I started this blog almost two years ago thinking that 60 was a good age to retire at, no real reason but mainly because that was when my parents retired. I had read all Mr Money Mustashe and because I hadn’t formally started on this FIRE journey in my thirties believed that there was no other option than the 60 retirement target.
Since then have done a lot more reading and watched numerous podcasts and then recalculated the potential pathways we could take. Numerous lightbulb moments and also taking into account things that have and are happening globally; ongoing pandemic, recent share market significant drop and the great resignation.
Into this mix, is my own role as a health manager and over the last two years working at the pointy end of the pandemic response. And like many other folks questioning whether working the 8 to 5+ “is all there is” to get us to this retirement dream?
So where are we now?
With my calculations and numerous spreadsheets (you know I mean numerous), we have enough savings, coupled with NZ Govt Super and my NZDF super confirmed that we can cease full-time employment in December 2023.
But as I said reading and watching blogs/podcasts we are not sure about suddenly ending full-time employment straight away. So done some recalculations and if we wanted to and coupled with the “I have had enough” feelings about work, am looking at both of us going down to 3 days per week starting next year. Haven’t discussed this with work at this stage to see if it is indeed doable. With Ms S she isn’t sure either. If we can do this, we are looking at this approach for 2023 and then either cutting down to 2 days per week for a further year or two.
Two of the key factors are maintaining a connection with the “outside” world and easing ourselves into our new way of living. My brother-in-law spoke to me about this years ago and I had actually forgotten about this, with my key driver was just about stopping work.
But on the other side, there are other factors to consider. My colleague was speaking just last week about a number of her friends that had stopped work at the same time as their other halves and almost had to go through the whole Bruce Tuckman approach, you know the one; forming storming, norming and performing approach just to be able to live full time together in their retirement 🤣🤣. Jeepers I hope that isn’t us…..
So this year will give us the time to fully plan and practice living on the annual spend that I have based my calculations on, continue to invest, focus on health and think about what we will be actually doing over the next 1-2, 3-5, 5-10 and so on.
So we just need to implement the plan, you think it would be easy!!!! However I feel it’s slowly all starting to come together.
Very happy days