Congrats sish, what a feeling. Only about 25 years behind you!
I couldn't disagree more.
If you work when you can afford not to and you hate it, fair enough. I could have stopped a good few years back, but this is what I like doing - I manage my own time, get to do acquisitions and integrations, run a finance team my own way, and have the adrenaline-fuelled fun of growing a company and hopefully selling it for a bucketload of cash. Keeps my brain running at high speed, keeps me satisfied. Plus it pays me very well indeed; I need the income to cover my expensive enduro bike habit!
I'm slightly dreading retirement, to be honest.
Congratulations Sish, enjoy those last few weeks knowing that you are moving on to better things. It must be an amazing feeling.
Office monkey is kindly reminding everyone how many days I have left at work.
Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves
Congrats sish101 and I don't mind admitting being rather jealous. Hopefully 4 or 5 years behind you. Enjoy the freedom and please do report back to let us know how it's going.![]()
Lucky monkey! Enjoy your freedom.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
Sat having a coffee at Bettys in Ilkey,over hearing a chap on his mobile at the next table(everyone could have heard him!)chatting about work from what I and everyone else probably gathered!.
Thought how nice that my conversations never concern work & thankfully were no longer part of that World.
But my Brothers passing helped me make the decision to retire sooner than expected.
We did look at our savings and investments to see how it might impact our lives without our incomes.It didn't and so we can do exactly as we did prior to retirement.
Love it......
Last edited by P9CLY; 19th August 2023 at 14:53.
Enjoy the retirement, I packed in Ja 2001, aged 44, after 3 months I picked up some part time stuff to keep me busy, jobs grew in days needed but I stopped jobs when the mood took me, nice to be able to work if I wanted.
I met with a good friend last night and he had recently taken the decision to quit. He strongly recommended this book to work out optimum balance between enjoying life and not leaving money !
I shouldn’t state he doesn’t have children and I’m not a financial adviser.
I ordered a copy this morning and it was delivered this afternoon. Already learnt a new phrase, “FIRE” generation.
Financially Independent Retired Early..
That reminds me of a website I came across researching FIRE a while back.
https://cfiresim.com/
Interesting and quite fun to put in your numbers and run simulations, there are a couple of videos on Youtube that give an overview of how to use it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YczFX6Hb2cs&t=199s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg7NX2Lx9wY&t=1221s
Similar tool here which I believe uses UK data for the simulation rather than US which is what I assume the above one does.
https://www.2020financial.co.uk/pens...or/#calculator
Well, I've reached retirement age - but it feels like I am retiring early ! What is that all about??
Must still enjoy the work......................
Congratulations, I’ve just heard that due to a recent EU civil service tribunal case my retirement date is now in just under 4 years time, instead of the previous 6.5 years.
And I’ll have my full pension by then so I’m pretty chuffed!
Note: Wife is not so happy
Another useful video from Shacky has landed.
https://youtu.be/ECOCa6FS8C8?si=pvA_6I9d7TJjNu20
I found that in addition to watching his videos, I listen to the audio only when I’m out walking etc.
Seems to make me concentrate more, but on it you can’t then see the graphics.
Also downloaded the model he linked to in one of his videos which was quite interesting to play around and model different scenarios with. Lots to think about.
Pension statement arrived for 2023 confirming over 10% indexation uplift in my DB accrual. Now just need to fund the gap until I can take it!
And that's me done. Last day today. Busy tying up loose ends. Had a steady stream of people into the office to say bye, eat cake and have a coffee and chat. I was quite emotional when the time came to leave and hand over my phone, laptop and pass. Good job I didn't bump into anyone on my walk to the car park.
Had a meal out last week with my old IT team from Process Technologies. I haven't seen some of them in person since before COVID. It was a great night out and looking along the table I saw a collection of friends, not just colleagues.
There was a moment last week when I felt a pang of emotion. I came back from getting a coffee to find everyone with their headphones on and in a Teams meeting. I sat down but couldn't find a meeting in my calendar... turns out it was for a project in October. So I hadn't been invited.
Had a meal out tonight with my family. I've come home and opened a fine bottle of whisky that someone bought as a leaving gift.
Mixed emotions, I have to say. Not the elation I was expecting. But I've only been left a few hours. I'm sure I'll appreciate my new time-rich status in the days and weeks to come.
Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves
^^^^^
Enjoy it, first day of the rest of your life!.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Congratulations on your retirement, plenty of time to do hobbies and use your time as you want. You've earned it, enjoy!
Congrats sish. I imagine it must be a little surreal and is one of life's biggest transitions - will take some getting used to.
Enjoy
Wonderful to hear that you’ve started the next chapter. It’s always weird when you leave somewhere and stop getting invites to meetings etc.
But, they’ll still be on calls and in meetings tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. And you no longer need to.
Wishing you all the very best in your retirement.
Congratulations. Some don’t make it that far.
From my experience you will soon wonder how you had any time to fit any work into your schedule! I hope you have sorted out some interests outside work life. There are many.
worst case - you could always go contracting (if you really miss those team meetings - personally I couldn’t run fast enough from the headsets and stand up / sit down calls).
martyn.
“ Ford... you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.” HHGTTG
Enjoy your freedom.
Congratulations, a new chapter begins!
^^^ 57.
Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves
Congratulations .. I'm looking forward to retiring in a few years' time. My own retirement will be a very low key affair, I've worked from home for over ten years and usually, I only see my colleagues at the Christmas do. I'll send an email round and that'll be it! Always assuming I don't make another career move in the meantime, but I'm trying my best not to.
As a vaguely related aside, I listened to a podcast this morning about maintaining happiness and purpose in retirement (not that I'm there yet).
It included an interesting interview with Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE, who's book I've ordered as a result.
He suggests five simple actions to measurably improve one's happiness: listen to music, get outdoors, socialise, help people, and undertake new experiences. Sounds like a good basis to keep one going in retirement!
I really enjoy my jobs. The monetary reward is a side effect. I'm more concerned about the prospect of being physically incapable of doing the job. For context 3 days a week in the dental practice that I've worked in for nearly 38 years & one day a week teaching the final year dental students at Bristol Dental School. Great fun & rewarding in both monetary terms & non-monetary ones.
Breaking my neck & back (C2 & T8) 6 weeks ago made me concentrate my mind on this & I'm happy to find that I can still do the job!
Last edited by trident-7; 26th September 2023 at 19:17.
I have tried to convince myself that I should retire early, just because I can. I can take my private pension in two months time at minimum retirement age.
I am a technical specialist in my area with a level of expertise you can only get from low decades in the industry, and not much competition from younger people who all seem to want so desperately to become project managers, engineering managers etc. with the bucket load of stress that come with those roles.
I find my work rewarding and I am contracted to work 36 hours per week and do no more hours than that, and I am well rewarded for it. Never worked a weekend in 32 years, or late into the evening either. Never looked or answered an emails on vacation.
I get 28 days vacation and buy 10 days from the company to give me nearly 8 weeks per year vacation, plus bank holidays.
If you are in a manual, uninteresting or stressful job I totally get retiring early, but with good pay, no stress, sensible hours and interesting work, I am now in no rush even though I could.