I took early retirement in 2011, having just turned 56. Over the past 8 years, I have been making the most of all the free time that retirement brings. I’m fortunate enough to be healthy and have enough money to indulge my passions of travel, investing and working with metal of all shapes and styles. I do some voluntary non-exec director work in the charity sector.
I spent more than 30 years working in IT, in the financial industry, and during that time completed an MBA. Work was often fun, but also extremely busy & stressful. For many years, I spent my work life travelling and staying away from home. So after a bit of planning (well, lots really), my husband and I decided to retire while we still had loads of energy to enjoy our retirement. A great move and I haven’t looked back.
Cracking can be read two ways – as really great, fantastic, or using it’s other definition as breaking through / understanding. This will be a bit of both. I intend to use this blog to share my knowledge of finance, write some interesting travel stories, and some ‘how to’ articles on silver working and copper bashing.
Having lived (and invested through) several financial collapses, 1987, 2000, 2008/9, I have a few scars, (think banking shares in 2008), but regardless still managed to put enough away to ensure a comfortable early retirement, before all our pensions kicked in, and I still have 5 years to wait until my state pension arrives. While the majority of our funds are in long term balanced risk investments, I have what I call my ‘fun money’, where I manage my own investments. My goal is to beat the managed funds. After 8 years, I can safely say that I am well ahead…
I hope you find my posts interesting and informative.
All the photographs on my blog are my own. I run a flickr site, where you are welcome to look at my public photos. It is good fun trying to create something to suit my posts….
Disclaimer – I am not a Financial Adviser – my articles are written from a personal point of view, and are for interest only
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