Took early retirement at a much younger age, I had been seriously ill -and had massive surgery on a major organ , then there was the surgery to reconnect my bits and pieces plus the inevitable surgical induced hernias.
I had a very old school deal which (to be fair) my former employers honoured most of .
The first two years were just about re-establishing my health, more surgery , a severe infection .
Oodles of swims and a gradual rebuild, so I didn’t get to sit brooding about what might have been, also helped by becoming severely disenchanted with the industry I worked in. All compliance and less ethics.
You’ve almost answered your own problem in that you didn’t go from a full on career to nothing , my advice is stay physically and mentally active . That doesn’t mean work in the conventional sense, maybe volunteering, maybe gardening - but you do need a sense of fulfillment
There is a distinct pattern of mortality in the first year after retirement , and I think you’ve dodged that bullet
A not too dissimilar account to my own , it’s very much changing your mind set and I hope you don’t mind me saying that was forced on you by your health.
My advice would be grow vegetables but don’t vegetate
I’m 57, was made redundant about 18months ago and had planned to find a role at a junior level. This proved far more difficult than expected, I thought I had another five to ten years to give value to an employer but didn’t want to do it in management and also didn’t want to do a bunch of consultancy.
Fortunately my finances were sound enough to retire at 55, I’d always planned for this to be possible… Thank heavens.
I’ve mostly enjoyed not working, I miss three things; a regular paycheck (just feels odd to spend rather than save!), A sense of purpose, interaction with others.
The reduced interaction is probably because of covid and hopefully stops being an issue in the future.
I’ve plenty of gardening/landscaping projects to work on but it doesn’t really replace the sense of purpose I had. I should do some charitable work to replace this.
So I would say, yes retire, it’s easy to fill your time and I love choosing how I spend my time but do think about purpose.
I retired when I was 60 which was nearly nine years ago.
I hired an allotment and after two months of retirement I stood in the middle of a field with a hoe thinking I used to have a staff of seventy, as many again contractors, office and PA. Now I’m a peasant. I’ve still not fully come to terms with the loss of purpose in the community.
We’ve moved house but I was told after 60 people don’t notice you and to some extent have found this to be true.
I’m lucky I have young grandchildren and prior to lockdown it was good to be able to spend a great deal of time with them. Football and cricket with a six year old keeps me fit.
I enjoy no longer being a hostage to my diary but still miss the office banter after nine years.
I’m lucky my wife is a sweetie and I enjoy spending days out with her.
I’m also lucky that I’m still healthy and this may well be due to retiring at 60!
I’m 58 next month and would retire tomorrow if I could afford it but alas a divorce 7 years ago cleaned me out big time. Retirement will have to wait quite a while now
My business is a consultancy, so can be quite stressful at times. I enjoy some of it, but a chunk of what I do is running meetings on Teams trying to keep large groups of engineers in check; it’s tiring and challenging work. And then there is IR35 which for those that recognise the term is an additional challenge.
I’m encouraged that most people who have taken the step think it is the best thing they have done. I like the thought of stacking the wine isles, maybe even a little coffee van for my drinks and my wife’s baking. Maybe I’ll need to read the second career thread in more detail for some other ideas…but marrying my best friend - not sure my wife would like that (of course she’s my best friend, but you know what I mean)
Im 55 and having just recently done some sums with my wife, know that retirement at 60 is likely/probable (as long as I get that far, no guarantees…).
I think the points made about having a sense of fulfillment as well as the need for social interaction after the office no longer beckons (ie. keeping mentally & physically active) are the ones that resonate most with me.
And the fact that these need nurturing pre-retirement.
Good luck with your decision WW, look forward to hearing what you decide.
And carry on enjoying your retirements everyone else that has posted!
I took early retirement from teaching when I was 57 (now 64) to care for my father. He past 2 years later so my wife and I decided to move house. The first year or so was taken up by decorating. Three years ago the school asked me to return part time for 2 days a week. All my teacher friends told me not to do it but I foolishly did - I lasted 5 weeks! I didn’t realise how much had changed in the few years since I had left - it left a bitter taste in my mouth even though it was my fault for not listening to friends who were still working in education. After that (pre COVID) I did odd jobs for people in their homes. Since COVID we have been walking a lot every morning and then doing little jobs e.g. gardening. Have been cooking more - which I have really enjoyed, listening to more music and reading which I didn’t get much time for previously. Nowadays I don’t know where the time goes each day!
I have never worked a ‘regular’ job myself. I once graduated on a friday afternoon and the next monday morning went to the chamber of commerce together with a friend and we registered as a business.
From the day we started our adage has been ‘work to live, not live to work’, so we decided to make 20 hours our standard working week, to be distributed freely over the week.
This has worked out really well for us, it probably means we’ll never be ultra-competitive as a business, but the flipside is that in close to 25 years it has never felt like ‘work’, every hour just feels like a fun hobby to spend time on.
My situation is probably different to most others, but the best advice i could give personally is instead of trying to work really hard and retire early, try to work less and it might not even feel like work in the first place.
Hello, I took ‘early retirement’ at 52 I had a small pension from my RN service which increased from age 55. I also run a small business which doesnt make very much but serves a purpose. So there was a bit of income, not much but having put two children through private education, taught us how to live without much surplus cash, I can reccomend it!
So all that was 10 years ago and I am very much enjoying life with a lot less stress and its stress that kills so you need to avoid it.
Like many on here I have had unexpected health issues and have also worked more hours than is healthy per week for a very long period of time. Age 66 and retired to France 8 years ago after a period of reduced working hours in a different area. I love the easy life but it does take some adjusting to. Do I miss the buzz, the rush, the travel, the city lifestyle? Well yes in parts but would I go back to it? Not a chance.
If you can fund early retirement, do it, but plan your new lifestyle adjustment.
Its not possible to generalise but in the Covid queue yesterday morning the guy in front of me said when you were younger you had the health, but not the money. He was refering mosly to exotic travel. Now (Covid excepted) you have the money but not the energy.
What ever you do you need the motive to get up in the morning and have some sort of structure to the day. There can be a lot of hours to fill.
I had to stand for 90 minutes to get the vaccine and at 77 that was not a lot of fun. My neighbour, five years older waited for two hours. Luckily the weather was in our favour.
We are all different of course, but I could happily have retired at the age of 18 and never run out of things to do.
By contrast, I have a colleague who retired at 65, sat at home for 6 months and got bored out of his mind. He phoned up and asked if he could come back to work, and is now happy again.
I’ve just passed 60 and would love to retire now. Another year or two to top up the pension and I should be there.
I retired in November 2019 just before my 56th birthday. It didn’t quite go to plan, the long distance walks,charity roles and visits to and from friends have been postponed due to COVID, but I don’t regret it for a moment. I loved my job and worked in the same company for 35 years, but I’m really pleased I have retired. I’d echo some,people’s comments above, it’s important to have some plans for your time. Not necessarily projects, but have enough hobbies and social groups for your needs. Dropping down from about 50 hours a week to nothing can be a shock to the system if you haven’t things to do. That can be as simple as listening to music and catching up on your boxsets.
Something I found worthwhile was working out what my post-retirement income was and living to that for the last year of work, so covering all bills, travel and normal spend on hobbies. (The extra money I allocated as ‘toy money” I didn’t spend all of it.) That way I had experience of living to my new means.
Living in the States, I am happily surprised at how early you folks can contemplate retirement. My wife and I have done pretty well by American standards. We are 63 and 61, and we could afford to retire tomorrow. She is a physical therapist at a nearby hospital, and treating patients feeds her soul. As she gets kicked up the administrative ladder there is less and less patient care, and she is happy to know that she doesn’t have to check boxes or count beans any longer than she can stand it. I examine patent applications for the federal government. I still respect and enjoy the work. We won’t be retiring until she wants to, and I am looking for something concrete to retire to–this has been stressed as important in retirement seminars, and I don’t really have that. Meanwhile, it is liberating to know that I am in it for sport. If all we are doing is increasing our kids’ inheritances, it’s good to know that they are successful enough that they won’t really need the money when the time comes.
As I often do, I didn’t really answer the question. This is just another perspective.
There are a very large number of people in the UK who have little or no pension provision, and will have no choice but to work until they reach the ‘official’ retirement age, which will be around 67 for most, when they will get a meagre state pension. On the other hand, for many it’s just a question of putting your mind to it, making a plan, and sticking to it. I did this somewhat later than I should have done, otherwise I would be retired by now, but at least I’m now on track.
There is also a dying breed (if you’ll pardon the rather unfortunate connotation!) of people who are lucky enough to have a decent final salary pension scheme, many of whom will have a sizable pension. The sad irony is that many large UK public and private employers have inadequate pots from which to pay these large pensions, and it is the people who are now working, with hugely reduced pension benefits and later retirement ages, who are bankrolling them.
That decision is important but fortunately not carved in stone. As others have mentioned, you can always change your plans after depending on circumstances.
I retired in December 2019 at 58. The plan was to move to a smaller house, and spend lots of time traveling Canada and the USA with our small travel trailer. We did that and really enjoyed it… for two months and then COVID-19 hit and the Canada-US border was closed.
I compensated with buying a digital piano and taking piano lessons for the first time of my life at 59 years old! I enjoy every minute and never get bored, but I may take on a 1-year temporary job 5 minutes away from home until that crazy period ends for good. I could use the money and restart the traveling project after anyway.
