I'm Eric from Time2Retire.co.uk retire. And I retired
at 55, but it's been about a year now since I
wrote that final resignation letter to my boss.
But it's been many more years since I started
to mentally write it. But when I reached 50,
like many, I re -evaluated my life and came to
some life change decisions. Now, in this video,
I want to look back at what I did and what's
meant for my family and me. Now, if I go back
to age 47, I had a very well -paid job. It was
also a job that had been killing me slowly for
years. My mental and physical health was shot.
So, I forced myself to make one of the best decisions
of my life. I took a less well -paid job, and
it's easier. Swapped the leashed Range Rover
for an older model Honda Jazz, and I swapped
the two weeks in Mexico for a week in Northumberland.
Life got immeasurably better immediately. I also...
Up to my pension contributions to over 30%. Now
at 50 I downgraded my salary again. And I moved
to a fully work from home job. Which could pretty
much do it. My eyes closed. I kept my pension
contributions of 30 % though. Now life improved
a notch again. So although this is the first
anniversary of me actually writing my final resignation
letter. I wrote it mentally quite a lot earlier.
Let me talk about some of the stats that you
may have considered when choosing your retirement
data. We've been told the same story for 50 years.
Work hard, save your pennies, and enjoy a long,
golden retirement. When we look at the ONS charts
and see life expectancy climbing, reaching 79
for men, 83 for women, we think, ah, I've got
time. Well, there's a darker side. buried in
the data. We aren't necessarily living longer.
In the UK we're actually dying slower. Modern
medicine is really good at keeping us alive but
it's struggling to keep us well. I'm going to
explain why at age 47 I decided that I wasn't.
Going to retire at 67. So let's look at our health
span data. So we take a cold heart look at the
ONS data, 2026. And if you're the man in England,
your life expectancy is about 79. Your healthy
life expectancy, well, that's only 61 and a half.
Now for women. The gap is even wider. Lived until
83, but fallen into poor health at age 62. Now,
obviously, these are only averages, but when
thinking about future dates, I think looking
at averages is quite important, really. So think
about that. The UK state pension, currently at
66, but rising to 67 by 2028. The average person
stops being healthy at 62. Well, that's terrifying.
We're asking people to work five years past the
point that their body begins to fail just to
reach the starting line for retirement. We're
not funding the golden age. We're funding the
management of decline. As we look at the geography,
it's not equal. This is the postcode rotary of
dying slower. Now, if you live in Richmond -upon
-Thames, you might get 70 years of good health,
but move to Blackpool or some part of the North
East, and that number plummets to 52. Also, if
you're a manual worker in, say, a deprived area,
you're just retiring later, you are effectively
spending your... entire retirement in a state
of chronic illness. You've won the prize of long
life, but the quality of that life prize is being
stripped away. So does this change the retirement
date conversation from a financial one to a biological
one? If you use a Standard financial advisors,
safe withdrawal rates, they plan your money to
last until you're 95, but they don't tell you
that your utility of that money drops 80 % after
your health fails. Now, spending £5 ,000 on a
trip to the Alps had 60 years of investments.
It's a memory. Spending £5 ,000 on a private
car at 85 is survival. If you wait until 67 to
start gambling, you'll be a statistical outlier
who stays healthy. The UK averages say you'll
already be 5 years into your slow decline. So
what do we do? We have to fruit load our retirement.
Here are... Three radical shifts for a UK retirement
plan. Instead of working full -time until 67,
can you go part -time at 55? Use your healthy
years while you have them, even if it means drawing
a small pension earlier. Now in the UK, we rely
on the NHS a lot, is a care for the sick not
a care for the well your pension is going to
be useless if you can't walk your gym membership
and your diet are actually your most important
pension contributions also is there an option
to downsize early why wait until he's 75 and
can't climb stairs maybe downsize earlier or
lock the equity and spend it while you can still
enjoy the go -go phase of retirement rather than
the slow, slow phase. Okay, so living till 90
is a miracle of science, but living well till
90 is a miracle of planning. Don't let the state
pension age dictate when your life begins. The
ONS tells us that this slow decline starts early
in our 60s. Look at your calendar, look at your
health, and ask yourself, Am I saving for a life
that I'm going to be too tired or too old to
live? Thanks for watching. See you on the next
one.