A decade of early retirement – the non-money bit

Today is the 31st of August, and it was on this day 10 years ago that we reached our Tipping Point. Nothing to do with the TV show of the same name based on one of our favourite seaside arcade games, but the day we had enough residual income coming in to cover our bills.

Jay has written a great post about the financial side of things. How we did it, what’s changed over that decade and what we do now. So, I thought I’d cover off the non-money bit. What is is like to retire early and what do we do all day?

Swimming against the tide to financial freedom was hard, it caused me to have anxiety and depression, and when it actually arrived it was a tad surreal. I’d already quit work a few months earlier due to anxiety. The fact that we had almost reached our goal made that decision much easier. Jay was our only breadwinner, handing in his notice once we reached the Tipping Point. A month later he left the 9 to 5 and the alarm clock was switched off.

At first it’s like a loooong holiday. You go and visit places and do stuff you’ve dreamed about while sitting in the office. We spent 18 months away in our motorhome; touring Morocco with friends and finally getting to tour Scandinavia – as we hadn’t managed to fit it in on our earlier two year-long motorhome tour.

We’ve found that when we’re back home we feel a tad guilty about not being at work when everyone else is, so we constantly try to find things to do to keep busy – writing, running, even DIY (although that normally waits until it seriously needs doing).

We have an unwritten rule that on weekdays the TV stays off until after 5pm, or I would seriously lose days to This Morning and Homes Under The Hammer. We’ve done this ever since we first started our retirement, even during Covid lockdown we’d only fire up the TV from Boris o’Clock (the nightly Downing Street briefings). At the weekend, or if one of us is poorly, we’re a bit more relaxed about it, and sometimes take in an afternoon movie or watch some sport. Without the TV some days fly past, others can drag, but it does make us look for other stuff to do.

With no monthly pay cheque coming in (our various residual income streams all pay out at different times throughout the month so it never really feels like pay day) we did worry if we’d done the right thing. We coped with this by calling it ‘our crazy life experiment’. We kept tabs on what we had coming and and going out, and if it all went Pete Tong we said we’d just get a job at a local shop or as a delivery driver.

After two years Jay went back to the 9 to 5 for a few months. We were feeling a bit ‘travelled out’ and were at a cross roads as to what to do next. It was lovely having, what now felt like, a big fat wad of cash appearing into our bank account each month, but quite quickly it became obvious that it wasn’t the right thing to do.

We’d tasted freedom and it had changed us. We likened it to the choice of the blue or red pill in the film The Matrix. After taking the Financial Freedom pill, Jay didn’t want to be cooped up in an office. Colleagues complained how much they hated the place while buying expensive cars and huge houses or discussing the thousands they’d spent on a two week holiday. It just didn’t sit right. Some days he wanted to scream at them – spend less and have more freedom – but it would have fallen on deaf ears.

This, the endless office politics, the glacial pace of change and the pointless international commuting was making him unhappy. A chart went on our wall where he scored each day between 1 and 5 in terms of enjoyment. At the end of the month work was nowhere near a 50% pass mark, so in November of 2017 Jay retired, again, now with confirmation that Corporate Life wasn’t for us anymore.

We were back to no more early morning alarm clock and no more sitting in rush hour traffic – unless we badly misjudged a trip out somewhere, but even then we just sit there and use it to remind ourselves that we’re so pleased we don’t have to do this every day. In March 2018 we set off on a three month motorhome tour as life just felt simpler when not at home. With a plan to decide what to do when we got back.

It turns out we’re a bit rubbish at planning. We probably should have realised this when the plan for a year-long motorhome tour was ‘get to Calais and turn right’. We’d always try to plan too big, or too far ahead. This is probably due to a crisis of conscience and the ever nagging question of ‘are we wasting our hard earned freedom?’ We’ve now learned to only look one year ahead when it comes to life planning, or just six months if we’re really struggling. Our financial planning is another matter and for that we’ve got spreadsheets galore and different scenarios taking us to age 100!

We’ve turned a lot of the focus and drive we used to gain financial freedom, towards keeping physically fit. We both run several times a week and go to the gym. Jay is much more competitive than me and trains hard to get faster. He’s taken on the London Marathon three times, after qualifying for ‘Good for Age’ places. My running is much more social, my running buddies and I call ourselves ‘the party at the back’. We both enjoy exercise in our own ways, and reap in the added mental health benefits too.

Since Covid (also known as 2020) we’ve spent a lot less time touring and more time at home in Kimberley. Partly because we love being part of the local community here, but also because we want to be around to help support our parents. Jay’s Mum passed away in 2020 and while his Dad is busier than we are most days, he still needs a bit of support with some things.

My Mum has been in a care home with advanced dementia for a few years now. She doesn’t really know who I am these days, but she realises I’m a friendly face. My Dad still lives at home but is increasingly needing support, I’ve just managed to get him to agree to let carers in a few times a week to help him, so we can get away for a few more weeks at a time.

A few years ago my parents signed paperwork to give myself and my brother Lasting Power of Attorney over their affairs. While it now means I’m looking after all their finances and health decisions too, having the LPoA has made it so much easier when speaking to banks, doctors and social services. If you don’t have this in place for your parents, or even yourselves, please do it now. You don’t need a solicitor, you can do it yourself online.

As we’re back home a fair bit, when our tenant renting the rooms in our house gave notice in 2023, we moved into the house. It was a bit strange at first because in the van and Cooler (the studio apartment we lived in) we could always see each other. Now we had a house with several rooms, it took some getting used to all that space.

Moving back into the house brought with it a bit of financial anxiety. Would our crazy plan still work now we no longer split the bills and had no rent coming in? We decided to fill the gap by turning the Cooler into The Kimberley Hideaway which we rent out through AirBnB. This gives us an income, stuff to do (mainly cleaning and laundry) and flexibility to switch it off when we want to go away.

The one thing we have realised over this past decade is that it’s great to say ‘I want to retire early to travel’, but you need to think about ‘then what?’. What will you do once you’re not bothered about looking around another church or castle? It may never happen, but something else may come along to curb your travel plans, so you’ll still need an idea of what else you’ll do. Whatever it is, we’ve realised it helps if it gives you some sense of purpose. Volunteering, helping others, whatever it is, it will help to stop the nagging worry that you’re ‘wasting your hard earned freedom’.

A decade down the line and I think we’ve mostly laid to rest the guilt, uncertainties, doubts and worries. If they do crop up, between us we’ve got ways to deal with them – a reassurance, a look at a spreadsheet, a walk in nature when we should be in the office, or a sit in rush hour traffic. So, back to that burning question from the top of this post, What do we do all day? The answer – whatever we want. And it’s wonderful.

Ju x