When and how did you afford to retire? (1 Viewer)

[kcy]

Totally agree! My daughter is in her 5 year of a 6 year course at uni to become a vet. She will be very poorly paid when she qualifies :-(. So planning on helping her with house buying etc when we down size. Also she doesnt want to leave uni as she likes being kept

goodness me,you poor things. I presume you just have the one. Any more and how would you manage? You'd have to buy a block of apartments to put them in.

 

[Spidey]

goodness me,you poor things. I presume you just have the one. Any more and how would you manage? You'd have to buy a block of apartments to put them in.

Have anther daughter doing gcse's but she will probably go the IT route. So better paid

 

[Motörhead Fun]

Ye gods people - its not about grass is greener.
Its about making the choice about when to retire... About making the best with what you have.
Without a doubt, public services pension provision was one of the advertised benefits which went along with the role.

But who knew 30 or 40 years ago that government raids on private pension funds would make final salary schemes untenable.

In my case:
I joined a private company (BA) 30 years ago which had a fully funded contributory pension scheme but mandatory retirement age of 55.
Decades pass
Governments raid the schemes, change the accounting rules & abolish mandatory retirement ages.
Result is that the company can no longer afford the pension scheme but is legally obliged to provide what it agreed to.
I was able to work a further 3 years beyond 55 which added 50% to my pension = result .
However my pension is not a benefit - it is deferred salary. The employer & the employees both contributed.

And before anyone thinks lucky you - or jammy git or smug bastard...
2 months after I voluntarily chose to 'retire', the company offered a severance package - had I waited 6 months I'd be £40+k better off .

Luck plays the biggest part, despite our life choices but it doesn't matter...
Retirement is like taking another job - in a different country - until you sign up, you never know if it will be right.

For me, its about adjustment to the life I can comfortably afford, not necessarily the one I envy.
Many motorhomers have better newer shinier vans than me but that doesn't matter because we all enjoy the lifestyle best we can.

Retirement used to be enforced - now its a choice.
Having free will is more difficult.

[apologies for the rambling ramble... got to do something whilst my freezer defrosts].

If a BA pension is just deferred salary due to your contributions why ido BA have a pension deficit greater than £3 billion?

Good luck to you but the truth is that pension deficits in the private sector which result from final salary schemes are paid for by loss of dividends n defined contribution pension schemes.

As I said, good luck but anyone that thinks their contributions to final salary schemes covers the costs are kidding theirselves

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[Langtoftlad]

If a BA pension is just deferred salary due to your contributions why ido BA have a pension deficit greater than £3 billion?

I did not say just my contribution.
Deficit due to, amongst other reasons;
- BA taking a contributions holiday.
- Changes to accounting rules.
- Brown's raid on pension fund dividends.
- Life expectancy is higher than historical actuarial assumptions.

As I said, good luck but anyone that thinks their contributions to final salary schemes covers the costs are kidding theirselves

Sorry - not kidding myself in the slightest
My final salary scheme is deferred salary
- re-read my post ...
"The employer & the employees both contributed."

Unfortunately many factors have lead to the demise of final salary schemes so I disagree that those schemes deficits are the sole cause of reduced dividends and/or the creation of defined contribution schemes.

Thank you for your good luck wishes .

 

[mikebeaches]

We're in Caterbury Aire just now after an amazing 2 weeks in France. We're travelling back up to Scotland today and start back at work on Tuesday. Met lots of lovely people on sites who were over for a month or longer and they didn't look much older than us ( we're 54 and 53). I would love to know how and when people managed to give up work and travel more? It's a pipe dream for us at the moment

Always a difficult decision, knowing when you can afford to retire. I wrestled with the conundrum for some time before finally taking the plunge just before my sixtieth birthday. Thankfully, six years later it's all going OK, and we have adequate funds to live on.

Reading the October edition of the Saga magazine I came across details of an interactive calculator intended to provide a forecast of whether you'll have enough money. So I gave it a try and was moderately impressed - certainly would have been handy 7 or 8 years ago when I needed to determine if it was time to jump. The calculator doesn't require you to enter your name or any personal identity information. It also provides some norms of what an 'average' person might require in retirement.

https://www.sagainvestments.co.uk/look-ahead

 

[Deneb]

I would also recommend Retire Easy. I have been using the free version for a couple of years now, although they have just launched a subscription version which allows multiple scenarios to be created along with other additions. The couples version is useful if there are two people's incomes, pensions and assets etc to be taken into account.

It's more in-depth than the Saga calculator. You can play with different levels of inflation and investment returns.

https://www.retireeasy.co.uk/

I'd also recommend cFireSim for running Monte Carlo risk simulations.

http://www.cfiresim.com/input.php

Prestwood also have a free to use version of their "Truth" financial planning software as used by professional advisors. You have to register to use it, but I've never had any unsolicited contact from them or anyone else as a result.

http://www.truthlite.co.uk/

You can probably guess that I've been agonising over when to retire for a couple of years now. I've been conscious of falling into the "Just one more year" syndrome and have recently decided that its time. The tools I've mentioned above have been very helpful to me, together with a wealth of knowledge on the Pensions and Retirement forum at MoneySavingExpert.com

Royal London also had a good retirement planner, in some ways I preferred it to Retire Easy, but they've just withdrawn it as a strategic business decision from what I can gather.

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[Manxcat]

I had a seizure in June. Never been ill before. While in hospital contemplating mortality I realisedon't that now is the time to retire. Working 70 hour weeks, seven days a week had got too much.

Catherine finishes work at the end of the year., then we are free to live the dream. Finances? Well we should book OK, better to be happy and alive.

Ps my calculations are that we should be able to live reasonably at about 30k pa

Pps I am now fully fixed, just recovering from major abdominal surgery.

 

[thIOM]

Hi Manxcat. You are right, it is better to be happy and alive. Living here on the Island is quire expensive and I wish that my gold-plated fat cat Government pension was £30k a year.

However, it is surprising how much money you can not so much save but avoid spending when retired. I did not realise that going to work was actually that expensive!