Early Retirement - pro's and con's

[polybear]

The crazy thing now is that, in many companies, you don't get to find out that you are supposedly doing things wrong/underperforming etc. until appraisal time, at which point it's too late to respond and you've been shafted with a cr@p pay rise.

Once upon a time if you were doing things wrong The Boss would tell you there and then.  Not any more.

So why isn't The Boss marked down for doing a bad job by not managing his team correctly?

At my place, the head of customer support spent an afternoon showing two or three HR Herbs around the site, talking to people etc. about what they're doing.  Why?  The HR Herbs didn't know what the company did, yet were tasked with recruiting people.  You couldn't make it up....

These same HR Herbs (ex. Tescos, by all accounts) wanted to put the employees (predominantly highly skilled Engineers, Software etc. etc.) on zero hours contracts.  Fortunately the Top Brass put them straight on that one

[Colin]

More of the same I expect. There were never enough of us doing the real work, but there were always plenty of "non-job" holder drones scurrying about, whose only function appeared to be telling senior managers that all was well and that targets would of course be met. 

[TheQ]

We only have annual assessments.. But have six monthly reviews, 3 monthly reviews, and monthly one to ones...

I'm lucky in the fact my boss believes the same as me, all this HR waffle is carp.

 

They daren't put the Senior engineers on zero hours contracts, they are paid a fortune as it is, but most of them put a huge amount of time in, trying to get projects to work..

 

I know my boss is looking at bailing out 2 years early (the company doesn't), which would put him leaving 6 months before my target date.. It would take very little to make me leave, which would screw the company totally as we are the only two who know how most of the job is done, since they still haven't replaced the deputy boss..

 

As for pay rises it's done on some very complicated formula,

First there is your pay company,  there are 3 of those in the factory, they all have different annual pay rise percentages.

Second is the pay pool you are in,

Third is your perceived value to the company, so the more senior you are the more your perceived value.

Fourth  your assessments,, good luck with that, as there is a mysterious factor that reduces everyones assessments from what your boss puts.

FIfth comes things like.. less than five years to go to retirement ? you certainly won't be getting an above average wage rise no matter how good or needed you are..

 

So as a technician nearing retirement, in a pool of very senior engineers, who earn 2 to 5 times my wages you can guess what happens to my annual pay rise..

Edited August 1, 2019 by TheQ

[polybear]

21 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Fourth  your assessments,, good luck with that, as there is a mysterious factor that reduces everyones assessments from what your boss puts.

FIfth comes things like.. less than five years to go to retirement ? you certainly won't be getting an above average wage rise no matter how good or needed you are..

 

 

Mysterious factor?  Ah yes....it's called "Calibration" where I work = make the assessments fit the budget.

Five years?  Fifteen here, though they'll never admit it.

[Nick C]

My wife's former employer's HR department managed to take nearly 9 months to correctly update her change of name in their system - as she pointed out, if she'd taken that long to do such a simple task in her job (IT), she'd have been fired...

Edited August 1, 2019 by Nick C

[Colin]

You think that's bad? We had a communications team who oversaw the operation of the internal web pages and frequently censored comments deemed to be disloyal, while trumpeting on about all the successes and what a "great place to work" it was (I suppose they enjoyed themselves).  Kim Jong-Un would have loved them!

Edited August 1, 2019 by Colin

[ikks]

    Back in the late eighties, one high profile National Sales Manager at a Management Conference(AKA a junket and p1ssup ) decided to put a case for a HR manager, despite a few of us disagreeing, it happened. Within a short time of a very expensive appointment, the new HR manager had to increase his establishment.............work pressures!!!, in no time we had new people working on "Quality Assurance", Policies and procedures, most of which appeared to stop lateral thinking and stifle people's incentive and imagination........so we were left with a vegie patch mentality, just do "what I need to do within the written HR manual and don't actually think about what I am doing".  We had appropriate non-draconian procedures in place already.!!

I had always encouraged my people to discuss any improvement they thought could enhance our methodology and systems, some were adopted, some were not but at least they were aware that that their opinions mattered, I believe this  made our part of the operation much more efficient and the guys got a big kick at seeing their ideas at work. Sorry..........let the individual think and you will get results, stifle them and you will get non-thinking automatons

 

Mike     

[john new]

And the other HR fiasco - job evaluation (men v women) for equal pay. It always seemed to involve dropping men’s wages a fair bit so they were either on the lower grades the women were on, or, if women got any extra it was little and rare. Levelling down not up! Then later they wondered why recruitment was from a smaller (sometimes even nil) pool, market rates had been ignored. 

 

The women should have been paid more, as it was they continued to lose out, and that dragged others down too.  

 

I was lucky and got out, others had to stay they were too young to leave.

Edited August 1, 2019 by john new

[Chris116]

I took voluntary severance and retired in May 2016 just over three years before my 65th birthday. Given that my VS payment divided by three and added to my pension meant that for the last three years I have been paid more than I would have been had I stayed at work the financial side of the deal was a no brainer! 

 

Whether you retire early or not the most important thing is to ensure you keep yourself busy with things that interest you. I remember noticing when my father retired, all those of a similar age who had no interests when they retired died soon afterwards. Those, like my father, who five years later could not work out how they ever had time for work lived to their 80's and beyond. I fill my life with interesting things and fully intend to be around to cost my pension funds the maximum amount possible!

 

If the finances add up and you have interests outside work then I would recommend retirement at the first chance. If you firm is going to do any reorganisation then see if you can get them to pay you extra to stop coming it work, I loved being paid to stay away! 

 

The only downside is that our government is not paying my state pension when it said it would. Most other organisations pulling that stunt would be in trouble with the law for taking money under false pretences but since the government write the law what they have done is legal. 

Edited August 1, 2019 by Chris116

[Ravenser]

21 hours ago, beast66606 said:

I was made redundant a couple of months back - the Mrs and I worked out if she works until her retirement age (6 years) then we can survive on our savings (hopefully not all of them, assuming we don't have a major financial crisis then we'll still have a modest amount left) and her wage.

We have a lot of equity in our paid off house and plan to down size in a few years giving us a boost in the cash stakes. I have been offered an IFA which I will be taking up to see the best way of dealing with my pensions and general money matters.

I enquired about my NI contributions and was told I would have to pay a modest amount to fulfill my obligations - somewhat annoying as I've worked for 40 years and paid without a break but I'd best not say more as it would get political.

 

As has been said, my expenses have dropped considerably as I no longer fritter money away on nice to have things.

 

I've not signed on as I'm somewhat sceptical about all the financial information which has to be given to not get anything (due to our assets) so I'm wary about this

step.

 

Not having to work is great, I miss a few of my team but a lot of my old colleagues I won't miss. The lack of pressure during the day is great and I'm far more relaxed in life.

 

If you can afford it - go for it.

 

You should be entitled to 6 month's contributory unemployment benefit regardless of assets + plus a fair amount of hassle from doing enough visible job searching to keep the Job Centre off your back

[Colin_McLeod]

I'm not sure about some of the importance put on the social element, but I worked for my last employer because they paid me, not because of the social life. Yes I made a few work friends, but my social life after work hours rarely involved work colleagues.

 

[polybear]

2 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

You should be entitled to 6 month's contributory unemployment benefit regardless of assets + plus a fair amount of hassle from doing enough visible job searching to keep the Job Centre off your back

 

I think they'd pay your NI too?

[dj_crisp]

An interesting topic... after reading this on my 3.5 hour commute home (I seem to live in hotels) I'm sold on this retiring early concept.

 

Also that despite the travelling my contractor lifestyle is ok as I really do not miss any of the HR fun! It's much simpler negotiating a rate for a bit of work/project.

 

Some very interesting insights... thanks all for sharing. 

 

Will

 

[brianusa]

1 hour ago, dj_crisp said:

An interesting topic... after reading this on my 3.5 hour commute home (I seem to live in hotels) I'm sold on this retiring early concept.

 

Also that despite the travelling my contractor lifestyle is ok as I really do not miss any of the HR fun! It's much simpler negotiating a rate for a bit of work/project.

 

Some very interesting insights... thanks all for sharing. 

 

Will

 

 

Having never worked for a company that was rich enough for a HR (they were employment officials then), I've never had the hassle.  Neither were other workers on my social list apart from lunch, etc, as I always tried to keep work and personal life separate.  Otherwise the conversation usually turned to work or the people there and nobody was remotely interested in toy trains!

      Brian.

[Bernard Lamb]

7 hours ago, TheQ said:

We only have annual assessments.. But have six monthly reviews, 3 monthly reviews, and monthly one to ones...

 

 

As for pay rises it's done on some very complicated formula,

First there is your pay company,  there are 3 of those in the factory, they all have different annual pay rise percentages.

Second is the pay pool you are in,

Third is your perceived value to the company, so the more senior you are the more your perceived value.

Fourth  your assessments,, good luck with that, as there is a mysterious factor that reduces everyones assessments from what your boss puts.

FIfth comes things like.. less than five years to go to retirement ? you certainly won't be getting an above average wage rise no matter how good or needed you are..

 

 

My old boss would be spinning in his grave.

We had a final salary pension scheme. It was based on the best three years in the last ten. Which almost always meant the last three years.

When an employee was coming up to the qualifying period they always got a good pay rise and were given first choice of any overtime as the pension was based on gross earnings.

The old man retired, the company was taken over by venture capitalists who asset stripped it and I was kicked out three weeks before I was due to retire at sixty with nothing.

As the new owners were outside the EU that was it. Sod all any one could do. After 33 years service it hit me hard.

It took 4-5 years to persuade the government to do anything about it. We now have the PPF/FAS so others will not be in such a mess. Well possible until we crash out of the EU, when every thing is up for grabs again. It was our claim that non compliance with EU regulations was the cause of our hardship.

I looked for another job but there was not a lot about for people in Quality Assurance in an engineering field.

I took the six months dole money. Hardly worth the bother as it was taxed. But I was entitled to it so I jumped through the hoops out of principle.

Joining a campaign to raise awareness of the problem kept me busy and various kind benefactors kept the wolf from the door until I did get some money back.

Sixteen years later I can cope on a slightly lower pension than I expected, as I rapidly had to adapted to the sudden loss of income I became more aware of what was essential and what was not.

I am now in the happy state at 76 of not being concerned, as my basic income plus savings will see me through my most optimistic life expectation.

It was of course a very stressful period for SWMBO who had to remain in work during the years when I had very little income.

To any body contemplating early retirement I would say go for it. Particularly so if you are stressed with your current working arrangements.

Physical and mental health is far more important than money.

Bernard

[beast66606]

3 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

You should be entitled to 6 month's contributory unemployment benefit regardless of assets + plus a fair amount of hassle from doing enough visible job searching to keep the Job Centre off your back

 

You only get that if you sign a contract agreeing to spend 40 hours a week looking for a job, they also consider 100 miles a reasonable commute ... and don't take account the expenses of doing said commute.

 

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

I think they'd pay your NI too?

 

They do pay NI

 

The amount of NI I have to pay is worth taking a hit on for freedom from fruitless job searches 8 hours a day - for me at least.

[TheSignalEngineer]

1 hour ago, beast66606 said:

You only get that if you sign a contract........ 

When I retired from full-time I went to the Jobcentre to check out the system. The paperwork to even get them to pay my NI was massive. 

As it was I got some consultancy jobs until such time as I could get my state pension and beyond, so I decided it wasn't worth the hassle of following up with them. 

The situation for others may be different but with no mortgage to pay, our occupational and state pensions we have ended up with as much disposable income as when we were both working.

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, beast66606 said:

 

You only get that if you sign a contract agreeing to spend 40 hours a week looking for a job, they also consider 100 miles a reasonable commute ... and don't take account the expenses of doing said commute.

 

 

 

But there are ways round that.

At my first formal interview I was asked if I was really looking for a job.

The interviewer was a very astute Muslim girl in the full garb.

I was a little apprehensive at first but we soon got on well.

If you don't waste my time I will try not to waste yours was the gist of it.

She told me the minimum that I needed to do to provide proof that I was looking for work and she filled in all the forms to show that she had done her job correctly.

The one mistake I made was to sign on straight away, which meant that I had to pay tax. If I had left things until the next tax year I could have been better off.

Coming across as stupid at any interview is not that difficult, if you did actually progress that far.

Bernard

[2750Papyrus]

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

My old boss would be spinning in his grave.

We had a final salary pension scheme. It was based on the best three years in the last ten. Which almost always meant the last three years.

When an employee was coming up to the qualifying period they always got a good pay rise and were given first choice of any overtime as the pension was based on gross earnings.

The old man retired, the company was taken over by venture capitalists who asset stripped it and I was kicked out three weeks before I was due to retire at sixty with nothing.

As the new owners were outside the EU that was it. Sod all any one could do. After 33 years service it hit me hard.

It took 4-5 years to persuade the government to do anything about it. We now have the PPF/FAS so others will not be in such a mess. Well possible until we crash out of the EU, when every thing is up for grabs again. It was our claim that non compliance with EU regulations was the cause of our hardship.

I looked for another job but there was not a lot about for people in Quality Assurance in an engineering field.

I took the six months dole money. Hardly worth the bother as it was taxed. But I was entitled to it so I jumped through the hoops out of principle.

Joining a campaign to raise awareness of the problem kept me busy and various kind benefactors kept the wolf from the door until I did get some money back.

Sixteen years later I can cope on a slightly lower pension than I expected, as I rapidly had to adapted to the sudden loss of income I became more aware of what was essential and what was not.

I am now in the happy state at 76 of not being concerned, as my basic income plus savings will see me through my most optimistic life expectation.

It was of course a very stressful period for SWMBO who had to remain in work during the years when I had very little income.

To any body contemplating early retirement I would say go for it. Particularly so if you are stressed with your current working arrangements.

Physical and mental health is far more important than money.

Bernard

 

When my company relocated, I took redundancy, rather than relocating with the business.  However, I was denied benefit as my wife was working.

[PatB]

14 hours ago, polybear said:

The crazy thing now is that, in many companies, you don't get to find out that you are supposedly doing things wrong/underperforming etc. until appraisal time, at which point it's too late to respond and you've been shafted with a cr@p pay rise.

Once upon a time if you were doing things wrong The Boss would tell you there and then.  Not any more.

So why isn't The Boss marked down for doing a bad job by not managing his team correctly?

At my place, the head of customer support spent an afternoon showing two or three HR Herbs around the site, talking to people etc. about what they're doing.  Why?  The HR Herbs didn't know what the company did, yet were tasked with recruiting people.  You couldn't make it up....

These same HR Herbs (ex. Tescos, by all accounts) wanted to put the employees (predominantly highly skilled Engineers, Software etc. etc.) on zero hours contracts.  Fortunately the Top Brass put them straight on that one

It's even worse where, as here, the HR function is largely outsourced to recruitment agencies. This was brought home to me a few years ago when I was interviewed by a recruiter 20 years my junior. The asked me if I could revise my CV because they couldn't understand it. This surprised me, given that the agency billed itself as "specialists in technical recruitment" and my CV included nothing that anyone with even passing familiarity with my fields (pretty mainstream in WA) would have trouble grasping. Needless to say, I didn't get the job. 

[peach james]

On 01/08/2019 at 05:16, Nick C said:

My wife's former employer's HR department managed to take nearly 9 months to correctly update her change of name in their system - as she pointed out, if she'd taken that long to do such a simple task in her job (IT), she'd have been fired...

 

My HR team can't even lay me off properly !

 

(you can't make this up, really...)

 

I'm on layoff over the summer.  It being summertime, this wasn't a shock to me.  Heating plant engineer.  So, my boss called me in end June, and formally said to me that he has no work until mid September (25th, I think it is...).  Great, not a problem.  Issue me a Record of Employment, I'll bag off to Employment Insurance, and collect whatever they're offering me for the 3 months that I won't find another job during... but wait !  I'm on what is close to a 0 hours contract, and canceling my contract has other problems- like it also cancels my security clearance.  So...now they can't figure out how to lay me off for the summer.  Got EI working on it from their end...because I'm not spending MY time at 0$/hr doing it.  

 

James

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

Pity you're in Canada. Here we can't get someone to service our ASHP system until end of August.

[polybear]

Well.....

The Application Form went in today

Only for the Head of Dept. to be on hols for a week

I then told my Section Manager (for want of a better description - we have others, but they'd get me suspended by Andy...).  Turns out my (new) Line Manager had already grassed on me, despite me asking him not to mention it

Was the Boss gutted, asking if there was anything they could do etc.?  Nope.  In fact it was more a case of "we'll have to find you something to do for six months"  (my current job is nearly out of funding, though there is still stuff to be done)  - I can't go until end of April, and that assumes that the Head of Dept & HR approve it.

Why on earth didn't I bale out sooner

 

An unloved little Bear

 

 

Edited August 5, 2019 by polybear

[Colin_McLeod]

Well done on making your decision. The six months will soon fly.

 

The response of your company will help reinforce that you made the right decision.  Enjoy the last six months.

 

 

[Bob M]

Just been reading this thread.  Took voluntary redundancy last May just after my 59th birthday.  I haven't regretted it for one day.  I'd never thought I would go as early as this as I'd been lucky enough to mostly enjoy what I did, but changes over the last two years had taken any pleasure out of the job.  A new Chief Exec had ordained that everyone had to have a 'can do' attitude.  Anyone actually using their practical experience to point out that an idea was dangerous, impractical, illegal, have unintended consequences etc. simply wasn't showing the right attitude.  

 

 She then insisted that my boss restructure and so he took my post out of the structure with my agreement.   As I had 38 years pension and got redundancy it wasn't a hard decision.  

 

When they realised how much it was going to cost to let me go they had a bit of a panic, and suggested that I could be allocated to a job one grade lower, which the VR rules allow,  but knowing that HR always panic when challenged I said that if they tried that I'd put in a claim that my job should have been on a higher grade, which if successful would mean they couldn't make me stay in a job two grades lower and it would cost them even more in pension and redundancy . I never heard any more about it.

 

Returning to your original question.  Not everyone enjoys retirement.  About 15 years ago I recruited a chap who had retired a couple of years before.  It was a part time project management role for which he was over qualified, but he wanted something to keep him busy and feel useful.  He is still there!

 

Finally if you've got any sort of practical engineering skills then any heritage railway will be only to happy to have you, just be careful it doesn't take over your life.

 

Bob