Joining the ranks of the Unemployed

[pete75]

£70k! Blimey. My Missus is head of her department in a secondary school and just clears £40k. On the very rare occasions she has been "on strike" she has just brought work home and got on with it. She hates not working.

Clearing £40,000 - that's getting for £60,000 before tax, pension and NI stoppages.

[pwa]

£70k! Blimey. My Missus is head of her department in a secondary school and just clears £40k. On the very rare occasions she has been "on strike" she has just brought work home and got on with it. She hates not working.

Clearing £40,000 - that's getting for £60,000 before tax, pension and NI stoppages.

No. I wish. Just over £40k before deductions. Been more or less the same for ten years.

[pete75]

£70k! Blimey. My Missus is head of her department in a secondary school and just clears £40k. On the very rare occasions she has been "on strike" she has just brought work home and got on with it. She hates not working.

Clearing £40,000 - that's getting for £60,000 before tax, pension and NI stoppages.

No. I wish. Just over £40k before deductions. Been more or less the same for ten years.

No pay rises and one or two one percents?

[Cyril Haearn]

Redundancy on the 31st March lots of free time. Looking forward to it.....

Are you winding down at work now, handing over to colleagues? What will you do on the first day of the rest of your life?
Will there be a farewell party or some sort of event? Will you keep up contact with your ex-colleagues?

[pwa]

Clearing £40,000 - that's getting for £60,000 before tax, pension and NI stoppages.

No. I wish. Just over £40k before deductions. Been more or less the same for ten years.

No pay rises and one or two one percents?

Yep. With more taken out for the pension, less pension at the end, more responsibility for managing other colleagues without any promotion to recognise the fact, etc, etc.

[pete75]

Redundancy on the 31st March lots of free time. Looking forward to it.....

Are you winding down at work now, handing over to colleagues? What will you do on the first day of the rest of your life?
Will there be a farewell party or some sort of event? Will you keep up contact with your ex-colleagues?

Yes but most of my real work went a while ago and I was just left with the so called managerial stuff. Have now handed over my three accountants to a different gaffer and the rest of my folks have been distributed to different IT teams. First day after redundancy is Easter Sunday so I may well eat a chocolate egg to celebrate.The next day is my mother's 90th birthday.
We're having a bit of a micturate up on the 28th March. I'll keep in contact with some of them.
Have a few things arranged - well cycle tour in Holland in April. Early May spending a few days in Paris with a friend who's an AI Prof at the Sorbonne. Always interesting to get her ideas on the future of man and intelligent machine - they're often very different to newspaper articles on the same.

[Mick F]

Long before I retired at 62 I created and constantly updated a spreadsheet to calculate essential outgoings and my potential income................. I found many new friends by volunteering for local charities which was fun too. Retirement is great!

Exactly what I did.

Me too, but I did that in my early 40s before leaving the RN.

I added up the mortgage and council tax and all regular bills, and that came to a little bit less than my service pension would be. April 1996 I left the RN after 27 years - I think the figure was £450ish a month.

I figured that if all the bills were paid by my pension, all we would need was food and clothing and petrol for the car of course ........... plus beer and wine.

My full pension came in at age 55. It went up from £550 to £850 a month and became indexed linked.

[thirdcrank]

It's not really very complicated. In the manner of most media presentations of anything to do with money, it can be shown in chart form.

Imagine your standard of living as the curve on a graph. There will be all sorts of things moving it up and down like having children, redundancy and ill health, but the predictable biggy is retirement, which is potentially a big drop in that curve.

Anybody planning security in retirement, rather than day dreaming, has to think in terms of ensuring that the curve remains as flat as possible. Spending every penny as it comes in will not achieve that. Borrowing money while in employment will lift the current standard of living but cannot continue indefinitely, while risking increasing the drop in retirement. Saving a bit along the way can help keep the line level after retirement.

All manner of problems, of course, not least thieves in sharp suits breaking through and stealing the nest egg, Cap'n Bob being an extreme example of this.

I look back now on a life of being over-cautious in money matters, saving not only against a rainy day but against Noah's Flood. eg Our children never went on foreign holidays, unless you count Wales and Scotland as foreign countries. The result is that my curve is higher than at any time in my life, but I'm so cautious - close with money - I'm reluctant to spend it. Ebeneezer Scrooge? A total amateur.

[Cyril Haearn]

Redundancy on the 31st March lots of free time. Looking forward to it.....

Are you winding down at work now, handing over to colleagues? What will you do on the first day of the rest of your life?
Will there be a farewell party or some sort of event? Will you keep up contact with your ex-colleagues?

Yes but most of my real work went a while ago and I was just left with the so called managerial stuff. Have now handed over my three accountants to a different gaffer and the rest of my folks have been distributed to different IT teams. First day after redundancy is Easter Sunday so I may well eat a chocolate egg to celebrate.The next day is my mother's 90th birthday.
We're having a bit of a micturate up on the 28th March. I'll keep in contact with some of them.
Have a few things arranged - well cycle tour in Holland in April. Early May spending a few days in Paris with a friend who's an AI Prof at the Sorbonne. Always interesting to get her ideas on the future of man and intelligent machine - they're often very different to newspaper articles on the same.

Hej Pete
Today is your last day
Please keep us updated
Diolch

[pete75]

Are you winding down at work now, handing over to colleagues? What will you do on the first day of the rest of your life?
Will there be a farewell party or some sort of event? Will you keep up contact with your ex-colleagues?

Yes but most of my real work went a while ago and I was just left with the so called managerial stuff. Have now handed over my three accountants to a different gaffer and the rest of my folks have been distributed to different IT teams. First day after redundancy is Easter Sunday so I may well eat a chocolate egg to celebrate.The next day is my mother's 90th birthday.
We're having a bit of a micturate up on the 28th March. I'll keep in contact with some of them.
Have a few things arranged - well cycle tour in Holland in April. Early May spending a few days in Paris with a friend who's an AI Prof at the Sorbonne. Always interesting to get her ideas on the future of man and intelligent machine - they're often very different to newspaper articles on the same.

Hej Pete
Today is your last day
Please keep us updated
Diolch

Hi it is indeed though I actually finished on Wednesday. Have got all the final figures now and I don't think I'll bother working again. Annual income will be slightly below the uk average wage. Lots of people manage on that or less so I should be able to.

[Mick F]

Hi it is indeed though I actually finished on Wednesday. Have got all the final figures now and I don't think I'll bother working again. Annual income will be slightly below the uk average wage. Lots of people manage on that or less so I should be able to.

Congrats!
I'm sure you'll manage.

Money is all about income vs outgoings. We have spent year after year bouncing in and out of overdrafts, but income was just about equal to expenditure, so we never spiralled downwards. These days, we have a nest egg and some rainy day money, but we'll never be rich.

You can't take it with you.

[mercalia]

so what is the lowest level of savings do people here think is a good idea?

[francovendee]

I think, without knowing your situation, you are making the right decision. I did it years ago and wondered how we manage. We did and still run a car have holidays eat and pay the bills. The difference is most of our 'stuff' isn't very new but this isn't impo.rtant. Good luck, I hope you enjoy your freedom

[Cyril Haearn]

The biggest problem is the unknowable, no-one knows when they will die

Maybe I will have 30 years healthy retirement
Or 30 years in a care home
Or 30 months, maybe I will die before retiring

One might live longer than average/expected and run out of cash

Or one might die young and rich

Any thoughts on Last Wills & Testaments?

[reohn2]

so what is the lowest level of savings do people here think is a good idea?

Think of the cost of the highest uninsured material disaster that can happen to you then double it.
That and the ability to save a little out of your income should you need to replenish those savings should the worst happen.