I don't want to work anymore!

[ettieb]

I'm 55 and have been working since I was 16 apart from a couple of years off when my son was little. I'm so over working. I don't hate my job.. I've worked there a long time... with lovely people.. my boss is great and I can choose whether I work from home or go into the office or a bit of both.. so I know I'm very lucky but I just want freedom to do what I want when I want. It doesn't help that a lot of my friends are retired and do lovely things which I want to join in with. I can't believe I've got to do this for another 12 years... there are no options for me financially to go part time. We are on holiday at the moment in Devon.. nothing fancy.. just a caravan and cooking for ourselves mostly as we can't really afford to eat out... but I'm as happy as Larry... just knitting.. doing crosswords.. generally bimbling around doing my own thing. I just think I wanted to moan!

I’m in this boat at 50. I’m hoping to semi-retire at around 60, but can’t do it earlier if I want to help DC through uni, or whatever route they take. Would love to go part-time right now, so I have more time to live my life and enjoy my hobbies.

@DoubleTequilaSunrise I am retired and love it and it certainly hasn't aged me. This year I have been on 3 holidays and have 2 more planned before the end of the year. This week we have been on 2 day trips and eaten out 4 times. I have also been to the cinema once in the day. I also have a time consuming hobby as well as my exercise classes. I have ordered 3 dresses this week for my long distance holiday in October. I have also had some great afternoon naps and watched some great TV. Sometimes I also remember to clean the house 😉

I think the key to happiness is being int he moment and not wishing your life away. I wish I were retired already....I wish I were always on holiday just like this....I wish I didnt have to work etc etc. You cant change the need to work, so dont make it heavy going for yourself by wishing this time away. Thi day will never come again, why spend it with regret and longing for something thats not practical or achievable at the moment? Either stop working and live in reduced circumstances knowing that once these intiial lovely early days are over and old age sets in, you may not be well equipped to deal with it, or accept the ability to work as a privilege and a gift and enjoy the purpose and engagement with life and other people it gives you. Of course it feels like a drudge and a burden sometimes, especially after a long working life, but its up to you to make the best of it.

I used to live in China. A Chinese friend of mine retired this year at the national retirement age for women. She’s 50! Just five years older than me but I have another 22 or 23 years left!

I'm guessing you're a lot younger than 55? Wait until you get there and see how you feel.

I'm 55 and work part time. We can afford it. I enjoy my job most of the time but I would still enjoy not working. My income does come in handy though.
Some women I work with who are similar age or older and work full time ask me if I get bored. No I definitely don't. I have plenty of friends who work shifts. DH is part time semi retired. I have a lot of hobbies and interests. Plus who knows what my mobility will be like in my 60s? I love being active especially walking.

I hope you find a solution OP. Life really is too short.

What helped me is that I moved to part time hours during the pandemic (which coincided with menopause for me) and picked up a second job which pays more per hour and is also more flexible with hours so I basically now work around the same number of hours overall, and get Fridays off (yay).

I understand that might not be possible for OP, but just to say you're not alone and I did not expect the rushes of anxiety that I got with menopause but I do feel I have a better work-life balance now.

I'm the same and am 50 and working a full-time and part-time job and I've had it with work.

Doesn't help that I live in one of those areas whereby most women my age don't work - either SAHM who never worked or early retirees. They volunteer and do art courses or whatever. I'm so jealous.

I’m 42 and hoping to finish full time permanent work before 50. Then take adhoc part time jobs as and when anything interesting comes up, volunteering and travel.

I don’t want to work for the next 25 years. We couldn’t have DC so that has helped the finances as did buckling down to pay off the mortgage.

I know very few people who have jobs they love and I wish that I was one of them.

In some ways I agree with the OP, I’m 56 and would love more time to myself but will need to continue working until 67 at least. I still have a school aged DC and want to get both my DCs through education and better established and self supporting before I reduce my earnings much. Also my sister retired at 57. She’s now in her early 60s and has aged so much since retiring and tbh has got a bit boring and less tolerant in her views too. I am afraid the same might happen to me if I retired now! Fortunately I do like my job, so it’s not all bad news, and I can work from home quite a bit, which does help a lot. If I was in the office today for example, I wouldn’t be on Mumsnet at this point in time, I’d be commuting into work!

Well, if AI doesn't kill us, then there's a good chance in a decade or two most of us will be bimbling around knitting and doing crosswords.

I retired from a stressful job at 60 and it didn’t age me ~ it rejuvenated me. All everyone who meets me say is ‘you look so well’. It’s amazing how youthful you feel when you’re not be being dragged down by work.

Of course it’s important to keep busy, mentally stimulated, physically active - again, much easier when you’ve got the time.

This myth that we all have to keep on working and it’s good for us, is perpetuated by the government who want our tax money and the rich who want us to be wage slaves. Life is for living, not working.

I did plan really carefully for 20 years to be able to afford it though!

THE thing I would say - from my own experience of retirement - is:

• I did what planning I could WAY in advance (ie it was a large part of why I chose the employer I did when I found myself needing yet another job in my 30's and one of my criteria was their job pension situation). I loathed that job with a passion in the event unfortunately - and it did take a LOT of doing one way or another to manage to stick it to their retirement age.
• I took the chance to get myself some extra job pension - and boy did it ever cost me money I really could have done with to live on (ie because I was/am single - and therefore had a very low standard of living for years with the money I was using to pay for that - on top of all the extra costs of being single, eg only me to pay for my housing and bills)
• My plan for a long time was to get my missing degree (having left school after O level stage) to prove (to myself and everyone else) that I'm capable of it. That plan had to change - because I was going to do it via the Open University, but it became absolutely pointless to prove that I'm in the 5% of the population capable of getting a degree, when (apparently) about 50% now get degrees and "degrees" and so how would I even know in my own mind it was a real Degree, rather than a bit of paper with an apparent "degree" on it. I'll have to settle for "Oh well - at least there was an official IQ test done on us all at school - and so I know for a fact I have a high IQ and what that figure is and I am capable and that's something I suppose" (as I'd not realised and just assumed "bog-standard" or not that bright till then (ie like my mother and brother).
• Don't count on anything inheritance-wise - even if there is a reasonable amount of money "in the pot". Certainly not if you've got a grabby sibling. Fortunately, I'd realised my brother is a "grabby sibling" years before the event and that he'd do his darndest to grab for some of the 50% I'd been promised. He did do his darndest and pleaded the "I've got children card" on my mother and she changed the will in his favour and he and his children got 75% (rather than the 50% we'd both been told he personally would have). So - nope....do not go counting on inheritance - as you may not have realised a sibling is grabby (thank goodness I had got him assessed accurately and have always known he was my mothers favourite and so I did take account of knowing the will had probably been altered to be unfair in his favour).
• Even firm fixed plans may have to change - I'd always known one of the things I would do in retirement is enjoy having a nice garden/growing what I could of my own food in it. But, in the event, finances were such that I was still in my "starter house" when I retired and knew I'd have to move elsewhere in the country to a cheaper house price area to get my missing garden/missing having the house detached/etc - and so I did so. However, because it's a poorer area of the country than my own the condition of housing stock looks to be rather worse often and it's also an area where workmen are unreliable and between the two = I've had to do a LOT of renovation work on the house and have had a LOT of let-downs by the workmen here and, between the two, I had to spend a LOT longer than anticipated on getting my house sorted out. There has been some pressure on me to do a leisure activity I'd not chosen to do/am not interested in personally - and I gave way a bit initially, but soon found I couldnt manage house renovation/what I myself want and the pressured-for-by-other-people activity and so abandoned the "what some other people wanted me to do" one.

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I think I have got a happy medium going on at the moment. Although, I can't profess to having worked my arse off since I was 16. I do feel like I have "worked hard" though because before DC I worked 6 days a week and travelled a lot for work, and then when I was a SAHM I was alone most of the time as DH travelled 2 out of 4 weeks. I have also had to move countries 4 times to keep up with him, leaving behind jobs and friends.

4 years ago, when I moved back to the UK, I transitioned from SAHM to 2 days a week, and now I work 3 days (25) hours, and very unsociable hours. As my DC get older, people are asking me when I am going FT, but I don't want to. I am 54, work P/T and the rest of it I do what I like; gym, hobby, running club, dog walks, meet friends for coffee, look after myself and of course all the household chores (in that order!)

I have a good balance. I have some money coming in, the house is in order, my DC are sorted, I have the self esteem of working, my state pension is being sorted, and I have good mental health.

Having experienced other countries workplaces and cultures I can see first hand that the UK is just a big washing machine of stress. Commute, work, commute, bills, tax, no time to relax, little time to exercise, poor social connections, poor nutrition, poor healthcare. A lot of us will be lucky to retire TBH if we don't drop dead first.

I don't care what the Tories think about over 50's refusing to kill themselves working. It is of their own making. The greed in this country is breathtaking. I'm talking the people at the top, not the average guy. It's time to push back and say NO.

I'm 64, still working, don't really need the money. I do have expensive tastes and I'm quite a restless soul who needs structure. I'm dreading stopping really. Just the thought of having to watch bad tv and picking things that my dh has dropped but can't reach.

I’m 54 and could have written your post. I like my job but I’d go tomorrow without a backward glance. The plan is mortgage paid off at 57 then go. In the meantime I’m going to drop a day a week next year.

that day a week to bumble about….bliss. I work flexibly, can wfh, it’s not stressful but….

then retire young enough to travel , live elsewhere, hike. I’m going to do a long pilgrimage trail in Japan.

my mum got dementia at 72, died a few years later. I’m going to live some life.

I'm finding this thread so interesting, so many of us in our fifties, really keen to have more of a life than work. I can't stop because I'm the main earner, I still have a dc at university and our mortgage is far from paid off.

Interesting thread. I'm 51 now, work full time and earn the bigger salary. I would love to drop a day but we can't really afford it. Like you OP, I'm happy pottering and am quite happy in my own company. I'd love a day or two each week to do something for myself.

Ironically, I have today off as I get one in three Fridays as time in lieu, but it'll be spent catching up on housework and chores that don't get done because we both work full time.

have you checked how much you will lose by going part time ? Sometimes its not as much as you think dropping a few hours .

I think most people would like to retire but can't afford to.

You have never strayed onto SAHM threads obviously. Most people vehemently how they LOVE working and would rather die than be at home as they would find it so dull.

OP one of my parents retired at 50 and made a hobby into a living. Loved every minute of it. Gave that up at 80!

I quit when I was forty. I took a poorly paid part-time role in a charity that I can work from home. I couldn't really afford it and I can't really afford it tbh but I'd rather have one little holiday every year than work full time forty seven weeks every year to have five weeks off. You cut your cloth I suppose but I do feel pangs of envy when I hear about someone going to Asia for a month or going on four different week long holidays a year. However I travelled a lot when I was younger and once the person has returned, I appreciate my own life very quickly.

Fast forward ten years to now and would I make the same decision again? Maybe I'd have waited until I was 55? My old role would have become a work from home role due to covid anyway and I could never have foreseen that.
I enjoy spending time with my kids, I love picking them up from school and being with them. I don't like the mundane everyday tasks e..g. cooking/ironing/cleaning but I'd still have been doing a lot of that whether working fulltime or not.

Can you even reduce to a four day week? I did that before giving up my fulltime job? It really made very little difference to my take home pay.

Failing that can you look at another role within your company? Sometimes a change is as good as a rest?

Ironically, I have today off as I get one in three Fridays as time in lieu, but it'll be spent catching up on housework and chores that don't get done because we both work full time.

You can change that.
What would you like to do today? Can you do it at short notice? If you can just do it! Who cares if the floor is mopped. You will not remember that next week. You will remember how you spent a lovely day and it will boost you.

That's terrible treatment by your employer and they don't deserve you. There are loads of employers who are desperate at the moment - recruitment is really difficult because there aren't enough applicants and you've got loads going for you. Move on and find an employer that treats you better.

😁

Oh God tell me about it OP. I'm 61 and have been working since I was 18, 43 years in the NHS.
I'm so damned tired.
I still work full time, I come home and just collapse into bed. That's my life.
I've got 6 years left to pay on the mortgage so I'm overpaying.
I just want to stay in bed one morning and never go back - but that isn't an option. I'm helping DS buy a home of his own and I need to make sure I have savings as well as my pension.
But by God I'm looking forward to leaving it all behind me.

When my husband is 65, I will be 63, and that’s when we will retire. Going to release equity in the house which will give us about £400k, that should bridge the gap!

I'm dreading stopping really. Just the thought of having to watch bad tv

I finished 2.5yrs ago at 58, I hardly ever watch TV! I have plenty of friends who retired at similar age and younger and we all keep busy.

A colleague has just retired at 55, he lost his partner suddenly earlier in year, my close friend’s husband died in similar circumstance 18mths ago and it makes you realise that life can be very short.

My days are filled with dog walks (near and far), day trips out, meeting friends for coffee/lunch, I enjoy reading, Soduko etc. We have bought a small motorhome which I use alone as well as with DH.

I spent August in Oz with my DD (who had been travelling) watching the Womens WC, there was no way I would have done that if still working, I was away 4 wks!

Retirement is definitely what you make it and doesn’t need to include the TV!