It’s almost a year since I started having thoughts of early retirement. At the time I was struggling with boredom at work, problems with getting the right care for my elderly mother and feeling trapped and worried that I had reached where I was going in life. Like many people I just needed a little push to make the decision to retire early.
That push came from two directions. Firstly, my elderly mother passed away and I was left contemplating what she had done with her life over the last ten years and the whole meaning of life in general. The truth was she had been generally happy, but hadn’t done anything nor gone anywhere for years and had even withdrawn herself to the point where she made constant excuses to stay indoors.
The second push came from a school reunion. It wasn’t especially well attended, perhaps 30 or 40 at most. Whilst I was happy to see those that attended, the majority spoke of growing health issues; diabetes, weight problems, even heart attacks. Towards the end we raised a glass to those who had passed away. There were more than I thought. I think we named seven from roughly one hundred that left Orleton Park School in 1983. It was at that point we, and I say we because my wife also came to the same conclusion, decided to retire early at 57 and 54 respectively and take our chances in the world.
It didn’t happen quickly. After declining in to dementia my mother passed away before Christmas and there were her affairs to sort out. We had to give our own finances a good overhaul to see if retirement was an affordable option. There were practicalities to consider, such as giving 12 weeks notice at work and there were three adult children to inform that the bank of mom and dad would be closing and no more loans would be issued. And of course we had to think what we would replace 40 hours work every week with, without getting bored.
Fortunately, my wife helped with the later. During COVID she had taken part in numerous virtual long distance walks and it was her dream to complete the actual 500 mile Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain, having walked the virtual one. That took care of the first 6 weeks. From my point of view I did not wish to spend another winter in the cold with only six or seven hours of real daylight and travelling to South East Asia over winter looked like an affordable way to achieve that.
So here we are in Thailand on the first day of December. It’s 28 degrees under the shade of the patio terrace at Green Canyon Resort where I’m writing this. We are three weeks in to our South East Asia adventure and we have successfully completed the Camino de Santiago in 37 days (35 days walking and 2 rest days). Shortly after first light this morning I went for a three mile run and a dip in the pool and we have just had a superb breakfast.
From a retirement perspective we are only a few months in and it’s probably too early to have anything other than some initial thoughts.
On the affordability front, I’m still not sure how the finances are going to pan out. My military pension has only just restarted after several weeks battling with the people who administer pensions for the armed forces. My tax code has been wrongly adjusted by the HMRC because apparently I didn’t pay enough tax last year and they need to recover the underpayment through tax even though my income is now one third what it was. These combined mean we still don’t know what our monthly income will be on a regular basis. As far as outgoings are concerned, I think we are spending a little more than we budgeted for but have no way of really knowing until we have been away a few more months. Regardless, our plan was always to reduce our savings pool each month to bolster my pension. We certainly won’t run out of money for the next five years but after that we might have to see.
With regard to filling the 40 hour a week void left by not working, it’s a bit of mixed bag. Jointly we both agree that this has been the best decision ever and we are having an absolute blast travelling around and exploring new places. In particular the six weeks walking the Camino de Santiago was a great physical challenge and we met more people in those six weeks than we had met in the previous six years. From my own point of view there is no void to fill. I would happily have retired the day after I left school and wild horses will not drag me back to work unless I run out of money totally and have sold every asset I own. Conversely, whilst my wife is extremely happy travelling, she has already conceded that she may look for a part time job next spring when we plan to spend the summer back in the UK.
If you are considering whether early retirement is for you my only advice is that if you do retire and you run out of money you can always go back to work and get some more, but if you run out of time you can never get any more.