Anyone retiring very early?

[Yoosee]

we may be able to retire in a few years- DH will be 53 and I’ll be 52. By my calculations we’ll have enough money for a good standard of living.

Has anyone else done this or planned to? DH’s job has very long hours and lots of travel. He’s also mindful of the fact that his father had a serious heart attack in his 50s. My job is less stressful but I don’t love it.

If you are doing this, do you do substantial voluntary work or some sort of side hustle? Quite like the idea of a tiny fun business- maybe restoring furniture- but at the moment I have absolutely no skills in that area.

See the link I posted upthread. Between about £20k and £60k after tax per couple is the adequate to comfortable range of income needed after mortgage repaid.
Would be a wonderful feeling to get paid for doing nothing for the rest of your life.

Thanks

but i asked the OP for her version of a good standard of living

If you're savvy enough and can pull together a spreadsheet you don't need an IFA. When I'm having a shite work day I look at my pensions spreadsheet. 10 months to go and counting.

How big is your pension pot, any dependents, lots of other savings and investments?

if you do… an IFA is worthwhile
if you don’t… a spreadsheet would be fine

Or if you do need investment ideas and help have a look at Hargreaves Lansdown, I found them very helpful.

Yes, I retired 11 years ago at 52. We travel. Currently in Asia over the winter.

There's a website that Martin Lewis and Gov.uk recommend called unbiased.co.uk that will match you with vetted and qualified advisors.

You could also get your hands on a beginner's guide to investing book to give you a starting point.

Nah you don't need an IFA. I manage all of those well via a spreadsheet - though it does have a few tabs.

I am 55. Due to VR payment when my contract ended in August last year, I didn’t absolutely have to work for financial reasons. I tried not working- DPs are very elderly and both now have dementia and are insisting on staying at home so I thought I could help more - but it nearly broke me and I have recently started a low stress part time admin role. I didn’t enjoy not working, maybe because the timing wasn’t of my choosing and was stressed about my DPs, and so far this new role is giving me a better balance.

DH on the other hand finished up end of last year, he had been planning to retire for a while. He loves it and is happy to go up to my DPs an hour away weekly to reduce the pressure on me.

Maybe of we had the ability to do long trips away I would have wanted to stay not working, but because of my DPs a week is about as long as we can risk although we do have a two week break booked later in the year that I hope we can go on.

My observation is that retirement needs to be something you plan towards and I needed goals for each day, otherwise it’s too easy for it to creep away. I enjoyed aspects of not working but I like mixing with different ages and work is useful for that.

This is what I have done.

Read (or listen) to the book How to Fund the Life you Want. It’s so helpful on this matter!

Its finding a IFA that you trust thats the challenge!

Don't bother They'll just charge you high fees and won't necessarily get the best products for you.

Excellent free resources on YouTube such as Rebel Finance School and Meaningful Money will teach you all you need to know about saving, investments and pensions.

I haven't retired but I have stepped off the corporate wheel, turning 50 this year. Everything is paid off and good savings so planning a career pivot into something less stressful or what I used to do at a lower level. I just need to cover day to day expenses probably until age 57 is the plan. The relief is huge, I just couldn't do it any more.

I’m 61 and I’ll be retiring in August 2026.

I could have gone in 2014 at 50 and could have lived a very comfortable retirement but I wasn’t mentally ready to retire - I’d only been a Headteacher for 7 years at that point and wanted to do at least 15 years in that role.
I’m now at 19 years and enough is enough.

I know many people who have retired early and have ended up going back into work.

I retired at 47.
Plan A was to live affordable within my means and see if I could navigate life doing the things I wanted to do without having to go back to work.
Plan B was to find a part time job to supplement Plan A.
Many years have passed and I’m still on Plan A.
If you can afford to do it ……. do it.
Life is way way too short and before you can blink it’s your mothers face looking back at you in the mirror.

Yeah, we did. It's great as it's meant we have time to deal with the seemingly never-ending caring responsiblities. No idea how we'd have coped with a job as well...

Structure, purpose & community.

We are semi-retired aged 53 and 54, though I’m looking at building a non-exec director portfolio career to go alongside my charity trustee role. Probably looking at 3-4 roles in total, so maybe 60-100 days work a year (so effectively a 30-50% job, just split across three/four roles).

That way I will keep my brain active and also have enough income not to deplete my savings too quickly. It also gives us the time to travel that we want.

DP seems quite happy to sit around and not do very much other than read everything on the internet, interact on various online forums, and play online games.

I want to semi retire in my mid-late 50 (work part time & draw some of my civil service pension). I’ve worked since I was 18, 75% of the time full time (two DC) and I’m tired. Want to enjoy some of my life!

I’m 58 and haven’t worked for years. Dh still works but can do his thing from anywhere so we travel a lot, also go to our friends’ kids’ weddings abroad. I’ve started playing golf mainly for the social aspect, spend mornings lifting weights, do yoga and make nice home cooked meals. I have a very sociable dh so we are out a lot but I have very elderly parents and like to be around for them.