Retirement
My carer’s duties ended on April 7th 2022 when my Mother moved into a care home. I stopped claiming Carer’s Allowance (£69.70) from the Department of Work and Pensions and decided to take a few weeks to rest and consider what I was going to do next. Naturally, being 54 years of age, the most immediate consideration has been one of employment. We all need an income to survive. At present the State Pension Age in the UK for men is 67. This is when you will receive your State Pension, which is based upon your National Insurance Contributions that you have paid throughout your working life. That is 13 years away, hence why I’ve been considering returning to work. However, Mrs P took early retirement from the Civil Service seven years ago and raised the point that if I returned to full time work, we would no longer have so much time together. Although caring for my parents has been tough, it revolved around a schedule thus affording Mrs P and I windows of opportunity to do things.
With this in mind, I decided to investigate whether part time work is more viable? IT support and management, project management and short term IT contracts tend not to have part time options, so I decided to check out local work of a more general nature. I investigated vacancies in local government and small business. I then spoke to the staff at my local supermarket and newsagents to see what employment was available. The results were very interesting. If I want to return to most fields of IT it is not too difficult. Short term contracts such as a hardware rollout in a hospital or across a series of offices are paying good money for experienced staff, now that so much migrant labour is not available. But taking such work would mean spending extended periods of time away from home, which is not something I desire. The alternative would be to take a position such as an IT Manager for a small business, possibly in Central London. But that raises the spectre of commuting and again is more than likely to be a full time position.
Therefore, I decided to look more into local, part time work as this would theoretically suit my needs. I want to have at least two days a week available for me and Mrs P to spend time together. Financially speaking, the part time job would only have to pay a specific figure that I’ve worked out that I need to get by. However, the more people I spoke to, the more I discovered that is not how things work. Many do not get to work the hours that they want and tend to have little say when they do work. The pay is low, the workload excessive and the general environment pressurised and uncaring. One young man I regularly spoke to at my local supermarket said it was like being on a treadmill and akin to being a prisoner. There was little or no respite from the daily slog and he felt like an asset that was just there to be used when his employers found it convenient. This gave me pause for thought. Why would I want to do such work? Why would anyone want to do it other than out of necessity?
I have had good jobs in the past that I have earned through my skills and experience. I have undertaken them well because that’s what I feel is the foundation of the contract between myself and my employer. It is a civil and polite quid pro quo. But I have never seen my work as defining me in any way. I have worked in the past because I have to, not because I believe in “work setting you free”. There is pride in a job well done but I’m not doing it for a pat on the back. I expect market rates as well as competitive terms and conditions. Everyone should. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be the default position of many employers these days. They want as much as they can get out of you and for as little as they can get away with paying. Plus work culture is rife with so much bullshit these days. Awareness courses, personal development, the pursuit of the company vision. And let us not forget the psychopaths, sociopath, bullies and the sexual predators that still seem to get through the interview process and climb the greasy pole. Fuck all that.
“ I’ve looked at the numbers and to use a technical term, you have fuck all money”
So having researched the state of the UK job market, I concluded that it either didn’t align with the lifestyle I was aspiring to or it was effectively a form of self torture that didn’t warrant the rewards it yielded. I then decided to consider alternative options so I spoke with a financial advisor. I subsequently discovered that due to change in the UK financial regulations, I could access my own private pension in December this year when I become 55. From 1997 to 2016 I paid money into my own independent pension fund. The amounts were not always consistent and in the last few years of that 19 year period the payments were somewhat erratic due to me mainly doing short term contract work. However, I could access this money and contrary to my belief, it wasn’t as small an amount as I thought. This combined with other assets such as savings, meant I was in a stronger position. The financial advisor said “you can not work if you don’t want to. You’ll be able to get by”.
Retirement is just like this…
As you can tell by the title of this post, it’s not too hard to figure out what option I’ve taken. My Father worked hard throughout his life but he also extolled the value of leisure time. Like many people, the last few years have really made me and Mrs P rethink what we want out of the remainder of our lives. We’d prefer to get by and have time to enjoy ourselves rather than run ourselves into the ground chasing a few extra pounds. I guess this makes me an anathema to the likes of Dominic Raab, Liz Truss and the other authors of Britannia Unchained. But why should I kill myself making someone else rich, especially a socioeconomic group I despise. I am 54 and possibly have 20 good years left if my family’s medical history is anything to go by. I am going to live life on my terms. Therefore I am now retired and will remain so unless my finances or personal situation forces me to do otherwise. I hope that you can do something similar. Remember, you’re a long time dead.
