The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Just an update to my lack of participation here...my wife and I both have retired early in May, 2017! I'm 59 1/2 and she is 56 1/2. We have both worked at the same aerospace company for a total of 54 years and on top of that, we have sold our California home (too expensive to retire here) and purchased a home in Arizona (much lower cost of living). The past few years have given us way too much work and not enough play and hobbies, so we pulled the trigger and that was that! We've been super busy packing and storing our stuff including box after box of my models and her quilting fabric along with the standard stuff of every day life. I'm looking forward to getting back to the forum here after we're settled in because I really miss the UAMF and all of the great contributors to the forum. Anyway, I absolutely plan to spend more time here soon. Keep it going, folks!

Excellent news Dave; I wish you both a long and happy retirement and look forward to seeing more of you on the forum!

Congratulations to you both. Did I hear that Arizona is expecting temperatures of 50 degrees celsius? Keep cool

Nigel

Hope you don't melt.

We have at least on Arizona based UAMFer already, don't we?

Congratulations on your retirement, I am in my early 50s and retirement looks more and more tempting and ever further away.

Congrats on your retirement. I wish you both well with your new life. Hope to see you back here soon.

All the best.

Greg

Good luck to you both, I look forward to seeing your builds.

Regards Splash

Good for you, Dave. This year I've been fortunate enough to have been able to take early retirement myself at 55 and so far it's the best thing I've done! A long and happy retirement to both of you!

ShaunW wrote:Good for you, Dave. This year I've been fortunate enough to have been able to take early retirement myself at 55 and so far it's the best thing I've done! A long and happy retirement to both of you!

Will you lot stop taunting me!, I still have to get up at 5am tomorrow!!!!

Congratulations, but could one of you early retirees please tell the rest of us where you found those money trees? I'd like nothing better than to retire, but I'd need to bridge the 20 year gap until government pensions (if that's what they're called) kick in at 68. That takes a fair bit of cash
I'll be lucky if I can get off the hook at 60, but working till the day I die seems as likely

I work for myself and still enjoy it (up to a point). But I can see myself gradually winding down rather than taking a single "retirement" event.

rob_van_riel wrote: working till the day I die seems as likely

I too see this in my future.

David.

rob_van_riel wrote:Congratulations, but could one of you early retirees please tell the rest of us where you found those money trees? I'd like nothing better than to retire, but I'd need to bridge the 20 year gap until government pensions (if that's what they're called) kick in at 68. That takes a fair bit of cash
I'll be lucky if I can get off the hook at 60, but working till the day I die seems as likely

No money tree here, Rob. I was made redundant last year and I quickly found that employers were not exactly going to beat a path to my door at my age. I don't know what it's like in Holland but over here a lot of employers consider 55 year olds to be past their sell-by date I've been fortunate in that my private pensions have performed quite well - one of the best pieces advice my father gave me was to start a pension young, I didn't really appreciate the importance at the time (I mostly wanted to spend my money on girls and motorcycles ) but now I'm seriously glad I took his advice. I'm not talking buying new Mercedes-Benz cars and a villa in the south of France style retirement here but I have enough to get by well enough (I'm not an extravagant type in any event) and my wife still works as a teacher, which helps

ShaunW wrote:No money tree here, Rob.

And there I was, thinking with a few helpfull hints from this community I might be able to set up a nice little plantation of 'em

I was made redundant last year and I quickly found that employers were not exactly going to beat a path to my door at my age. I don't know what it's like in Holland but over here a lot of employers consider 55 year olds to be past their sell-by date

If you're under 40, you don't have enough experience, if you're over 40, you're too old..
Seriously, past 50 you're either out of luck, or seriously good at what you do in some niche, and so a scarce resource. I'm hoping I'll either be able to hang on to my current job, or make sure I'm in the latter category (I'm somewhat optimistic in that regard).

I've been fortunate in that my private pensions have performed quite well - one of the best pieces advice my father gave me was to start a pension young, I didn't really appreciate the importance at the time

Truly private pensions probably exist, but for the vast majority of people they are inaccessible. What we have instead is mandatory quasy-private pensions per company or branch. These schemes are designed to complement state pensions, and do not start paying out anything until you qualify for a state pension (in fact, it is illegal for them to do so). After you've paid a substantial chunk of your salary for the state pension (which is quite literally a pyramid scheme), plus an equally substantial chunk to the mandatory and mostly useless 'private' pension, there's not a whole lot left to make arrangements yourself. Note that there are zero guarantees as to the value of your pension, and typically, zero influence you can excert on the result.

Eric Mc wrote:Hope you don't melt.

We have at least on Arizona based UAMFer already, don't we?

Nah, that's just a vicious rumour.....