I am writing this at 9.30 on a Monday morning, sitting in the garden. Mrs Accumulator has just waved to me through the window and I can scarcely believe she’s there.
The past year has been strange, full of awkward trials and tiny tribulations, but the moment that’s just passed between us – well, it doesn’t get better than that. 1
About five years ago, 2 I’d have been desperately fighting bin-fires at the office, with no Mrs TA within a country mile.
Work would have felt like one of those mad videogames where pointless cack (pizza, pies, U-boats, whatever) hurtles at you down a conveyor belt while your energy bar ebbs away.
Now I’m in a soggy garden with the scent of pine resin up my nose. It feels like heaven.
God, that went fast
I haven’t had much time to reflect of late. To think about how chuffing lucky I am. Though the feeling bleeds through my every day.
From one perspective, the past year has felt like an extra level in that crazy conveyor belt game:
- Here comes a devastating diagnosis. Scratch one parent! (It’s not the end yet, but it’s the beginning of the end.)
- Now incinerate hundreds of hours on a communal endeavour with no ‘We’ in community.
- Next, feel the spread of aches and pains that likely can’t be ignored much longer, nor fixed. Goddamn age.
- Watch people you love trapped in torment. Feel powerless to help them.
- Fail to fulfill some promises to good friends while you arbitrage the above.
Yet from another perspective, I’m happy I met the challenges that came my way. Whether they’d feature among the golden beaches and labradors of a retirement brochure is beside the point. No-one else fancied it, so it had to be me.
Perhaps I made a difference to my loved ones. And others further down my contacts list. Either way, it made me feel useful. That’s pretty vital for a retired male.
Much of what I’ve done has no place on a CV, or Linkedin. It probably won’t make my memoirs (available soon!), or even a FIRE post about how amazing FIRE is. But I’m still glad I did it.
It meant something to someone. It meant something to me. Certainly it was waaaay better than hitting the Q3 stretch target for BastardoCorps PLC.
Virtually none of it was in the plan.
This was the plan
Before I retired early, I sketched out an idealised structure for my week because I feared I might otherwise just lie in bed:
- Monday – Walk, read, all day
- Tuesday – Monevator
- Wednesday – Monevator
- Thursday – New skill
- Friday – Volunteer
- Saturday – Day out with Mrs Accumulator
- Sunday – Day out with Mrs Accumulator
It all happens, but fragmented and frittered across formless weeks and months. No week looks like this. Also, the volunteer part has not featured me giving my time to a worthy cause, so I need to sort that out.
Here’s a list of activities five-years-ago me thought I’d try with my oodles of spare time:
| Try-out | Five-year verdict |
| Carpentry | No chance! |
| Growing vegetables | Didn’t happen |
| Wood chopping | Not so much |
| Foraging | Fuhgeddaboudit |
| Campfire nights | Done this! Once |
| Cycling for groceries | Dunnit! Um, not the 2-3 times a week I had in my notes |
| New skill – meditation, maths, Brazilian Jujitsu | Stares uncomfortably into the middle distance |
| Cooking | Yes! One new recipe in five years. Box ticked! |
| Hiking | Yes! TI can testify! |
| Coding | I’m off the hook: Claude’s ruined it for everyone |
| Hydroponics | What do you think? |
| Naps | Definitely! All over this |
| More writing | Blimey. Actually, yes |
| Home renovation | Yes! Ithangyew |
So there you go. I award myself a First Class Honours in pottering, prevarication and lack of application.
Take that Mr Money Mustache! This is how you start a movement. (Time-wasters only, please.)
Take it steady,
The Accumulator
P.S. Our FIRE budget for 2025-26 was £29,366 for two. Actual spend: £29,432. Ooh, so close.
- The knowledge that it doesn’t get better than that was passed on to me by The Investor, quoting the wise words of a text message from his late father: “Eating fish and chips from the best takeaway in the world. Mum only ate half hers. Had to finish it off. It doesn’t get better than that.”[↩]
- This update is late![↩]
> It all happens, but fragmented and frittered across formless weeks and months.
Yay, my kind of fellow. All those GTD maniacs can stick it. Preserve an curious and open mind and all the rest just trails along behind that inquisitive snout. No schedule, no todo list, just as it happens.
Sorry to hear about the ageing folks. It’s one of those things that goes along with the second half of life, sadly.
Anyway, hats off to a good start to your retirement may there be many happy years more ahead of you!
“So there you go. I award myself a First Class Honours in pottering, prevarication and lack of application. ”
Reading the above brought me much contentment. Thanks Acc … that statement alone is worth the cost of the subscription (which is exceptional value to start with).
Refreshing and thanks that made me smile.
I’ve been contracting for the past 20 years. I’m used to a couple of months not working, but this time, 3 weeks ago, it might be for good.
I have some ideas but the reality is very much ‘fragmented and frittered across formless weeks and months’.
I’m doing OK on the new or more accurately renewed skills – learning Danish, surfskating, cooking something new and coding.
I have to agree to differ on coding – I’ve always been more of a hacker of other people’s code, Claude doesn’t change that.
I feel my late father’s disapproval for not even consider volunteering for something.
and naps – yes, I’ve always been good at naps.
Well I can sympathise with all that but add in gradual loss of physical strength and endurance ( train to London, 2hrs in National Gallery equals 2 days rehydration and recuperation to rebuild strength ).
Weekends and bank holidays irrelevant, the latter just serve to dislocate my internal day of the week calendar.
Talking of which, how is it I get a feeling for what day it is, or isn’t.
” Oh it’s Wednesday, that’s odd it felt like Tuesday”
What pre-calendar primordial instinct generates that ?
Anyway, good luck,could be worse.
“New skill – Meditation – stares uncomfortably into the middle distance”. Surely that’s a tick?
Things I have noted about retirement (or deep demi-retirement, which is where I am at the moment).
* A desire to help surviving parents, partners and offspring can be quite a time sink.
* The best times/events are often emergent and unpredicted.
* No plan for what you are going to do in your retirement survives contact with the enemy/reality.
* Parkinson’s law kicks in with a vengeance. I can now spend a day on a task that I would have HAD to complete in an hour when working full-time.
* An ageing body means that things take longer/must be outsourced, and body maintenance takes more time. I need to exercise more regularly than I used to, or things seize up and stop working, and regular exercise means I have less energy for other activities (the equivalent of Mroptimistic’s visit to the National Gallery, but on a weekly schedule).
* On the other hand, I have slowly added some of the new things I lacked the time for, and I don’t need to succeed at them. There is considerable pleasure in trying but failing to learn the piano.
* Pottering is better than I expected, and being “busy doing nothing” is an unexpected delight.
Thanks for a non-rosy, naked-truth article.
This is a lot more useful than a superficial, relentlessly positive article. We learn from the challenges of others.
Good article as always @TA, how time flies, four years in myself and as busy as a beaver, in my own way, when it pleases me.
The vocals of Bing Crosby from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court ring true…
It is still a fairy tale and the thoughts of taking up gainful employment never enter my head.
Long may it last.
JimJim
Thanks TA – this is the sort of FIRE I am imagining for myself in (hopefully) 3 or 4 years. I am already a procrastinator extraordinaire, so I think it will come naturally to me. Unfortunately, I’m not sure my wife sees the same allure in unstructured weeks, months & years that I do. She has been indoctrinated over the years with that insidious WASP-y work ethic nonsense – but I’m hoping that, once we get there, she will be a convert to the joys of simple pottering and curiosity-led shenanigans.
Thanks @TA. I can relate to this at pretty much every level as I sit, six months into my own permanent holiday, in my joyously nerdy happy place setting up a linker ladder to take me the seven years to state pension (only now had the time to get my head round it, and thank you for that as well). Were it not for this amazing resource, I have no doubt that I would still be grinding away. Priceless.
@Kamae. A bit of a warning. Look up Japanese Retired Husband Syndrome for the risks ahead.
Your sitting on the sofa, leading your best life, and then you get ‘the look’.
@Mroptimistic #10
😀
I have no doubt it is a real thing. I think I (having given more thought generally to this next phase) am more prepared for the shifts in the pattern of life that FIRE will undoubtedly bring. I am eager for them in fact. I have sent her links to some posts – ermine’s amongst others – about “retiring to” not “retiring from” and I think that re-framing struck a chord.
We have also dealt with the passing away of both my parents in the last few years and a serious ‘scare’ last year with her mother, so I think that now when I talk about using our remaining healthspan (as opposed to lifespan) wisely it is beginning to resonate. I think we will get there – together!
@Ermine – Cheers!
“Preserve an curious and open mind and all the rest just trails along behind that inquisitive snout. ”
I think this sums it up 🙂
@bernard1449520 – Thank you! I’m glad I’m not the only one who recognises the value of a strong grounding in PPLA.
@PC – You’ve racked up an excellent list there! I’ve not even heard of surfskating. And yes, there’s always time for a nap.
@Mroptimistic – Gosh, your description of fading endurance is jolting. That sounds extremely tough. I’m about to become eligible for my pension for the first time. I’m also becoming increasingly aware of my own frailty. I do want to make good use of whatever retirement go-go years I get.
@old eyes – Thank you for the genuine laugh out loud 😀
Your retirement experience entirely chimes with mine. Minus the Les Dawson piano routine 🙂
@Jon TE – Cheers!
@JimJim – Good to hear from you! Completely agree on proper employment. I would be officially useless now in an office environment. Never. Going. Back. I’ll eat the cat food.
@Kamae – You and your good lady sound like you personify the yin and yang of retirement. A contented life definitely needs a balance of aimless pottering and targeted busyness IMO. Discovering new equilibria with Mrs TA, as circumstances have changed, has been an enjoyable road to travel in itself. Definitely a rich source of creative tension. I won’t put percentages on the creative versus the tension 😉
@zero more years – Wonderful to hear!
@TA, I always look forward to your annual updates. Five years is a lovely milestone. Congratulations.
I’ve reached 2.5 years and have hit my stride. I moved to a sun drenched new house, no more moody lamps during daytime. And it is heaven!!!!!!! Money and time well spent!! (So many exclamation marks but they’re meant to convey the real joy that simple beauty offers).
My old place was lovely but a little more inner city, which had been increasingly light ravaged by new buildings and increasingly drug affected unpredicatable people.
I feel so much more human. I shed my poisoned reptile skin from my final year. I deleted work contacts bar one person who became a real friend. I made and am still making handfuls of new friends too. I have so much more capacity for friendship and good deeds now.
Both my parents died last year. I literally can’t fathom how I used to smother my emotional responses to ‘life’ (to maintain a professional facade for work). I’m grateful that I can feel now post work … I cried tears and it was and has been real, human and healthy.
My hobbies are still reading, pottering, kundalini yoga (amazing!), gym sessions, walks, and beach holidays. I renovated and did a terrific job, as voted by my cat and I ….
As you attest, life presents hurdles. I lean into these as part of life. But I am so glad I shucked my former corporate/govt profession … I left millions on the table, but once I had enough, enough was everything …
Best wishes to you and Mrs TA.
I really enjoyed this, sounds like a wonderful way to spend your retirement.
Sorry for being a dope, but I don’t understand what this means:
“Now incinerate hundreds of hours on a communal endeavour with no ‘We’ in community.”
Is that not volunteering?
Also, nothing that is of any value in life intersects with LinkedIn, so fully on board with that observation.
And yes, hasn’t five years passed quickly? That five years included your temporary return to the work place right? Or was that more than five years ago?
Most excellent, dude!
I’m coming up to one year in a couple of weeks and it wouldn’t have been possible without this crazy good site (and the GFC.) Thank you.
Your list is rather frightening. I walk the dog for an hour or two, do three Yoga sessions a week, a couple of 90 minute gym sessions and a couple of 40 minute runs. So physically, not bad. Do chess puzzles, sudoko and Duolingo (French) but what I need is to add some social activity but I can’t seem to summon up the courage to commit to volunteering or part-time barista at the moment.
With markets on a tear, this FIRE malarkey’s a cinch.
@LondonALTA – I’m so very glad you still sound unbowed and optimistic after a year like that. Pleased to hear about the unanimous verdict on your renovation too. Mrs TA and I are super happy with phase 2 of ours.
@Rhino – It means it wasn’t the cause I was looking for. While there was value in doing the work, it’s not the way I want to spend my free time in the future. Primarily because I’m looking for a proper community from that part of my life, not people who won’t put their shoulder to the wheel.
@Brod – Sounds like you’re fitting in plenty already. You should read Ermine’s list sometime [of stuff he’s actually done.] Very impressive!
I hear you about the markets. If needs be, my bridging cash phase is over. I can tap the SIPPs now. I am no longer a very early retiree. But for one reason and another, my financial concerns have completely faded away.
Much is perspective though. The other day someone said to me they were aiming for a retirement of £1,000 a week (while moaning about how hard they worked). I couldn’t help but laugh. I don’t know if they really believed that figure or if they were boasting. They have such a fragile ego there was no point questioning their numbers or ribbing them for such nonsense.
@TA:
Nice update – a lot of which chimes with my own experiences. Time sure does fly; it will fairly soon be ten years since I pulled the plug.
Re: “I can tap the SIPPs now”: do you have any cunning plans in mind for the period up until you start your state pension or beyond? Or, will you still be following your take on McClung’s prime harvesting, etc to your SWR?
I’m new to this retirement lark, so after 3 months of practise it seems I’m doing it right 🙂
A very entertaining update and nice to hear that retirement hasn’t gone to plan for others as well as for me (-: I jumped off the treadmill in 2017 and intended to spend my days fishing. I’ve been fishing exactly 0 times since I retired. No complaints though. PPLA is the way to go
Well done on the controlled spend.
We spend almost twice as much.
If I knew your secret, I’d have FIRE’d already.
What a great post TA ! Very enjoyable read.
Everyone’s journeys are different and following a sh!tty 2023 and 2024 I very nearly hung up my boots for the last time … only to be coaxed back into some part time consulting which has turned into part time > full time permanent work. And I love it.
I can walk away if it gets too much, but this firm has just made me an offer that’s going to be difficult to pass up … but does mean I’m on the hook for 3-5 years … taking me to just about 60/61.
That said, I’ve just been formally discharged by those lovely Macmillan people so this definitely feels like second chance / new beginning / one last hurrah time for me.
Who knows … I may get fed up with it soon, they may get fed up with me sooner.
But in reality, for me, every day is a bonus … we have good balance (plenty of time off) and I enjoy the work and adore the people (mostly ) so will see how this plays out.
Great to keep a watchful eye on your progress.
Love this! I’d love to know more about your budget/spending allocations. I kinda feel you probably have a post on this somewhere….
I feel that I’ve let life style creep creep in, and could do with a reality check or a cross reference. I’m impressed as your number is much lower than mine. Thanks for all the updates. I really enjoy them.
Nice update. I’m into retirement year 6 now, it does seem to go scary fast! Do you ever wake up on a Monday morning and have to pinch yourself to check it’s not a dream? I do. My time is my own and no major financial worries, partly thanks to reading your articles here for many years now.
Brilliant post – and follow-up comments/shares.
Now 18 months in, Mrs KOKO stopped in July – have numerous “list items” unchecked but carry on regardless. Such an individual journey – but if people ask, we are happy to share our experiences.
Moving more, travelled a fair bit, found a volunteering gig that I love – but still find time to spend a whole day being busy doing nothing productive!
Final reflection – thanks to this site – found the money side of things continues to worry me less as the numbers rise despite best efforts to spend. Now looking to simplify things more & more….
I suppose we just KeepOnKeepinOn!
@Al Cam – Ideally I won’t touch the SIPP for a while longer (unless necessary) thanks to side hustles. If I do, then I’m likely to apply McClung as outlined in the No Cat Food series. But I need to take another look at annuities or potentially extend my linker ladder, at least for a portion of the portfolio. The rates look exceptional.
@Julio – That did make me laugh. It’s funny how things work out.
@GFF – It was more the way this person expected me to be impressed, I think. People have financial commitments that can have all kinds of implications for their budget but I know this particular person is prone to the not-so-humble brag.
@Dave – I don’t think I have written a classic budget breakdown post. The Retirement Living Standards report is an excellent sense-check. The underlying research goes into people’s self-declared spending habits and expectations in some depth:
https://monevator.com/what-retirement-looks-like/
@BillD – Absolutely. That “how did I get so lucky” feeling really wells up on a Monday morn.
@KeepOnKeepinOn – I hear you re: simplification and subsiding fret levels. I’ve been a bit coy about telling people I’ve retired up to now. But here I am at the standard early retirement age, so I guess there’s no need.
@GFF I think in your case, the clue is in your middle name. Kids will have an affect on spending for the same standard of living. They don’t make FIRE impossible, but they will make things a bit harder.
Edit: For the avoidance of doubt, I am not making any judgements either way – live your life as you like – just lets not pretend that it won’t make any difference.
@TA:
OK, thanks.
I imagine you have these all covered, but would ordinarily suggest you check that you: a) gainfully use up your annual TFA’s and b) at least consider what you might do with your TFLS’s, esp. if you need to move quickly if somebody tries to further amend those pesky rules.
Go well!
How in the world can you folks survive on ~30k per year?
Would you be able to give a rough breakdown of [anonymised] annual spend?
The reason I ask is that looking at the ever increasing cost of holidays abroad [or locally], petrol prices, other increases that would have shot us way beyond that sum!
@Gudwin — You write (with my bold):
Well I can’t speak for @TA, but here’s two clues he’s written about…
https://monevator.com/staycation-holidays/
https://monevator.com/can-not-owning-a-car-buy-you-a-house/
And then of course there was _that suit_ 😉
https://monevator.com/fire-emergency/
@TI blimey. I have no more questions!
Great update post.
We both RE’d at the same time and since then it’s been funny how similar your updates have been to my own situation/experience.
I’m often asked what I do every day and I find it hard to reply as I can’t recall as it’s often not very much!
In the last year I lost a parent and spent 6 months primarily focused on the result of that –
Funeral
Sorting through a lifetime of belongings.
As executor of the will
Refurbing the house ready for sale ( 135 miles away from where I live)
It’s been a tough 6 months, I cannot imagine how we would have managed had myself and my wife been still at work.
We are both home again now and back to lazy days, hoping the house sale goes through quickly.
Cheers All.
@Gudwin – 😀 Also, I think the research discussed here does a great job re: differing expectations of UK retirees: https://monevator.com/what-retirement-looks-like/
FWIW, the deep winter space suit has been consigned to history. It was an interesting experiment 🙂
@Fi-Firefighter – That’s a very hard 6 months, I’m sorry to hear.
Yes, I often struggle to explain what I do all day. To be fair it was the same at work 🙂
TI commented that he thought I often sounded harried during the year. I think that’s right – real life doesn’t disappear, but the underlying happiness baseline is way higher now.
Oh my, has it really been five years already? How time has flown, even for us readers!
Thanks for sharing @TA and congratulations on the milestone. Sorry to hear about tough times you’ve gone through with the family.
I think I have already decided that when the time comes for me to FIRE, I’m going to have no schedule and no ‘want to do list’ to start off with – let my brain and mind rest first! I can’t wait to be going for my own PPLA!
All the best to you and Mrs TA!
Congratulations, pottering is seriously underrated!
> Now incinerate hundreds of hours on a communal endeavour with no ‘We’ in community.
I have come to the conclusion that communal endeavours exists for egoists to take control and dominate something now they don’t have a fiefdom at work. Every time I get involved in a charity/community (i.e. somewhere I give my time for free) I decide that actually the workplace wasn’t so bad because at least I got paid for endless meetings, changes of direction, lack of competence and nothing actually being achieved. My wife now rolls her eyes every time I mention “I could get involved in X that would do some real good for the community” because she knows how it’s going to end.
Given the common thread in these endeavours I may be the problem…
Cheers, Weenie!
@Unwilling – That’s very interesting. I wonder if I will ultimately come to the same conclusion?