I’m Tony. I’m 58 years old and I recently resigned from work.
I created this site to document an unfiltered view of what early retirement really looks like in the UK, from the planning
and researching available options, through to the uncertainty, the numbers and the day-to-day reality.
I write about my personal journey to early retirement.
I am not a financial adviser.
All content reflects my own experience and research and should be taken as a starting point for your own thinking, not as professional advice.
Not the numbers. The other stuff. The questions I had to answer before I could actually hand in my notice.
Nobody warned me I'd still be waking up at 6am. Or that the hardest questions wouldn't be financial. Follow along as I figure out what early retirement in the UK actually looks like from the inside.
Most early retirement content is polished, commercial and built around someone else's perfect circumstances. This isn't. I do not hold any financial services qualifications. I am not a pensions adviser, an investment adviser, a tax adviser, an accountant, a solicitor, or any other regulated professional. This is my unfiltered account of figuring it out in real time.
I’m digging into the stuff no one tells you about - from the 'Oh no' moments with the budget to the weirdness of having a free Tuesday morning.
The practical side of retiring early in the UK - pensions, ISAs, tax, drawdown, the State Pension and benefits. Plain English, UK-specific and built around real decisions rather than generic advice. Start with the Master Checklist.
The questions I asked myself before I stopped. The doubts, the fears, the "what ifs", and how I worked through them. Use these to work through yours.
I used these guides and trackers (yes, there's a spreadsheet!) to keep myself from panicking about my bank balance. They helped me; hopefully, they’ll help you too.
Different people, different situations, same principles. See how early retirement planning might look for people starting from very different places.
The topics I've had to get my head around, grouped so you can find the one you need.
How tax works once the salary stops, building an income from your different pots, and planning your spending around the life you want to live.
NI credits and gaps, state pensions forecasts, the workplace pension rules, ans where all of it sits in the bigger picture.
The years between stopping work and the pensions kicking in. How to fund them with ISAs and cash, and whether easing off slowly beats stopping dead.
Everything a spreadsheet can't tell you. Who you are once the job title's gone, and whether you trust yourself with a diary full of empty days.
What changes when you stop and your partner carries on working. Age gaps, caring for parents, and the conversations those bring.
The spreadsheets and checklists I built to stop myself spiralling about money. Borrow them, they did the job for me.
The list has been building for years: an overgrown garden, guttering that's needed replacing for a while, rooms I keep meaning to redecorate and never get to. I've given myself a few weeks after 26 June to decompress, and the obvious move is to spend them clearing that backlog. I think that would be a quiet mistake.
My State Pension forecast shows a little over £12,500 a year in today's money, payable from 67. That's nine years off for me. In my retirement plan it sits right at the bottom, the guaranteed floor under everything else, the part that's meant to be certain. Every few months a headline makes me poke at how certain "certain" really is.
A team dinner conversation led to a longer thought about Rush, retirement, and what their songs have been telling me all along.
On stepping away from work, the people you're leaving behind, and the strange grief of ending something you chose to end.
A new study claims that 1% higher annual pension returns could add £150,000 to a worker's pot by retirement. The maths is real. The applicability for most readers, less so.
A reduced Cash ISA cap for under-65s and a new tax on excess cash held in Stocks & Shares ISAs land in April 2027. The reality is less dramatic than the headlines, and most readers have more options than they think.