Re: Retirement good or not so good?
Originally Posted by
Lion Queen
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my husband and I are really looking forward to retirement and talk about it all the time.
I actually quite like my job but I'd still prefer to retire because I never seem to have enough hours in a day. If I could choose my own hours at work I might even not retire but I hate the robotic, groundhog day feeling every day.
My husband really wants to retire because he's fed up of the stress of work and he's so tired (he's diabetic)
Then I get to thinking, oh heck I'm wishing my time away and I should be grateful that I'm well enough to even go to work, some would kill to be in my position.
Saying all that, yes I'd really love to retire and do things when I please, if I please.
My husband always says he could be dead by time we get round to retiring so we should do it now but I'm not sure we'd want to have to pull in the purse strings as we only have two small pensions so could we even survive, I suppose we would as I think you live to your means but I love to spend soooooo............hmmmmmmmm do I want to retire? I'm confusing myself
It is possible to continue working, part-time if you wish and your employer is OK with this, and claim State Pension. I only mention this as that's what I did and in fact semi-retired at 60.
https://www.gov.uk/working-retirement-pension-age
I felt like you say your husband does, tired and stressed. All I had done, or that's how it felt at times, was to work. My offspring had been taken off by their mother many years previously, they lived a 50 mile round trip away. My parents had moved to the coast so that was a 250 mile round trip. All I seemed to have done was work, another 50 mile round trip each day and drive here, there and everywhere to work and to keep in touch with children and parents.
On semi-retirement I realised that suited me OK for a while. Then five years' later I decided enough was enough, a heart attack two years' after semi-retiring was the final decider, so retired fully.
Nowadays, twelve years on from that, I am enjoying all that I had been unable to due to commitments and work. My family cannot understand why I am quite happy to enjoy my home and freedom. They seem to believe I should be out doing this, that and everything else. As I say to them, it's unique for me to enjoy what I worked all those years for, plus I also need a well-earned rest!
On the financial side, it's surprising what you can manage on, there are savings from not having to travel to work and other areas where it's possible to manage alright. Try sitting down with all the figures of your outgoings and see where you could save, then imagine yourself semi-retired and what you could do with that time. If it didn't suit you then you could possibly return to full-time work.
Your husband says about being dead before you get round to retiring, with my experience of a heart attack that brought exactly that home to me and in a big way. We only come this way but once and we really should be working to live and not living to work. That's my theory anyway and something the Australians appear to have sorted, they have a far better work / life balance than we have here in the UK.