Since retiring in the summer of 2022 at the age of 51, in only a few short months we have noticed a number of positive changes in our lives that are a direct consequence of that decision. We spoke about this recently on our YouTube channel here, after taking the time out at the end of 2022 to reflect on our progress to date.
Live our lives more spontaneously
By having the greatest gift of time, that we have never really had in our working lives, we have found that we have suddenly become more spontaneous. We no longer have to time our lives to the beat of someone else’s drum. If the weather is good and the mountains are calling, we go and climb them.
If friends reach out for a coffee, we are happy to drop everything and meet with them. A prime illustration of this was when we dropped into friends that live in the Lake District for a coffee. This turned into staying for dinner and then staying overnight. 48 hours later we were still there, catching up on old times and having the time of our lives.
Less is more
The less possessions we have, the more time we seem to have for the things that are really important in life. For the last few months, most of our possessions have been in a self storage lockup facility. The thing that has surprised us is just how few of these possessions we have really missed. As a consequence of moving house and down-sizing into a smaller home, we went through some significant minimising, and yet it seems that we didn’t go nearly as far enough. We are now really worried about what to do with the stuff that we have in storage that we are happily living without.
Living out of the campervan over the summer months really helped. During that time, we had only the clothes that we really loved, we cooked using the minimum of equipment and had a few valued possessions such as laptop, kindle and camera to keep us entertained. This period of time galvanised our view that by simplifying our lives we actually got more out of our lives.
An added bonus to having less possessions is the need for less decision making and time consuming choices. What to wear suddenly becomes a simple decision as we only have our favoured clothes available. What to read becomes a simple decision when your library is on your kindle.
Invest in ourselves
After devoting most of our working careers to the investment and development of others, we have made the decision that now is the time to invest in ourselves. We have the time available to truly be our own best friend. We have time to eat well, sleep well and rest and recuperate. We have time to reflect on each and every day, drawing out the things that we are truly grateful for. We have the time and energy to devote to each other- we no longer spend our free time desperately trying to rest up for the work challenges ahead, but we can spend our time productively and creatively with each other. We have time to think about rekindling old hobbies and interests, rather than those things being the first things to be sacrificed when we are short of time.
Deathbed mentality
Life is short and life is limited... this is the one certainty of all of our lives.
We have definitly made a conscious effort to live every day as if it is our last. This is not meant to be a morbid or morose mindset, but a pragmatic one based on the finitude of life. We have so many things that we want to do, both individually and together- we do not want to waste any time doing things that are unnecessary.
Less worry
It is fair to say that worry and anxiety in retired life does not disappear like some miracle, but the nature of the stresses does change significantly. We quite naively thought that once we had made the decision to retire early all our worries would disappear. Instead of worrying about looming deadlines, workload and angry parents at work, we find that we are now worrying about builders, renovation costs and ways to keep the house warm! Much simpler worries, but no less demanding!
We have now taken a much more pragmatic approach to stress and anxiety by asking ourselves the question- How bad could it really be? If all our early retirement plans implode in a financial mess, the worst thing that could happen is that we would need to return to working life for a few years until the pension kicks in. Now I am not saying that we would return to education, I think that ship has well and truly sailed for us both, but we would not be averse to a bit of simple, manual and no brain work on a short term basis to fund our very simple needs.
Pay it forward
We always tried in our working lives to just be nice to people, and that has continued and increased in our early retirement days. Being nice to others costs nothing, makes other people feel good about themselves and also is a great way to make ourselves feel good. The more we find ourselves being nice to people, the more we get the niceness back from people. Taking the time to thank someone, or compliment them certainly makes the world seem a happier place. Giving your undivided time and genuine attention to others is the easiest gift you can give. I now find myself more than ever impulsively thanking staff for their efforts and service, asking them how their day is going and showing a genuine interest in their answers.
More scruffy- ironing is over rated
When we were working, we both took a professional interest in our personal presentation- there was a need to look like a teacher. For me it was a suit, a smart shirt and tie and formal shoes. For Jackie it started with straightening her hair, adding makeup and donning the work clothes of a primary school teacher.
These days, we dress for us. We are clean, and generally tidy, but we wear what we want, when we want. Having slimmed down our wardrobes to just the things we love the most, we generally wear outdoor gear most of the time, as that best fits our current lifestyle. We have realised that as much as we felt we were making individual decisions whist we were working, we were actually quite influenced by the expectations of those around us. We still value the people that are around us, but our days of ironing work outfits and shirts on a Sunday night to fit in with others people's expectations are well and truly over.
More active
By having more time, we are so much more active in all aspects of our lives, despite not having the work related steps that accrued during busy days in the classroom.
Jackie is an activity statistical nut and loves the data that her Garmin produces. She targets 400000 steps per month and she is regularly hitting that goal. We log our vertical height climbed every year as an indicator of our activity. This all started a few years ago when we took up the Everest challenge to climb the vertical height of Everest in a year (8849m). As we have fallen more and more in love with the great outdoors, we found ourselves hitting over 3 Everests in 2021. As we write, we have completed 4 full Everest this year and are pretty close to our lives 5th. All of this illustrates to us that we are keeping active, getting outside and making a positive contribution to our wellbeing.
During my working years I was an avid Crossfitter, training religiously 3 to 4 times a week to make sure that I kept my mental health and wellbeing on track. Now that I have more time, I find that I am getting my functional fitness from being outdoors in the hills as much as I can, walking or (in the better weather) biking. I loved going to the gym, but now I have the great outdoors as my gym right on my doorstep...and it is considerably cheaper than a monthly gym membership!
Better routines
I have always lived a very routined life- with most of my life running to a set timetable or checklist. Jackie is the first to admit that she is not like this at all. On her days off from work, she loved nothing more than staying in bed, watching crap TV and generally just sobbing out. Now that we technically have all the time in the world to do these things, she finds that she is actually more routined in a positive way, as we love doing activities together.
Don’t get me wrong, she still doesn’t get up as early as I do or join me in my morning routines- but that is good as we still need our time apart and that is my time for me. However on most days we have things planned and we are generally up and about to get them done on time. We find time each day to sit down and eat together, something that was almost impossible during our working lives.
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