Thinking About: Retirement

I’m 56 in April so my thoughts have been turning more and more to retirement. The only thing (OK the main thing) keeping me at work is the fact that, at the moment, I simply can’t afford to retire as I have a powerful need to eat from time to time. But 60 is looking good (or at least do-able). My mortgage finishes in 2020 so that’s one less thing to be concerned about and I have a policy that matures that year too which will help. My company pension is claimable from 60 too and with 32 years in harness by then the pay-out isn’t bad. OK, it’s not exactly enough to live on (not quite) but with my savings and a little applied frugality it should get me to my State Pension age if I manage to live that long (crosses fingers). I don’t need much to keep me going – a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table. As long as I have that I’m doing OK. I’m not planning on living the high life once I stop working so I doubt if I’ll miss that! I even said to people – after that asked me if I could afford to retire – that I’d rather eat cold beans out of the tin than work myself into an early grave. If I would actually do that….. well, I don’t know. Although I like to think that I would.

When I talked about taking ‘early’ retirement a few weeks ago my boss asked me “Won’t you be bored?” I just looked at her, chuckled and remarked that I didn’t come into work for something to do. Personally if I retire at 60 and live 10, 15 or 20 years more and spend most of that time sitting at home reading books I won’t consider that time wasted in the least. As to boredom – I’m going to have the time to really delve into things, to immerse myself in the world’s knowledge and to follow my interests wherever they lead for as long as I want to follow them. Who knows what I might find on that journey. It’ll be like going on a classic quest meeting interesting (if often dead) people along the way and sitting by their fireside on a cold and windy night (just like this one) discussing the meaning of life and the really big questions like ‘Do Penguins have knees?’

One of the things I’m hoping to do is to push my reading level back to that of my teenage years when I cleared 100 books a year on average. If I could get to those levels again I’d be very happy indeed. I’m also giving some serious (back burner) thought to doing a PhD. The problem I have, at the moment at least, is that I’m not sure what to do it in – which is a bit of an issue. It’ll definitely be in the political philosophy area (well, OK, probably) but there will definitely be a heavy historical component too. It’ll need to be something I’m passionate about, something that I can delve into, investigate and keep on digging. That will definitely take some deep thought. It’s a most perplexing three pipe problem….. [muses]. I’m hoping that something I read in the next few years will create a spark to builds and builds into quite a conflagration…. At least that’s the theory!

Ideally I’d like a lottery win (wouldn’t we all) to take a year or two off the 4 years I’ve yet to serve at the coalface but the odds of that are pretty long. It’s a dream that I shouldn’t really think about or it’ll just depress me. Oh, to win a million and spend the rest of my life in my own library! We can all dream – and that’s mine. Retirement here I come, one day at a time.