time. To be honest I found having a puppy loads harder than babies. Mainly because you can take kids to places that won’t allow dogs. But that is by the by, that is my personal view and I have no wish to dismiss anybody else’s. However I do feel as the OP did that there is a hint of smugness in some of the posts.

In short I don’t think op is doing anything drastically different to anybody sensible before they have a child - looking at her life and seeing where and how a child would fit into it.

I agree that it's an uncomfortable read.

It is a tiny monthly income but plenty of people live on similar after rent/mortgage costs.

It's a precarious existence because the rental income could disappear if the property lies empty for a few months, but again no more precarious than any of us who could lose our jobs tomorrow.

I don't think it's fair to make op feel guilty about what would happen if she became ill or died, what choice does she have, with no family at all.

The only thing that I don't get is why op doesn't think it will be feasible to return to paid employment once her child is at school, even if it's not in her old sector. School hours jobs are hard to find - although she does talk about childminding or fostering - but a job that pays enough for wraparound care may not be hard to find. I suspect she'll change her mind once she's got long lonely days to fill, and a child who'd like swimming lessons or a birthday party or to go on holiday.

Not everyone's life works out how they want it to. OP is at least thinking through the options instead of rushing headlong into something irreversible.

I'd just do it! Noone knows whats round the corner you can have a good job, nice house then lose everything.

If you really want a baby then do it, things have a way of working out in the end and you own two houses already so you're already one step ahead of plenty of people.

Op life is too short for regrets. I really believe that things happen for a reason and if it's meant to be it will be. Do it! Set the ball rolling tomorrow.
Don't look back in five years and think 'what if'

People can say 'what of this' and 'what if that' but none of us knows whats in store for us. Sometimes we overthink things too much.

I really hope you do this op. wishing you all the best!

Well, good luck to you, OP.
I must say that I have read this thread with increasing bemusement. You really should be aware that your apparent inability to engage with reasonable people asking sensible questions and offering practical advice, as on here, will probably be a hindrance when you are bringing up a child on your own.

How likely is it that a person will fall ill and be hospitalised. not very.
i was never hospitalised until my youngest was 13,
and she stayed with a friend.
you will make friends, you will get a support network, you go to ante natal class, post natal classes, toddler groups.
people move and make friends.
if you want to have a baby op, do it.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jun/23/going-it-alone-why-chose-single-motherhood

plenty of articles to be found regarding this op.

I’m still a bit confused by the money. My understanding is that the op currently rents out a house that can’t be sold for £450 pcm (is this indefinitely?) and also rents where she is currently working. Presumbably if she stopped worked she’d live in the property? But then what would happen to the income? This is where I’m a bit confused?

The whole situation does seem financially precarious.

@milkandcrisps I cannot believe the hard time you got on this thread. So many people are only locked in the being a wage slave because they are also locked in to a mortgage and you have the freedom to think outside the box a bit here.

I also think that you're being LESS naive than an awful lot of women (myself included) who earned a reasonable salary before having a child and thought they could 'get back in' after five years. It couldn't be done in my situation either, but because I hadn't envisage that I wasn't perceived to be naive because...... I hadn't been as aware of the harsh reality!?

Also, let's be very honest, working costs money as well as bringing it in. Smart clothes for work, coffees, tights, collections, drinks after work, sandwiches, ready meals cos you're time starved.

It is a privilege to own a home outright and that offers freedom to think outside of the box. If the OP had a child there is, as she says, no reason to be a prophet of gloom and expect that she NEver BRING in any income again, she probably will but she's realistic enough to know it won't be as much as she's earning now.

I ended up being a single parent (again, nobody judged me BeFORE, they judged me afterwards I guess) so maybe OP you're just getting judgement first rather than later! Get it out of the way so.

Go for it NOW. Don't wait until it's too late. You don't need approval. I'm amazed a counsellor can't see that worrying about the future is pointless. You have a reasonable plan and you need to act NOW.

Thousands of broke single mothers somehow make it work and you have an advantage over most of them with 20 years worth of contributions to a pension and the freedom of owning your own home.

"You really should be aware that your apparent inability to engage with reasonable people asking sensible questions and offering practical advice, as on here, will probably be a hindrance when you are bringing up a child on your own."

I think OP's been civil actually, in the face of some pretty harsh observations.

Did you see the pp asking her if she just wanted a child so that she'd have a friend, or the one asking if she just wanted to raise her future career?

Not hard to imagine that her drive for a child is every bit as powerful as a married middle-class woman living in financial security, with all of the same motives and hopes for the future. Many women in her position would have to shelve those hopes but due to owning property op may just about be able to make it happen and who can honestly blame her for wanting to try.

• carer

I see we have another poster who's chosen to single me out for criticism when there have been more personally unpleasant posts as detailed in the post below hers.

Who's that directed at sooty?

I quoted borntobequiet

Everyone saying that you will be a wonderful mother because you will love the child. Nah. How do they know? They are just assuming that as they are good, loving (single) mothers (maybe) scraping by that you must be too.

But, that seems a bit of an assumption brought on by transference. There is nothing come through here to me about you being a loving great mother. On the contrary I find this a very depressing thread, as you sound monumentally selfish. All I am getting is that you want to grow your own friend to live with as (to paraphrase your words) your life is shit.

There is so much about what I have interpreted from your posts that seem so, so wrong. But to put it briefly in order not to be typing all morning, you seem to be proposing putting all your eggs in one basket. Gambling everything on the expectation that this child is going to be the answer to all your woes. That poor child, that is too much to put on the shoulders of one person.

Gloomy you have indicated posts which were much more unpleasant than anything I posted - thank you. The OP chose to have a go at me rather than reference those which I agree with you are horrible.
It's ImNot who chose to single me out on the basis of my work, as the OP has.

It’s horrible to be personally singled out sooty

I will be totally honest though and admit that I am disappointed with your posts. I would also expect a counsellor to be a bit more - insightful, sensitive, something? I don’t know. Yes perhaps that is unfair but no more so than posters claiming to be (say) linguistic experts then making glaring grammatical errors everywhere - people notice and challenge that anomaly.

As an aside with regards to name changing no one should ever have to apologise for protecting their privacy and that of their families.

love I want another child. Does that mean I am relying on them for my sole happiness or am I just like millions of other women who also want a child?

Gloomymonday, I think maybe what baffles a lot of people on this thread, including me, is that the OP has financial security, assets, a job and skills, but seems to prefer the idea of living the most frugal existence, and subjecting a child to that, when she just doesn't need to.

Her remark about how dreadful would it be if her child had to go into care for a few nights and her insistence that she doesnt need support were the things that concerned me.

Its not just 'serious' illness that require hospitalisation that need consideration. I have not needed hospitalisation in years as a single parent, I have had two bouts of bronchitis, where for two weeks I really wasnt capable of looking after a child, fortunately mine was old enough to fend for himself.
I've been where the OP is, I'm a single mum by choice, I have fewer assests than she does, and earnt less than she does. There is no reason why she can't pursue the dream of having a child, but neither does she need to eke out an existence either.

continually you have expressed that reasonably but I am human and I react in a human way sometimes. The OP had already said she was doing this for her and if it was selfish she didn't care, so in view of this I didn't feel I was unreasonable to feel that the happiness of the potential child wasn't paramount. And I do think the financial planning sounds unsafe and I think it's daft to say counsellors shouldn't think of future planning.
I would never, ever make the comments about friendship and future care giving which are truly horrible. Yet I've been singled out and those posters haven't.
Re namechanging the OP obviously has as is her right but it means that I am responding here to someone who obviously knows who I am but I don't recognise her, if you get my drift? That's disconcerting.

I know several really successful women who chose to go it alone.
However I don’t think you are at all reasonable in assuming you can retire at 42. You need to think of the quality of life of the child and not yourself. If you are capable of working then surely you should be setting a good example to your kid.

ted because she can’t pay rent childcare and other expenses thus staying in her current role is not an option.

I am confused as to why people are confused.

I have two children and have never had to stay in hospital. It is not a given. Temporary foster care is indeed frightening for children but what is frightening is being parted from their main caregiver. It is not that foster care in itself is horrific; it isnt, far from it. Most foster carers are really rather nice

I get that sooty but the selfish but don’t care didn’t read in the same way to me as it did to you. It read to me as recognising things weren’t ideal but that want, need for a child overrides that. I can understand that.

OP before you give up your job, why not spend 6 months or so living of £450 per month (after rent and commuting costs). See how it is for you. Like a trial run. Try to put by the money that you would spend on the baby and see how it goes.

The rest of your wages could be added to your savings pot.

Try it, see if you can do it. That's the only way you will really know for sure.

I'm an adopter, and have many friends who are foster carers so fully aware that most FCs are really rather nice, my point is not about the niceness of the FC but as you say, being separated from the parent, which is traumatising. My son can tell you about the impact of being placed in emergency foster care. Its really not nice, regardless of how wonderful the FC is.

Nor did I suggest a hospital stay is a given.

My point is that her assets and current salary level give her a range of options, some of which are to use those assets more effectively and to change her job to something more child friendly.

Couldn't you get a different job? And get help with nursery / childminder from tax credits?