Month: Mar 2025

But Won’t You Get Bored?

It’s over three months now since I took my redundancy and stopped being a wage slave. So how have I been spending my time? And as quite a few people asked me when they heard I was leaving – have I got bored yet? I’ll come to that – but spoiler alert – er no – why on earth would I get bored? I had a good few months to get used to the idea of leaving work. That gave me plenty of time for planning and starting to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. To be perfectly honest the rest of my life is very much still a work in progress – but I think I can probably live with that.

I was effectively on gardening leave for a couple of months, and I knew I was leaving for a good bit before that, so there was plenty of time for planning. Being the control freak that I am I immediately set up a OneNote document with about a million tabs. I started with the money side of things making sure that I hadn’t messed up my figures and in actual fact I was about to become destitute. After about a million checks and getting one of my mathematically blessed offspring to double check my figures I was happy that the money was looking good. Tight, but good. Without downsizing I probably didn’t have enough to give up work completely, but I certainly didn’t need to get another ‘proper’ job, and I could definitely afford to take a good bit of time off completely. I’m not even thinking about it until after the summer.

I’m not quite ready to sell the house just yet. Both the kids are off at uni, but I want somewhere big enough for them to come back to as and when they want or need to. So for now I’m rattling around in a four bedroom house on my own. This seemed slightly less ridiculous when I used one of the bedrooms for working from home, but just now it does seem somewhat extravagent. Come summer time though I’m very grateful for the extra bedrooms and bathrooms. So for now I’ll stay where I am, keep having a mortgage to pay and I’ll need to pick up some sort of work at some point. Knowing that this work can be part time, perhaps just for part of the year and really doesn’t need to bring all that much in really takes the pressure off.

Once I was happy with the financial side of things then my mind turned to my environment. I found myself wanting to get my home sorted. I gave my house a really good deep clean, finished off the decorating that I hadn’t quite got around to since I moved in about eight years ago and generally had a really good sort out of things. I’m not a big one for lots of cleaning. I do enough to keep it hygienic, but if I’m doing more than that then it’s usually something going on in my life that’s worrying me. It never lasts long, and sure enough I’m long since back to doing the bare minimum.

Next my mind turned to how I will spend my time. Yet more tabs on my OneNote document. There’s loads of stuff that I love to do with my time and work always just got in the way of that. I really didn’t have any worries about getting bored, but I came up with a massive list of possible activities anyway. As so many of the things I love to do involve being active then my main worry was what I would do if I got injured and couldn’t run or walk. Luckily I also love to read, study and generally hang out listening to podcasts and watching the odd bit of Netflix.

I came up with places I wanted to visit locally and activities that I could do that would be free or low cost. I even wrote a list of activities for rainy days. Well I do live in Scotland after all! I have to say I don’t think I’ve opened that document once since I finished up work. I think I needed to put it together for my own peace of mind and to start my thought process, but my days just seem to plan themselves and I’m certainly not bored.

I was a bit worried about the social side of things. I was working from home previously, so it’s not like I had colleagues I was seeing daily, but I did have video meetings with them for a bit of social interaction. Also as a mortgage advisor I was spending a fair bit of my day talking to customers. These were long calls, so I always tried to get a bit of proper chat with them. I quite liked spending time talking with my customers. Not all of them clearly, but with most of them I was able to make a connection of some sort. The customer side is not why I ended up disliking my job so much. I had got to the point where I couldn’t even pretend to play the game any more. Office politics is just the worst. And I definitely don’t miss the working till 9 o’clock at night and the Saturday shifts.

Turns out I don’t miss my colleagues nearly as much as I thought I would. I literally never think about my old work. Things that seemed so important just a few months ago are just not even close to being on my radar. I’ve met up with someone I’ve worked with for the last ten plus years a couple of times since I’ve finished up. When she was complaining about how bad work is I totally zoned out. It’s much easier to see things clearly from the outside and see how little these things really matter.

I’m not quite sure I’ve got the social side of things sussed just yet. I’ve been with my boyfriend for a couple of years now but I’ve been very clear with him that I’m not interested in living together. We see each other every weekend and talk a couple of times a day and that’s enough for me. It’s hard when you’ve been single a long time to contemplate a full on living together scenario. And then there’s the whole financial side of things. I’ve worked very hard to get myself to semi-FIRE, but I’ve only got enough to support myself. The idea of shared finances absolutely terrifies me. I think that’s probably a whole other blog post though!

Most of the time during the week it’s me on my own. Luckily I like my own company, but I do know that I sometimes start to struggle if I don’t see people enough. For now it’s fine, but it’s definitely something for me to keep an eye on. It would be really easy to get isolated, particularly if I got injured and couldn’t run. I have three main friends locally that I run with. We do go out and do other things too, but predominantly running is our thing. They’re really good friends, but it’s easy to get out of the loop if you can’t run for a while due to injury.

My last day at work was 10th December. This was really nice timing as it just felt like I was having a really early start to Christmas. I baked mince pies, made and decorated a Christmas cake and we’ll not even talk about the number of calories in the pre-Christmas nutella cheesecake I made with my son’s partner. I had a trip down to Newcastle to stay with my sister and nephew at the end of my first week of freedom. Rather fortuitously my nephew had a holiday job working in Fenwick department store in Newcastle as a Christmas elf. He arranged for myself and my sister to visit Santa in his grotto, decorate Christmas plates, have festive snacks and generally behave like little exited children. It was epic.

I had booked a beginner navigation course for that weekend too. It felt an apt time to learn how to navigate with a map and compass. Up until now the ultra marathons that I’ve done have all been fully marked, but really to progress to other races I need to be able to find my way around old school. I was definitely only ever going to do one ultra, but as I’ve already done three I think it’s safe to say there’s more of these in my future. The course was in Hamsterley Forest in County Durham. I did parkrun before the course started. (Fabulous, but hilly, hilly, hilly!) I met up with the course leader and the other women on the course. We were a small group and it was a fabulous day. I learned loads and have since been out and about honing my skills in my local area. There’s still lots more for me to learn so I’m going to book on to the intermediate course later in the year.

After the weekend I didn’t have to rush back for work on the Monday, so I stayed on and my sister took the Monday off for us to have a day trip to Durham. I hadn’t been there for decades probably, and we had a fabulous time exploring the city. As I still didn’t have to get back for work I stopped off to stay with my folks in Northumberland and caught up with them. It was a great way to start enjoying my freedom. I eventually headed home to start the Christmas eating. My eldest came home with his partner for a week before Christmas, so I was able to spend plenty of time with them. We got some lovely walks in, cooked some great food and generally just chilled out without having to worry about work.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel after Christmas when everybody started heading back to work. Yeah, I really didn’t need to worry about that. Turns out I am perfectly suited to not working. It felt a little bit weird to begin with, but I quickly got over myself and embraced the freedom. So how have I been spending my time? I don’t have unlimited money (understatement of the century) so I can’t afford to be travelling all the time. Not to mention that I don’t think being away from home all the time would necessarily suit me. Saying that I do have a fabulous summer planned with various trips in the diary. I really like the idea of lots of shorter trips rather than one massive extended trip.

In February I took a trip to the big smoke. My eldest has moved on from Cambridge to London for his post-Grad studying. I was long overdue a visit to see his set up down there so booked tickets for a trip. Rather ridiculously it was much cheaper to fly than get the train, so I flew to Gatwick and jumped on the Thameslink and then the tube to Stratford where his halls are. I’d booked a nice and handy cheap and cheerful Travelodge for the week. I had a great time catching up with him. We saw the sights, I was like a local dodding about on the Tube, went to the National Portrait Gallery, had a fabulous time at the Van Gough Immersive Experience and my son made me his world famous macaroni cheese. He’s staying on in London to do his PHD, so he’ll be down there for a good few years now, so I’ll definitely be back to see him.

The time since I finished work has gone very quickly. A couple of trips away, a fabulous Christmas and generally just having a lovely relaxing time. It’s been great not to have to rush and get things done. I think I’m probably still getting used to a new rhythm to my life. It’s really tempting to try and dive into things and get them done as quickly as you can. Now though I have the luxury of taking my time with things and really making the most of the experiences that come along.

Winning the Redundancy Lottery and Semi-Retiring

There’s been a lot happening since I last posted. Most notably I’ve stopped working. For now anyway. Around the middle of last year there was an announcement of a very important meeting the next day that we mustn’t miss. There was a fair amount of speculation about what the subject matter might be. I was the only one who seemed to think that redundancies might be involved. Rather tellingly this made me incredibly excited. I worked out some tentative figures about how much redundancy I would get with my 24 years of service. My spreadsheets were well and truly scrutinised to see what this lump sum would mean for my FIRE journey. I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking about the possibilities. I think that probably tells you all you need to know about how enthusiastic I was about my job.

The next morning I signed on before my shift was due to start ready for the meeting. It was my boss’s boss who was taking the Teams meeting, which was scheduled to last 15 minutes. She came on camera and announced that she would be reading a prepared script and wouldn’t be taking any questions. Sure enough it was redundancies being announced. Ten per cent of the mortgage advisors and managers nationwide were going to be made redundant. Voluntary redundancy wasn’t going to be offered, but rather your manager would rate you and the bottom ten per cent would be made redundant. The meeting finished and we were then supposed to immediately go back to speaking to customers.

I had a meeting with my manager and I made it very clear that I was incredibly keen to leave. She basically had to pick two of her team to get rid of so she was in a horrible position, whilst also hoping that she would keep her own job. Hopefully the fact that she had one of her team desperate to go made that slightly easier for her. There was then a period of a few months where the managers were all doing their gradings of us and we were continuing to work as normal.

Eventually announcement day came around. Honestly it felt like Christmas morning. I’d looked at my figures over and over again and knew that ideally I needed another couple of years working before the redundancy would be enough for me to be at a very frugal FIRE. I also knew that I was at the end of my tether with this particular job and organisation and it was time to go. Much better to go with a nice big redundancy payment in my pocket rather than just quitting.

I dialled in to the meeting with my boss. I couldn’t stop smiling when she told me that unfortunately I had been unsuccessful in securing my role. I would be supported in trying to find another job internally and was officially at risk of redundancy. If neither the business or me found another job within the bank then I would be made redundant. I was really nervous that I would be found another role and wouldn’t get to leave. Another meeting followed with senior management for everybody within the department at risk of redundancy. They basically said that they’d already looked for suitable roles for us all and there were none and if nothing became available within the next month then we would be made redundant. In the meantime we were to continue working as normal.

Eventually the crucial date passed and I knew that I was guaranteed redundancy. They moved us all in to new teams for everybody who was being made redundant. There were lots of people who hadn’t seen this coming, had lots of debts, no savings and needed their monthly salary to survive. They were really not in a good place. That would have been me if I hadn’t discovered FIRE.

I spent a lot of my time over the next few months planning my future. I had a really good starting point with doing my net worth every month. I knew where I was financially, but I needed to figure out what my finances looked like now that I wasn’t working until 60, but rather finishing up at 54. The penalties are so great if I take my pension before 60 that it’s really not worth doing. So I need to get myself from 54 to 60. Luckily when I looked at my spreadsheets I realised that 60 years old and onwards was sorted already. I just needed to get myself through to age 60.

There had been lots of talk about the redundancy package possibly changing at some point in the future, but luckily no changes had been made yet. I was very glad that it was still at the same level – a month for every year of service. So for me that would be around £77k – obviously with tax to come off this. I’ve basically worked out how long I can afford to live off this and how much I need to earn to survive until I’m 60 and can take my work pension. I was really happy to see that I won’t need to get a ‘proper’ job. I reckon a part time minimum wage job would probably do it. That’s not necessarily how I’m going to play it – but it’s nice to know that’s all I need to do.

I’ve got a few options. So I could try and get a job at a similar level of pay as before and work for another few years and then stop work completely. I could get some contracting work and only work part of the year. Or I could do something part time that hopefully I would quite enjoy and just keep doing that up to age 60 or even beyond. If I could do that part time work on a self-employed basis where I’m in control then all the better. There’s certainly lots to think about. Either way I’m not in any rush to get back to work. My first day of freedom was 11th December 2024 and I’m not even thinking about work until after the summer. I really need a break and to think about what I want to do with my life. It would be far too easy to rush back into what I know, even though that’s what I’ve been desperate to escape.

So for now I’m relaxing into my new life. It still feels like early days, although it has been three months. I’m not rushing into making any big decisions, although it is now starting to feel as though the time for exploring my options in a bit more detail is starting to arrive. So have I reached FIRE? Probably not quite. But I would definitely say I’m at semi FIRE if that’s a thing. I’m definitely classing myself as semi-retired, as anything I do now will be to a certain extent optional. I refuse to feel trapped in a job again. I will work again, but it will be on my terms, and always with the knowledge that I can walk away at any time. And that’s the benefit of FIRE in a nutshell.