Trading time for lifestyle
The situation
Do you have a specific age in mind for your retirement? Would you trade more years working for a less stressful role, or perhaps a more convenient location, so that you had more time for family and friends? Many people approaching the end of their working life don’t think that they have the choice, and this is the situation our client, Harry from Bracknell, found himself in.
After a number of years as the Chief Financial Officer of a Tech start-up, the prospect of a pay out and early retirement on the sale of the business disappeared when the owners changed their minds about selling and scaled back instead.
The review
Spending and assets are discussed at every review meeting, and the discussions are often focused on lifestyle objectives. When Harry relayed the development in his work situation to Financial Planner Aaron O’Gorman, he was of the view that he would need to start commuting to London to find a well enough paid job to stick to his early retirement goal. But this would mean that he wouldn’t be able to continue to collect his grandson from school once a week.
Knowing this was important to Harry, Aaron suggested pushing back his retirement date and taking a lower powered role locally, so that he could. Together they reviewed Harry’s cashflow plan and determined such an arrangement would only delay retirement by a few years.
The resolution
Harry decided to follow Aaron’s advice, took a redundancy package and is about to start working 4 days a week in an interim capacity for businesses closer to home, planning to reduce to 3 days a week in a couple of years.
On his free day he still takes and collects his grandson to and from school.
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