To not really want to work anymore?

[caranconnor]

I am 50 and although I have enjoyed working in the past, I would prefer never to work again. I feel I have done enough. It is not an option, I have to work for another 17 years. But anyone else feel like this?

I'm 29. Will likely be working until I drop dead!

I'm saving into a workplace pension but I'm a single parent and a low earner so it won't be much.

I'm buying my first property next year and due to the size of my deposit and the low house prices in my area I should have it paid off in under 20 years. That's my focus for now, it will be one less worry.

I am just waiting with interest for the promised 4 day week on a 5 day week pay scale.

What could possibly go wrong ? 😳

I am just ticking over till I retire soon and leave the “hard work” to the youngsters, works for me 👍👍

I drive to work, it's about an hour commute each way. I swear to god, every fucking day I see the same buses and the same cars and the same people all doing the same thing. It's totally depressing. I wonder how many of them actually enjoy their lives and how many just do it out of sheer necessity. All that time I spend wasted sat in mindless traffic (when I could be in bed snoozing). I have two different drop-offs en route with the kids too. Cannot wait til they are both in school together.

I hear you OP
I like my job but I sometimes get these moments of lucidity where I think, I have to do this every day for the next 17 years or so and then I'm already pushing 70 with a meagre pension.

I dream of going four days a week. I think a longer weekend would really help balance my life out.

I’m 51 snd have worked for 32 years with a few months maternity leave with my first and six weeks with my second child. I do not intend working until retirement age, the main reason for this is that both my parents died suddenly and young (51 and 68) I would sell my house and move to a flat or mobile home to enable me to do this if I had to. Have a company pension.

Yes im 52 but i do have a great work life balance as i only work 3 days. I am so glad i am not full time😁👍

62 and have 4 years to go. I work part time (min wage) and am.also a freelance artist tutor, carrying out community/school based art projects as well as teaching short courses to adults. I enjoy all.my different types of work but barely make ends meet, partly because I am too knackered to really push the freelance side of things. I have worked hard at so many different jobs over so many years, and lived a very varied and interesting working life, but it has left me tired. You don't realise when you are younger that you will get tired. I wish I had paid more into pension pots when I had the chance to. I never gave enough of a thought to the far off future.

@vivacian did you get any resistance to going four days a week? Were people supportive to that? Was a special exception made for you, or was it just a case of putting in the request and having it accommodated. And finally, do you have a bit more than 80% of your 100% salary! I sit there with a calculator some days and I think that if I went 80% I'd have more than 80% of what my net salary is now.

I'm 54, and I had 20 years at home because XH didn't want me to work. He spectacularly cocked up his private pension and his work pension and then left me. I am lucky enough to be mortgage free, but I only work part time because I am constantly exhausted from thyroid problems (the complete lack of one!) and now menopause. I also have some hypermobility issues and appear to be developing arthritis or rheumatism. I can't get a doctor's appointment to find out which it is. I like my job, but the thought of at least another 13 years is really depressing. things are very tight financially right now and since I work in retail, there's no chance of that changing.

But life is always changing, so who knows what might happen in the next few years?

Now late sixties and still working, own firm and a job I still enjoy!

Must be mad:!

I am 59.5 and have worked a total of 31.5 years. I am thrilled I don't have to retire in July. I love work. Every extra year I work extrapolates to about £2200 pa on my pension.

Am 60, have worked since I was 18, 2 years off for kids, other than that it’s been full on and reckon I’ll work till I drop 😩

I am 55 and head up a large business for a plc. I have just dropped down to 4 days a week and it is amazing how much difference it has made to how I feel. When I did 5 days with 3 hours commuting each day I was absolutely knackered, but I feel so much better now I will probably carry on with it for a couple of years longer.

I'm over retirement age with no intention of retiring. That's the sheer luck of having an interesting job where I feel I'm achieving something.

I absolutely loved my job teaching and HoD at a busy secondary school. My health deteriorated and I was really unwell for a year on and off and I felt embarrassed as I had to have quite a lot of time off. I decided to hand my notice in at 56. Two years down the line my health has improved and I could go back to work but |I have decided I like it at home and I won't be going back. I do a bit of private tutoring one or two hours a week. My friends are still working so I can't meet up with them for lunch or anything. I think I have just got lazy. I bake a bit, potter in the garden in the summer, walk the dogs more, at the moment I am watching Xmas movies. I am just enjoying the time for me. I am lucky my dh has a good job so we can afford for me to stay at home. Dh says if I was working and on my feet all day I might get ill again. I can't get occupational pension for 2 more years and then 7 more before state pension. The best bit is if I am feeling unwell I don't have to try to dose myself up and drag myself to work, I can stay in bed.

Yup. Every day.

As someone else said earlier it does start to feel like you are wishing your life away though.. I was working Full time. Then jobshare for 13 years and now FT again for the last 7. So I got the best of both worlds.
But there is no way I want to be doing a 40 hour week in my sixties and hope I can go jobshare again once the mortgage is paid off.
I spend two hours a day commuting. Coupled with the menopause I'm exhausted.

Has anyone heard of FIRE – Financial Independence Retire Early?

I don't think that anyone who has had kids is entitled to complain.

Well luckily, you don't get to tell people what they're 'entitled' to complain about. People can complain about whatever the hell they like.

I am OBSESSED with FIRE.

I’ve also been frugal all my life. Like a pp who wanted to retire at 15, I told a teacher my ambition was to retire.

Beveren - "I'm over retirement age with no intention of retiring. That's the sheer luck of having an interesting job where I feel I'm achieving something.".

Great - carry on while you still feel this way. I'm 60. I had about 18 months off through 2 spells of mat leave. I was made redundant twice, so add 6 months on the dole.

I've been in my current role for 10 years, under 8 direct line managers. I'm really fed up - I no longer feel valued. I saw a great job advertised in another department. A year ago, I would have gone for it myself. I know the staff there, and decided I just couldn't pretend, hand-on-heart, that I would stay and make a go of it. A less-experienced colleague confided to me that she'd applied, and got it. I'm pleased for her. I feel no disappointment or envy whatsoever. In fact, it's confirmed that I really do want to retire next year. There are lots of changes ahead that everyone else is excited about - I just think 'meh'. Time to go, methinks!

I’m 43 and I’ve been working for 24 years with two periods of maternity leave. I don’t hate my job but I don’t love it either. About two years ago I moved into a role that in theory has more responsibility and is assumed to be more stressful but actually doesn’t have the variety of my previous role so while sometimes I’m under pressure, there are big chunks of the job that bore me senseless.

I shouldn’t complain because I’m actually on a good salary with a decent(ish) pension but sometimes the thought of 20 odd more years... . I veer between fantasizing about the day they cop on to the fact they really don’t need ME in that role and make me redundant with a nice payout and then dreading it because if it happens too soon I’d have to do the whole interview thing/prove myself in a new company/get familiar with new processes etc and I just don’t want to .

Yes, yes and yes.

I'm 42 and leaving my teaching career at Xmas. I am lucky to be in the position that I don't have to work for now if I don't want to. I don't know what I want long term but I'm definitely not teaching anymore and I'm definitely taking time out! I hate working I'm depressed and it's affecting me physically (fatigue and muscle ache, will see doc again after I've finished work to see if it's just stress/depression or something else!)

I'd happily retire tomorrow. I'd never be bored without work; there are so many things I'd rather be doing.

I'm in my 50s so still a good few years to go. I'm trying to get my mortgage paid off so I don't have such high outgoings.

The thing that really gets on my wick at work is the annual 'career development and learning' my boss pushes me to do. I don't want to develop any further thanks. I've been doing this type of job for 30-odd years, I'm tired! Just leave me alone to do my job (which I do very well).

DH and I decided many years ago that working was not for us. So when our business took off we carried on with our average sort of lifestyle and saved as much as we could.

We liquidated our business a couple of years ago and now in our mid fifties we are very happily retired.

Interestingly FIRE is very much a thing now.