Early Retirement at 57

Yep and also you dont have to travel very far to find wonderful locations.

Northern Spain for example is fantastic and easily reached and you can use the train network in some european countries which is light years ahead of what we are used to here.

And the good thing is there are significant senior citizen discounts in a lot of european countries.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for older people to travel! Rather that if "travel" - as opposed to à la carte short-term tourism - is a major objective, then waiting until you're into a period of your life when you naturally have less stamina and more risk of health problems is not really a great strategy.

 it's a lot harder to find the time to travel more if you're working full time regardless of income. It's also harder to take advantage of midweek airfares etc. The reason I'm dumping my spare cash into my pension is to hopefully ensure I don't end up time rich and cash poor.

This is the paradox I see all the time amongst my own non-retired peers (and lots of contributors to this thread): working away like demons to earn enough money to dump into a pension pot so as to be able to have the kind of lifestyle that I've been leading for the last 15 years on the back of a few months' work a year at most. Why? Why work full time when there's so much else to do in life? And why wait until you're 65, 60, 55, even 50 to do the cool stuff?

Yep- the “non-financial” factors are equally if not more important.
I know one person who retired at about 56-57 on full pension after working just under 40 years - it was part of an early retirement deal.

She has spent the last 20 years out on a golf course and travelling as well as maintaining a wide circle of friends and of course extended family - retirement was made for her- she’s so focused and motivated to get the most out of life.

Then I know others who have floundered after retirement - they’re not sure how to fill their days - I remember reading the great chef Keith Floyd’s autobiography - he semi retired to southern Spain and essentially drank every day - just because you have money doesn’t mean you’ll have a happy retirement - it’s very personality based and some will need to work a lot harder at “enjoying” themselves than others.

Speaking personally I’d really have to plan out what I want to do if I retired tomorrow morning - I’m hopeful for an early retirement at 60 all going well but my days will need to be filled with constructive things like exercise, talking, reading and hopefully some travel - if I went to live in somewhere like Spain or Portugal I know I’d get the sun fresh air and exercise but you’d want to ensure you don’t fall into becoming a big cheap booze drinker like so many retirees do in those places.

Having a life partner helps enormously too but both need to agree on what a successful retirement looks like on a day to day basis - I can imagine life could get quite monotonous and mentally challenging for some - that’s why you often hear of people having heart attacks and dying within a few years and sometimes months after retiring - it can be a very stressful time

wandering off to different countries for months at a time as I've done in the past.

There's no way I'll travel like that again before I retire, for the simple reason that parenthood doesn't permit it.

Well, now: in my case, that was the very reason my wife and I opted out of being slaves to the work-till-you-drop system. We felt it was more important for our children to grow up as travellers (no, not that kind of traaaavlur :g ) than for either of us to be thinking of maxxing out our pension contributions and tax allowances.

We'd already run into trouble for taking them out of school for a few days at a time (when they were still in primary) so we eventually said fekkit and took them out completely while we changed our own adult lifestyle for something more sustainable. Even when we put them back into mainstream education (mainly so they'd learn to speak a new language like natives), it was on condition that we could take them out/away again when we felt that the educational value of the trip outweighed any benefit of being in a classroom for the period in question.

Of course this is/was a lifestyle choice, and many people don't want to take that road; but there was - for us - also the economic argument, i.e.: if we were going to be living in a "no-income" fashion, then it was essential to take advantage of mid-week/off-season trips. Mind you, our interpretation of going on holiday/going travelling with children was very different to what you see described on the holiday forum here - none of this "all mod cons holiday camp" carry-on or theme-park wastefulness! Why bother with a Disney fake castle when you can poke around in the dungeons of a real one?

The natural consequence of doing things that way was that when the children were grown up and gone (or heading that way), it made more sense for both of us to "unretire" and rejoin the workforce on our own terms, not at all burnt out or weary, and to be happy selling our services for a fair wage - on and off - until we're mentally and/or physically unable to do so.

I am with you. Aiming to retire at 58 or 59 depending on how things go. I will be mortgage free but will have a kid, hopefully, in college. So that is the only possible fly in the ointment…along with a drastic economic shockwave!

I saw this on the Informed Decisions blog - an independent Financial Advisor out of Co. Meath I think.

I thought it interesting on the subject of how much one will need in retirement. Might be worth a read……

Bottom line, according to him:

"Based on this research (and my view is that it is closely reflective of the Irish costs), in order to be ‘comfortable’ as a couple in retirement, we need €70k per year net"

How Much Do I Need To Retire Comfortably in Ireland (informeddecisions.ie)

hard to take that serious when using father ted characters who hate each other! My take is that you will learn to live as I do now on the income we have

People only do home improvements when they retire?

Or use their lump sum.

That guy isn't living in the real world anyway

Precisely. The lump sum more than covers any renovations or improvements. While our combined pensions are over that €70k figure, I can assure you we could live very comfortably on much less. It's surprising, when mortgage is cleared and kids have moved out, how much less you actually need. You'll live comfortably, have holidays and change the car etc on a good bit less than €70k and still be able to save if you want.

Definition is toss :)

a subscription to a streaming service - what a tenner a month, what the hell?

several UK minibreaks - is this staying in a caravan v staying in a 5* hotel…

foreign holiday - cheap and cheerful to spain v 5* luxury cruise..

Its just so arbitrary, it means nothing..