To suddenly not want to work anymore?

[MasterGland]

I want to sit at home with my cats and read books. Perhaps bake occasionally, play board games with my son. Weed the garden.
I have realised that I can easily fill my days with these things. They make me happy. I am really struggling with motivation at work. I used to be quite career oriented, but now I keep calculating the minimum I need to retire, and how I might do it as soon as possible.
It is a sudden change for me, and not sure if it is related to the current lockdowns... but have not directly been affected by them really as worked straight through both. Anyone else had a sudden change of heart about the pursuit of endless work?

@NiceLegsShameAboutTheFace

I'm 53. I can afford to retire but the thought of painting, gardeing and counting squirrels fill me with dread.

For all those of you who want to do those things - which it seems is most of you - then I really hope you get there soon. But me? I'd like to work til I die.

Joe, is that you? Congrats

21 months to go.

We could afford for me to go now, but we save what I earn and I only work 15 hours a week on an hourly rate that is 30% ahead of the market locally. Golden bloody handcuffs.

I am 56, Dh is 65 next August, he has a good final salary, but the state would be the icing on the on cake, so we are holding out until 2022, so I don't feel I can jump ship before him. I have a small final salary, small in terms of PA payout, but not a bad CETV sum and would more than cover me jumping ship early.

However, work is ingrained in me and whilst I love pottering from Friday through to Monday, I am equally glad of somewhere to go on Tuesday morning.

DH is working from home since March and generally very busy, he wandered out of the front room this afternoon and watched me make bread. >

When he is safely ensconced in the front room and I can pretend it is just me pootling (steadfastly ignoring the teen upstairs ) then I think yes I could jump ship now.

However, when he wanders out of his lair and tries to tell an Irish woman how to make brown soda bread, that is a line you cross at your peril.

@cheetasonfajitas my husband has never really enjoyed his work and would equally like to retire early. He was a SAHD for a few years when our son was young (I had a fairly well paid career before teaching). So no man willing to keep this woman I'm afraid. He'd tell me to jog on! I think we will have to go part time and then early retire together

Joe, is that you? Congrats

@Chestnutpony

Money moustache has some interesting ideas on early retirement. I'm not willing to go as far as he does, but I've adapted some of his ideas.

I like his blog but I find it hard to see how it could work for me. I’m in a negative mind place though. Maybe need to look at it when in a better place.

[quote MasterGland]@cheetasonfajitas my husband has never really enjoyed his work and would equally like to retire early. He was a SAHD for a few years when our son was young (I had a fairly well paid career before teaching). So no man willing to keep this woman I'm afraid. He'd tell me to jog on! I think we will have to go part time and then early retire together[/quote]
You misunderstand OP. I did not say I wanted to be a kept woman, or would expect my husband to keep me. I am financially independent and find the idea of being “kept” distasteful. I meant that other people might think he was keeping me.

Change your career. But maybe wind down to part time as you change gears. I think you would regret winding down permanently at this age. Sounds like you need to new adventure to motivate you. What about going back to what you did before?

I did it, aged 43. Upped sticks, sold everything and moved to the cheapest place I could find. It worked

I felt the same but WFH has been a god send to get away from the open plan office.

I like being at home. I dread going back.

Lucky woman to retire at 52! I'll have to keep working til I'm escorted off the premises. I won't be entitled to a full Irish pension in Ireland unless I have 25 years' stamp and I only started working at 44 so because I'm in the civil service, I could actually still work til I'm 69. That is quite depressing! I could go three days a week. But I do love nothing better than pottering around, listening to audibles, learning how to meditate, do yoga, make clothes, little clay sculptures.

Sometimes I feel surprised to remember that I don't have like 300,000 euro tucked away in another account somewhere. I can't believe I'm poor! It shocks me every time I confront this realisation!

I did work before I was 44 obviously, just not in Ireland.

I have been planning for early retirement since I was 25.

I posted on S&B recently- my normal price is Asda. I can afford more but it’s all for the early retirement pot. I budget as much as I can.

It’s interesting because whenever I read articles about what you “need” for retirement, it includes things I don’t have now.

I don’t have children- I appreciate I might feel differently if I had them.

Me. So much.

I'm mid-career change which is scary and challenging and I'm not even sure I won't feel the same way about my new career.

I occasionally try to convince OH I'd be a great housewife but we both know that's a barefaced lie.

This is me. Sadly I'm only 34 so I probably need to wait 30 more years 😂

@Sarahlou63

I did it, aged 43. Upped sticks, sold everything and moved to the cheapest place I could find. It worked

Where is that place!?

YANBU. I’m 25 and I hate it already. I slogged my guts out through uni through depression, family trauma and being a carer for a family member, took me a year longer than it should have, for the career jobs do security.

Now I’m here, stable ‘career’ job, partner, semi detached in a country village and I am so so incredibly bored. All that, for this? This can’t be it. I’d kill for adventure, to see more of the world. I live inside my head daydreaming of different lives I could live. And no lockdown isn’t helping haha. The pay check to pay check is just truly shite

I feel like this, very much so. I'm 37 and mid.career change, and feeling very meh about it.

I think it is one of the reasons I am dragging my heels on house hunting. We would really like more space (still in tiny 2 bed starter home) but we've only got 60k left on the mortgage. If we move, that's like to go up to about 200k+...and all I can see is the likelihood of my pottering about getting further and further away!

I get it. I’m mid 40’s working full time. We’ve got 5 years left on the mortgage and then I’m going down to 3 days a week. Will retire completely at 57. I have so many hobbies & so much travelling that I want to do. Work is just a pain.

@Chestnutpony

Money moustache has some interesting ideas on early retirement. I'm not willing to go as far as he does, but I've adapted some of his ideas.

Just had a look at that site, interesting. I don't think I could live on 35% of my take home pay!

Yikes. That'd be a tough life.

My sense of fair play stops me jumping ship early, I quite frankly could not (pardon the vulgarity,) give a shiny shit of how others perceive me.

We are comfortable, we are going to be comfortable in retirement, with a good pot of savings behind us, on a good year (bonuses) DH's salary starts with a £1.

He only got there, working away all over the country and all over Europe, with my support, generally Monday to Friday, it was a good gig if it was only Monday to Thursday.

On one memorable occasion he flew out to NY for a single meeting, turned around and came home, with less than twenty four hours before we flew out on holidays, he was working, I was angsting.

Guess who does all the crapmin and organising in our house, so quite frankly how the outside world would perceive me giving up work at this stage bothers me not a jot.

Sorry if I have offended anyone, but that touched a nerve.

Just do it! I did.

@OwlOne

Lucky woman to retire at 52! I'll have to keep working til I'm escorted off the premises. I won't be entitled to a full Irish pension in Ireland unless I have 25 years' stamp and I only started working at 44 so because I'm in the civil service, I could actually still work til I'm 69. That is quite depressing! I could go three days a week. But I do love nothing better than pottering around, listening to audibles, learning how to meditate, do yoga, make clothes, little clay sculptures.

Sometimes I feel surprised to remember that I don't have like 300,000 euro tucked away in another account somewhere. I can't believe I'm poor! It shocks me every time I confront this realisation!

OwlOne

Were you a SAHM ?

If so, will you not get credits ?

I think your mid-late 30s can be a crisis point; the novelty of work/career has well and truly worn off but your not even hald way through your working life yet and the rest stretches out interminably.

Yup. Late 30s too, and not really expecting to retire, just decrease work as I get older.

I'm tired. I like my job but I'll be made redundant next year due to changes in the industry, and I have zero motivation to think about finding another one. I want to read books and make a beautiful garden and see friends I haven't seen all year because of Covid.

This is really interesting with differing views from a wide age range. I am utterly jealous of the people in their 40s &50s who have retired.
Unfortunately for me a messy divorce left hefty debt which will take me another two years to pay off.
I’m a community nurse in my early 50s and will not have paid my new after divorce mortgage off until I’m 65 at the earliest. I have a ASD child who will never live independently and will be financially dependent on me.
I often wonder what my patients will think of an older nurse caring for them?
While loads of people and social media are on overdrive on the negative affects from COVID on peoples mental health, there are a huge amount of people whose mental health has improved dramatically by being able to wfh either full time or in my case part home part clinic. More time with my dc less commute and can actually eat dinner before 7.
My mental health has never been better.... well until I get the envy at retiring before I’m 67