..to ask this question of any retired mumsnetters

[5foot5]

I hope this is not too personal but I thought it might be easier asking people on an anonymous forum rather than people we actually know.

If you (and/or your DH) have retired, might I ask at what age you were able to do this and what you (and/or your DH) had put away in pension plans at the time you retired in order to be able to afford this?

DH and I are looking thoughtfully at the calendar and would like to be able to retire in a year or so. We each have various savings in pension plans and would obviously seek financial advice on what best to do with them before taking the plunge. However, I would like to get some feeling before we took this step as to whether it is financially feasible yet or whether an advisor would suck in their breath and say "Oo you can't really afford it yet, better make plans to stick it out for another 5 years at least"

Why don't you wait til after March before you make any definite plans? We have no idea what the situation will be at the end of next year, so for now keep saving as much as you can.

Since the answer to this is different for everyone, I'd suggest that you both sit down and work out in great detail exactly what your needs are likely to be in retirement. Make sure you include things like needing to have the heating on more when you are home all day and a provision for ad hoc expenses (like the boiler needing repair) and entertainment/hobbies.

Once you have worked that out I'd suggest you try living on exactly that budget for at least 6 months and put any left over money into savings. At the end of that time have a full review. Ideally you would write down absolutely all expenditure. Then you can assess what your needs are (and repeat the exercise if necessary). You can get assessments of what you are likely to receive from your pensions in the meantime.

Hi OP. I retired aged 50 after 34 years in Civil Service, my pension was 9k pa to start with, now 11k pa.
DH took early retirement from Armed Forces after 16 years service, was on a small pension of about £130 pm till he became 55 when it went up to £560 pm. DH had other full-time work after the Army and built up a seperate pension pot of £28k, which was cashed in when he became 55 and was used to help pay off our mortgage.
He now only works a couple of days a week for beer money basically.

Our monthly income from pensions and wages is just over 2k, outgoings 1300 or so now mortgage is paid off.

We won't get state pension till 67, so a few years to go yet, but we are obviously well set up.

@CitrusFruit9 I have been keeping a spreadsheet of our expenditure for almost a year now so that we can do exactly that! There would be some things we wouldn't be spending as much on when we retired. For example, DH currently pays rail fares and parking to get to work. Also we run two cars now but could probably manage with one.

We wouldn't want to spend our retirement scrimping and saving but obviously we need to be realistic too.

It is unlikely to be within a year but it would be nice to think 2020-ish might be the time. However, I don't want to get all eager for the big R and getting the advisors in and so on if we are really far off being ready.

I am 56 and DH turns 61 very soon.

He has a good few years entitlement in a final salary scheme but it is with a company he left 20 years ago. He has about 18 years worth of entitlement in that. Since then he has been in 2 or 3 other schemes and is currently piling up as much as he can. He will be able to get state pension at 66.

I have a good bit in a private pension fund, currently (£400+K) though in these uncertain times I suppose the value could go down ! However, I know I won't be eligible for state pension until I am 67 so if I retire in the next 2 - 3 years I will have to fund myself for quite a while.