I’m 45. Plan to retire at 55 at the very latest - but might decide to retire at 50, depending on how much $$ I can make between now and then…
If I can make it until 55, all unvested stocks vest - so that would be a nice $500K - $700K parting gift but I doubt it’d be worth it if I can afford to retire at 50. There’s also the money I could make between the age of 50 and 55 - but then I’ll probably live 5 - 10 years less if I push myself that much…
Maybe I should just retire this year and be done. I could live off less - don’t really need the Solistice or the Statement.
This time last year I would have been fixing any application issues from the weekend.
Followed by a team meeting with the manager to discuss which projects were urgent, critical or JFDI for that week.
Getting dragged into conference calls to sort out other people’s problems or quite often doing their job for them. Never a thank you.
Senior Manager - “I have a problem with the app”
Me - “what screen is this with?”
Senior Manager - “it’s a Lenovo 21 inch”
The app had multiple operation screens so it was a fair question from me!
Eventually getting round to writing some code ( the nice bit).
Today. Take bike for MoT and then ride to Kirkby Lonsdale stopping for a Latte at MacDs and a drop of E10.
Tuna salad at Devil’s Bridge and a Vanilla 99 ice cream and a nice ride home.
On a tangent, I’ve met a chap within the last few weeks who took out some pensions with the CIS 30+ years ago, these are now all held with Royal London.
Now, while I’ve seen some dogs in my time, these are probably the worst bloody things I’ve seen this century, earning him pretty much Jack all and the poor bloke had no idea. He thought all pensions were the same…
Thought I’d mention it as a reminder for folks to check what they’ve got and consider all your options!
Never having been rich, we’ve maintained a comfortable life-style for most our our near 40 year marriage … the early 90s being our financial doldrums (career in free-fall, two young children, high interest rates, virtually no savings) … but we cut back our spending and got through it. Nothing unique, nothing to shout about but that period meant I was always conscious of saving for the future. Hence we funded my Personal Pension month after month despite having other calls on the funds.
My wife’s inheritance allowed us to secure our finances and build some savings which we now use to eke out her Teachers’ Pension until we collect our State Pensions in the next 2+ years.
I surrendered my practising certificate nearly 4 years ago and now earn pocket money doing a couple of small jobs, plus take a lump-sum draw-down each year to utilise my annual personal allowance. Again nothing unique or special.
But I use the draw-down, supplemented by some savings, to fund transfers to each of our two children and re-invest £2,880 (net) into both my wife’s and my Personal Pension schemes.
Am I mad? I’m sure some of my friends think so but I hope that by the time we do reach state retirement age (or more likely: 70) we shall have Pension Funds on which to draw / convert to annuities.
We’ve no regret about me retiring at 60, my wife at 58. Not being able to travel these last 18 months has been disappointing (we had been taking 2 -4 holidays/short breaks each year); if restrictions remain I’m sure I can demonstrate the need to replace some of the ageing Naim kit.
I have friends and family who enjoyed their work so much they didn’t want to retire. For me, it couldn’t come soon enough
We have been away for five weeks so far this year, with another week booked for next month. We used some of my pension lump sum to buy our small but beautifully formed Eriba Touring caravan and it’s one of the best decisions we’ve made. Dora cost a lot but now we have her, holidays are very affordable. While our four week trip to Burgundy and Provence was canned in 2020 we still managed over a month away in the UK, travelling up from the south coast to Loch Ness. The French jaunt was canned again this year so we’ve been trundling around England, with the French bookings moved to June 2022. It’s hard to do this if you are working.
In the process of moving some stuff from an increasingly expensive storage unit to a far cheaper, perhaps more basic outfit, I’ve discovered that the site has long-term term storage for caravans/motorhomes etc - interesting as I’d always thought I’d have nowhere to store one currently at home - seems there are other options out there.
So it does! Never owned a caravan/motorhome or considered storage solutions for them specifically, just surprised to find one not too far away run by a local storage company.
I only know as have been researching our plan of buying a motorhome in the uk- using it for travels in Europe and Uk, then storing it in uk when we travel home to Sydney
I know that the funds required to retire vary drastically from person to person dependent on their circumstances including mortgages, savings, dependents, desire to keep working on something less stressful, age, etc etc.
Out of interest what level of pot do folk have when they decide to retire?
I didn’t have a pot figure, as such in mind. Rather I worked on what I needed plus what I wanted. I took the actuarial age of likely death (insurance tables) added ten years and then calculated likely living costs, food, maintenance on property, energy etc. I then added wants such as holidays, cars, silly expensive stereo etc. Eye watering figures, but taking investments, pensions, cash in hand is also surprising.
I think that is a) private but also b) impossible to compare between individuals.
What I would say is that daily living costs are substantially below what I had estimated when I was working. Hard to say exactly why as I did not have significant commuting costs or other obvious expenses associated with working but I know others have noted the same. Of course you’ll need to factor any planned significant purchases, special holidays etc but in general you may need a bit less than you think.
With so many pension schemes/plans and different investement vehicles, let alone lifestyle and other factors it seems impossible to specify a one-size fits all.
Suspect we’d all want the best returns in retirement available to us, but so hard to place a firm figure on this.
Looking at it from the other end, research has shown that a couple needs £26,000 per annum (that’s cash after tax etc) for a comfortable retirement and £42,000 for a more luxurious retirement. The difference is basically the cost of an annual long haul holiday and a new car every five years. So you knock off the state pension and work out the size of pot needed to find the balance.
Of course, this is very average and if you like to drink a £20 bottle of wine every night and get a new Aston every year you’re going to need a lot more.
It’s critical to know whether the pension income is index linked. Costs have been going up a lot lately - food, heating, council tax, water rates, insurance and they all add up.
I will entirely understand if you don’t respond to this but have you ever come across potential lifetime mortgage mis-selling?
I’ve just discovered some close friends (not at all financial sophisticated) took out a ‘roll-up’ LM >20 years ago (pre MCOB), with (seemingly) the bulk of the funds applied to an investment fund. I know these quasi-arbitrage arrangements were promoted many years ago i.e. in the belief the investment performance would out-perform the costs of the mtge (in this case a painful fxd rate), with this able to support some moderate additional income. Needless to say, things have gone very, very, awry.
As a first step I’m trying to seek out some reputable lawyers/advice on what their position is - any ideas/thoughts welcomed.
I had a pal who worked for CIS years ago and I bought a couple of 25 year endowments soon after I started work as investments rather than to pay a mortgage (though I had considered them for that).
The whole endowment market went sour, and while most people I knew seemed to be looking for ‘compo’ for mis-sold products, I really couldn’t fathom how many clever acquaintances could have really pretended to have been so dim when they’d have clearly beeen told values could go up or down and been supplied with representative growth figures at the time they signed up. Perhaps I was the fool.
I kept them until the end which was probably the wrong decision, and had they been intended to pay off a mortgage I might have been more inclined to complain, however they were an investement made decades ago, which to my mind was better than doing nothing at all even if the return was poorer than expected.
I wouldn’t consider anyone a fool in this area, as post the stock market and general investment growth seen in the late-70s and early/mid-80’s (privatisations, liberalisation of the markets, esp. in the US), financial products like endowments were heavily marketed, with little/no mention of the downsides (plus, of course, many attracted ‘insurance reliefs’ for tax). How does it go, past performance cannot be taken as an indicator of the future.
But reality bit with events like Black Monday (1986/7 IIRC), 9/11, dot-com bubble (1999/2000) et al, such that volatility became a far greater factor and traditional interest rate and yields plunged in many cases. This meant that things like endowments and ‘with-profits’ funds started to come up short in asset cover, such that the providers introduced ‘market value adjustments’ on surrenders and valuations.
Of course, the more trusting souls, expected the providers to honour their obligations/projections, which they simply couldn’t in some cases e.g. Equitable Life.
This is why I’d always suggest using an IFA. Letting this kind of stuff sit in a drawer can cost thousands.
That’s my excuse anyway 