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, and 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.
I deliberately built no structure into these first weeks. I wanted to decompress, not swap one diary for another. What I hadn't reckoned on was where empty time actually goes when you don't fill it, which turns out to be straight into my phone.
A few weeks into retirement I woke up half-convinced I'd forgotten to tell someone official that I'd stopped. It turns out there's almost no one to tell. Here's who genuinely needs to know, including the insurers most people forget, and why the list is shorter and stranger than you'd expect.
Your body keeps the old schedule long after your diary stops. A week and a bit in, I was still bracing for meetings that no longer exist. How long does that take to fade?
I'm funding these first years from cash savings and my ISA, with the pensions left untouched. It turns out the tax rules for someone in that position are more generous than I'd braced for. With little other income you can earn up to £18,570 in savings interest before paying a penny. Here's how UK savings are taxed, how safe large balances are, and how I'm structuring mine.
A late thought on what it feels like to film my final episodes of a show that’s no longer the one I joined.
At work events, when the room filled up and the noise climbed, I would find the door. A quiet word to the few people who mattered, then gone before anyone formed a circle for a speech. The Irish goodbye. The French call the same move filer à l'anglais, slipping off English-style. I've done it for most of my working life, and my last day was no different.