Firstly, congratulations on your retirement.Originally Posted by Taunton Blue Genie
Secondly, what a shitter that someone who loves traveling is retiring into this situation, but it looks to be improving and I hope we hear more of your stories from your travels
As for doing a timetable, I think that is an excellent idea. I have often thought that retiring would be like breaking up from school for the summer months, only to return in September thinking "Oh, I didn't do any of that". I hope you stay in good health, but remember you will never be as young as you are today.
I have been saving extensively for my own retirement, and the plan is that I will pack in work in 10 years time when I hit 55. By that stage I will have paid for my house. I have no other debts. I will sell my house, move to a smaller one, and use that money to have a few years of fun and travel. If I have to return to work, it will not be in the stress riddled environment of my current expertise. The job pays well, and I have been chucking 20% of my wages into my pension, and the company have been putting in 10%. It will be a good pension.
"1. One's expertise at work won't ever exercised or sought after again
2. Not working seems like a guilty luxury to this person of working class stock when many people around the world are scratching about for a living
3. I don't feel old and decrepit enough to cease work. (A strange notion for some people but it was a concept that which was familiar to many of our parents)"
Point 1. So what? You've doubtless helped and shown plenty of people the ropes. I often think about advice I've received from a myriad of mentors who have long since departed the working life. That advice I have passed onto younger colleagues. Your expertise will carry on in various forms.
2. Guilt is the last thing you need to feel. Retirement is earnt. One way to alleviate this would be/ could be to do some volunteering work. Maybe on a once a week basis, whatever suits you. But, you don't owe anyone anything mate. Maybe you've got lucky in life, but luck is the reward of hard graft (except bad luck in health). I've had bad luck with a redundancy or two, that was out of my control. Getting a better job after each was because of skills I worked hard to get, and experiences I worked hard to find. I doubt it's much different for any of us.
3. Thanks to modern science and medicine, and modern work practices, people are no longer going from 6 weeks of retirement to a grave because of coal dust, chronic illnesses from working with asbestos, or just sheer exhaustion. These are all things that you made possible by working for 48.5 years and paying taxes to help educate these people.
Best of luck with your retirement. Please don't follow the example of some on here who will happily spunk their hard earned leisure talking shit. That would give you every reason to feel guilty. We live once. There is no after life. There is no reincarnation. We are a long time dead. Get out there and live the life you have earnt and well done.
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