Retiring Early - any regrets/advice?

[ArthurMcB]

The irony is my friend is in a very repetitive structured role and thats one of the aspects that he wants to leave behind.

 

[Lisgoold]

Definitely depends on the individual. I'm 18 months into retirement, and the last thing I want is structure. I had 48 years of work, and all of it working shifts. Over 40 years of it being 12 hr shifts.

 

[joe sod]

Definitely depends on the individual. I'm 18 months into retirement, and the last thing I want is structure. I had 48 years of work, and all of it working shifts. Over 40 years of it being 12 hr shifts

Thats a different story alright, most people don't know the reality of that work. Was it night shifts aswell ?
Why did you spend so many years doing shift work, alot of people do it for 10 or 20 years and then move onto other non shift work if they can?
Its prople like you that should have been getting the tax breaks not the working from home people.

 

[DeeKie]

A friend of mine retired early and he did a course in trinity in fine arts (no exam) to give him some structure in a step down strategy

 

[jpmackey]

I’m 40 next year, am positioning my finances and mind to retire at age 50, while also being very intentional about enjoying the next 10 years without a feeling of sacrificing.

 

[Lisgoold]

@joe sod

Yes, plenty of nights. Years of doing 4 days on, 4 off, 4 nights etc. Then switched to 2 days, 2 nights, 4 off.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the shift work. I mainly enjoyed it. It meant working a lot of weekends, but I'm fine with that, as I preferred the time off in the week. But on that sort of pattern, your life is kind of dominated by the clock, and in my case, by 8pm or 8am in particular.

So these days, I don't take much notice of the time, or even the day. There are things I make sure I do each day, so I guess there's a kind of structure. But they get done at random times.

You know that period between Christmas and new year, when you hear people saying they don't know what day it is. Well my life is like that all the time.

 

[joe sod]

Yes, plenty of nights. Years of doing 4 days on, 4 off, 4 nights etc. Then switched to 2 days, 2 nights, 4 off.

Thats an unusual shift usually the shift change is on a saturday so at least you get a partial weekend every week, with your shift the shift change can be any day, so you move from working full weekends to having weekend fully off. But with most events and occasions happening at weekends you miss out on alot of that .

You are the unsung heroes though because without people like you the country doesn't run, you are there at 3am on a saturday night keeping everything running. There was no working from home for you during covid or since.