Would you retire now or go part-time with this financial situation?

[Spitloon]

You're 45. You're married. You have fully shared finances.
You have £1m invested in various places which is generating about £5K per month interest at the moment (so £60K per year - ish)
You have £100K cash.
You have shares in a couple of companies which might pay out £200++ if things go well. But no guarantee.
You have a house worth £370K which is paid off.
You want to move to a different house in the next few years but no rush. That house would be about £600K.

Currently you spend about £30K per year in total.
But you'll be increasing this because you'll soon have more freedom for holidays, meals out, weekends away.
An annual income of £45K would be more than enough.

You don't hate your job but its stressful. You have a lengthy commute but this only averages a day a week over the year. Half your job is very autonomous where you can basically do what you like, which gives a good level of freedom but also means it can just expand. And it has done.
You want to take early retirement - i.e. give up working completely by 50. You know some MNers are dead against this but this is your plan, and works for you.

Would you:
> Give up work completely now.
Pros: No more work.
Cons: Cliff edge, weird adjustment process maybe.

> Go part-time for the last five years (contractually).
Pros: Still earning a bit. Slight reduction in the non-autonomous bit of your workload.
Cons: Stress doesn't necessarily reduce. Still have to work and commute.

> Go part-time for the last five years (just don't tell anyone).
Pros: Still earning full salary.
Cons: No reduction in the non-autonomous bit of your workload. Still have to work and commute. Potentially awkward to navigate.

DH and I have very different perspectives and I'm interested in what others think. Thanks.

DH is pretty chilled about it all. He's in the same position as me and thinking through part-time or just leaving altogether. He has a lot of scope for consultancy work but isn't keen on doing this.

We have so much in cash because it's in premium bonds. I know there are mixed feelings on PBs but I bloody love them 🤣

This sounds like heaven and exactly how I'd be spending my time too.

On your list point - my job is split 40/40/20 between three "types" of activity.

One of the 40%s is really really autonomous. I can basically do as a choose with it. There's light-touch oversight but basically no consequences to doing this part of the job as minimally as possible.

That's how I can get away with essentially going part-time but just not telling my employer.

Retirement trackers are not right for you if you are planning to live off your investments (which you should be as annuity values at your age will be very poor).

You will hopefully be invested in the market for another 40 years at least, so need to have that investment horizon not derisking now.

You need a financial planner (not adviser) to help you with this.

You’re nowhere near financially savvy enough to do this, or to expect MN to advise. There’s so much key information missing. Pay someone to go through it properly with you.

We had very similar finances to you when we retired early but it wasn’t as early as you. DH is slightly short of his full NI contribution but has done some consulting so will do that for a bit and then it’s just a couple of years to top up. We do have a child which was why we waited longer as we wanted them to be financially independant.

We have easily filled our time after decades of high pressure work including a lot of overseas travel for DH to remote bits of the globe. I had a shit commute, a child to wrangle and a FT job whilst keeping the home fires burning.

I sat and read a book for 2 hours yesterday, met some friends for coffee, had a short walk as weather bad round a local nature reserve with DH. We watched a film together. DH was tinkering with stuff at home when I was out, he and I are also learning French, well improving our French. He is also improving his German which was actually good to start with. Planning various trips this year and as you can go in low season it’s so much better. We stay home in August and use that as our do stuff at home time. I do some volunteering, DH won’t ever as he is just not interested.

You want to retire early but you have a £100k tied up in a perpetual lottery ticket.

That £100k could be earning you money. You really really need to take more advice. You should only hold premium bonds if you are maxed out on both interest free savings and ISAs and pensions.

if you move to 600k house your 1 million becomes 770K there is 100k in premium bonds ( wouldn't be my choice) so 670k to invest minus a suitable emergency fund or maybe the premium bonds count as that
on average invested 770K at 6% brings in about 46,200 you need advise on where to invest a FTSE 100 or S & P500 tracker on average would bring in closer to 8% the stock market did exceptioally well last year but it can go up and down but over the next 40 + years that should even out
obviously with a paid off larger house you have no mortgage but your monthly costs maybe more than current house in terms of heating, maintenance and council tax but you will have time to do most basic stuff yourselves like gardening cleaning gutters are easy provided you have ladders etc even painting
There is always the possiblity of doing some minimum wage work in a shop or just volunteering if that is your bag.
46,000 split bertween you at 23,000 each will reduce tax so you will have about 3600 after tax per month as you say you spend about 2500 a month you will have 12,000 a year to either reinvest or for it to cover maintenance holidays and replacement cars.
We spend about 2500 a month on living it covers all day to day stuff including insurance, birthdays Christmas car maintenance MOT clothes gym days trips glasses
we would need to use other savings to pay for major repairs, a new to us car holidays, replacement hearing aids etc