When is the right age to retire?

I retired at 50. I hated commuting into London, never had any time to do anything other than the essentials in the house at the weekend, no life outside of work and I just felt enough was enough. Best decision I ever made and I don’t regret it for a minute. It took me a while to relax and enjoy my new found freedom from the 5.28 on a Monday morning and I still got that feeling of dread on a Sunday evening for a while but not anymore. 4 years in and I am happier and healthier than I have been for years, I’ve gone from being a complete hermit to having 2 horses and friends I actually socialise with and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Go for it, retirement is what you make of it.

55, would love to, but managed to scale down from huge organization in city to local rural company doing 3(full on) days a week.
Money’s not great but I can still afford to keep mine and get out and about, with penny pinching….

retired at 54. My employer had to either give me early retirement or redundancy. Never looked back and retirement is great whilst you are still young enough to enjoy it BUT you have to make sure you are going to have enough to do.

Would love to, but cannot afford to retire.
Should have been in a better position, but invested heavily in property 12 years ago. The idea was that by now the properties (which are rented out) should have increased in value, and that by selling one a year, that would be our retirement money.

Sadly, could not account for the way property prices went, so they are pretty much worth the same as they were then.

Never mind, at least they are not negative equity anymore, so will just have to wait a bit longer.

I took early retirement at 55 from a very stressful job and didnt ever regret it. I worked with horses for 5 years and felt truly happy all of the time. I am not physically able to work with horses now but look after my one completely and ride almost every day, never regretted the decision to retire but find the lack of money hard to cope with….I would say go for it if you can manage financially as none of us knows how long we have got here, sorry thats a bit morbid, but true….

I think it depends on what you mean by ‘retire’. I retired in order to accompany OH abroad with work and also lived away from home in the UK with him. We bought a house last summer and that kept me busy for a few months but then I started to get the urge to work again so I’ve started selling my pictures through small galleries and gift shops. Provided the work doesn’t start taking over my life I’ll be happy with this level of work because I also have a busy social life but I shudder at the thought of doing nothing but sitting around watching daytime TV and being aimless. I’m pretty sure that’s not your intention though OP so I say ‘Go for it’ if finances allow

I retired at 47 1/2. I knew I needed to retire at as early and age as possible, so planned well in advance, saved enough to tide me over until my pension came, over paid the mortgage etc.

TBH, even though I wanted it, it was harder than I thought! I had even had long holidays before, and thought it would be like a never ending holiday. It really did not feel like that at all, so now I work part time in a school, as a TA.

To me, that is still retired, as I do it because I want to, I could leave if I wanted to. It means I have to be up at 6.30 every morning, although I am finished at lunchtime. I am still part of a team, it is a great team and we all work hard at work.

I do not regret leaving my long term previous career. It was stressful, long hours, and I was so exhausted I could not enjoy my horse.

To me it was indeed about work/life balance. Just because your job cannot be part time, it does not mean another job would not be fun, if less well paid 🙂

I stopped at 58 (now 63). The last 6 years of work were taken up with short term contracts – usually maternity leave covers or specific projects – lasting from 6 months to a year each. I was lucky to have secured several of these more or less back to back with few gaps, but decided to take “short” break after the last one as it coincided with a planned 2 week holiday. I’ve never got round to going back but am far from idle. Recently, I decided to see if my photography skills were good enough to earn me some pin money and have been happy to discover that people seem to want to pay me money for my images. It won’t earn me a living, but I cover my costs, keep busy and it’s growing slowly as people are starting to commission portraits.

So, I’d say, if you possibly can stop, then do. There are other things in life ….

I am 59 and not retired but I have scaled back the amount of work I want to do. Looking a people who are fit, active and engaged in life in their late 70’s early eighties, they have job of some sorts even if its unpaid.
Before you do anything check on the government website, https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension, its not a lot but you know your going to get it. I would plan for a different part-time job that gives you more time.