Moneymakeover Considering early retirement - thoughts?

[Colin4444]

And your health and any family obligations and how much money you have to live on in retirement and..

Of course your health, but if you have severe health issues you wont be worrying about hobbies / pastimes..
If you have family obligations then that is good as you are busy spending time with family / grandkids etc..
Not everything costs money, you obviously have to live within your means

 

[Redzer]

Majority of time is spent at work and with work colleagues. Even if myself and spouse are both WFH, we are interacting with our colleagues, not each other for most of the day. So while your deep relationships are with family and friends outside of work, on a sheer hours basis you spend more of it in the physical or virtual company of your colleagues if working a standard full time week. And for me anyway, the mental challenges and stimulus right now are coming from my work (sedentary occupation, but I am sure similar applies for physical roles). Of course, remote working has changed this to a degree, I spend less time commuting and when we both do WFH we can spend more time together.

I think that is the perspective a lot of people start with. Then, when they have the time, ie in retirement, they can replace that with those deep relationships in quantity of time as well as quality, and perhaps the hobbies or skills they didn't have enough time to spend on when earning their living replace those that work provided.

Unusual to have the majority of time spent at work although it does tend to dominate our thinking and we fall into a 'live to work' mindset. There's usually similar amounts of time during the week where we're not working plus weekends. Its important to use that time to develop other interests where possible and even more important as you get closer to retirement to have those interests well developed and available to fill the time gap previously taken by working.

 

[joe sod]

You need to work on this before retiring, your life seems to revolve around work, I personally think that is not very healthy...

I have no idea why you think you could not meet people from different walks of life playing any social hobby that I mentioned previously. If your looking for such diversity go travelling, live abroad for a while, or as alot of ppl mentioned go abroad for the Irish winters..

The point is that I'm getting alot of this from my job (it's not about me anyways , I'm making a general point aswell) i don't need past times to check a box. I think alot of people have hobbies or past times just to check a box and for social cache. When I'm off work I enjoyed being off and relaxing, I might go to the pub for social outlay . If you have plenty of free time well yes its good to have a past times, however i value my time , I don't want to waste time doing activities I don't particularly enjoy. I have done all the travelling and sightseeing when I was younger and will do so again when retired. I just think past times and hobbies can be over rated.

 

[blackdog]

Very interesting and useful debate.

I can understand why for some people their "craft" becomes part of their identity and gives them considerable satisfaction. It depends on the role and personality. Also, ultimately from the day we put on a school uniform we are moulded for this (look up the Prussian model).

Wearing a white collar in large global companies I've observed colleagues pass away before their time and be quickly replaced and forgotten, and projects sweated over with pride for many a late night consigned to an archive folder and subsequently deleted. I've also been part of meetings where the discussions left me wondering if it's naive to get too emotionally invested in any of this stuff.

As a young new starter I made some great friends, but with the increasing reservation that comes with age, seniority and cultural changes over the years, opportunities to form meaningful persistent relationships with like minded individuals within the boundaries of office work seem scarce.

For the OP aged in late 50s with outside interests I think he should go for it.

 

[MickFarr]

Retired last year at the grand old age of 52. So glad I did, best thing I ever did. If you want to find out how early retirement affected those people, you should check out the retirement clubs on facebook. The vast majority say it's the best thing they did. Some (very few) said they wnet back to working part time as they missed the social aspect of work.

 

[Purple]

It can be uncomfortable for many to ponder the point of their existence without having the sense of purpose a job gives, and so it is common to be hesitant about retiring earlier than typical.

I like my job mainly because I like the people I work with. Big achievements are good and it's nice to be well paid but happiness comes from the little day to day interactions with the people around you.
I'm lucky that I've good friends and I like my children and enjoy their company.
I've also been lucky that in the past I've been totally broke, hungry and cold broke, and that made me realise that money isn't that important as I was, by and large, happy despite that. So retire even if you end up with less money. If you have no mortgage and can cover your bills then after that time is far more important than money.

The conclusion I personally have come to is that there is no point to any of this, so just go play!

I never understood why anyone saw no meaning in life. The meaning of life is to love and be loved. That's all. The destination is a hole in the ground so enjoy the journey.

 

[Secondtimer]

Very interesting discussion here. Having read the replies, I'm now not sure if I want to retire fully, or if I just want to retire (from this job ). But after 17 years, I'm hoping for a cheque that probably won't come (as I am cheaper to keep ) Realistically, not sure I can afford to either. I think from working fully remote during Covid and loving the balance, to now going back to 4 days in office, with one remote have really put an end to work life balance as I'm gone from 7am to 7.30pm on the days I'm in office. Also interesting the way Clubman described his role... toxic to ok as that's how I feel. Going to look at my financial elements and may post a money makeover. Thanks for the food for thought.

 

[Leper]

There is no such thing as partial retirement. You either retire or you don't. It's like being pregnant, you either are or aren't, there's no such thing as being fully pregnant or being partially pregnant.

 

[Cervelo]

There is no such thing as partial retirement.

Don't fully agree with you here Mr Lep,
Years ago retirement meant just that, you retired from your day time job and disappeared off into the sunset
Nowadays retirement can take on many forms with partial retirement probably been the most common, for example
The person who has a couple of properties for renting as a side line to their career but retires from the career but doesn't stop been a landlord
Many people believe that their skillset and knowledge at retirement would be of benefit to others and go into mentoring
I retired from a 60+ hour week to do nothing but cycle but in the second year I took a part time job in a bike shop but still considered myself retired

To me retirement is a very global term and means many things to many people but "Full retirement" is the goal and once there....

 

[Redzer]

There is no such thing as partial retirement.

I also have a nuanced view on this as I plan ahead for a few years time P.G.
Previously I would have viewed it as a black/white option but I'm leaning more towards grey now as my employer is recently making other options available. I really want to go somewhere sunny for 6 months (Irish Winter Oct-March) and my employer is now offering leave of absence options that could allow that. I might not like how that 6 months works out or I may have scratched the itch enough that I'd be happy to go back to work for another spell. My employer is also trialing part time work options (2-3-4 day week) that could also facilitate a tapering into full retirement over an extended period. I appreciate that might not count as full retirement but in my mind, I'd be thinking of it as partial retirement at least for a certain amount of time.

 

[Fibbernacci]

I've been thinking about partial retirement as I might be able to use parental leave to create a glide path into retirement (or not). Like reducing hours to 50% or something like that. Even at that you are still 'owned' by those 4 walls so I subscribe to the no such thing as partially retired notion.