No one gets out of here alive

There’s plenty of chatter from politicians from both sides of the divide about older people leaving work early. I read that some £1.2 million people are classed as unemployed but a further 3.5 million aged between 50 and 65 have simply dropped out of the jobs market in recent years. This might not matter so much had we not left the EU, not least because we – well, not me – wanted to end EU migration. The migrants who have replaced EU citizens have mainly come from Pakistan, Nigeria and India, but clearly the numbers arriving have not matched those leaving the employment market. Politicians have concluded that the over 50s need to be incentivised in order to start working again. Those incentives had better be meaningful or it isn’t going to work.

I escaped full time work over nine years before my state pension was due and I don’t regret it at all. I did some work for a few dysfunctional charities, but what early retirement gave me was time. Time spent on the treadmill, of living my life in the way someone else wanted me to live it. Sure it cost me tens of thousands of pounds, but money alone was never my raison d’être. Living my life how I want to live it was always more important. Dancing to someone else’s tune for little more than the minimum wage, which if you already have an occupational pension you will pay 20% of your minimum wage, means that you are working for £7.60 an hour. I mean, really? If, like me, you were working for idiotic, incompetent and hectoring managers, you wonder whether it’s worth getting out of bed for.

It’s important to recognise that of the 1.1 million job vacancies in Britain, many are at the lower end of the salary range. Many require skills which many of us – especially me – do not possess. It’s entirely possible that while some of the 3.5 million people who have retired early may return to the jobs market, a large number will have long concluded that living a more modest lifestyle is infinitely preferable to working ones self into the grave. My feeling, which is based not on facts but anecdotes, is that more and more people will look to leave work, even as the state pension age keeps rising, because the quality of life is far more important. Speaking personally, I would strongly recommend retiring early. This is life. It is not a trial run.

What it came down to for me was very simple: what did I want to do in later life and could I afford to do it on a reduced income? And if I had to cut back in some ways, how would affect my mood? It turns out the extra ‘me’ time meant far more than mere money ever could. The thought of getting up to dance to someone else’s tune, which was so often off key, became less attractive.

Of course, if you live to work and work is what you need to be happy, then good for you, especially if it’s work you really enjoy and perhaps challenges you in ways that extra leisure time never could.

I’ll always come down on the side of getting off the hamster wheel as soon as you can. You never know what’s round the corner and it’s not always good and there’s no fun in being the richest person in the crematorium. And, as I never tire of saying, there are no two words as bad as “what if?” What if I’d done this, what if I’d gone there, what if I’d sacrificed a decent wedge of money and packed up work before I got too old and frail to enjoy the time a little more?

Work is overrated. And let’s face it. No one gets out of here alive.