A little bit random possibly but I saw him at the Aylesbury Waterside theatre recently (nice to see that Friars is still going – it was always more a concept than a venue) and he’s looking good for his age. Not only that but he’s still playing, writing, recording and, from what I could see, still enjoying what he’s doing. Retirement? Why retire when you so obviously enjoy your job and people will still pay you to do it?
Steve Hackett obviously is lucky enough to do what he really enjoys for his work and be able to continue to do that at 74 (and still going). If you are in this fortunate position then why would you want to retire early, or even at all? If retirement is about having the time and ability to do what you enjoy, then being able to do that and be paid for it has to be pretty near perfect.
Not everyone is in that position or, although they enjoy what they do, they reach a point where they feel they need something different. Financially they may be able to stop work, but the important bit is deciding what to do next. Without at least an initial idea of what the script of the rest of your life should look like, it will be difficult to have a fulfilling and enjoyable retirement.
At the other end of the spectrum from Steve Hackett is the FIRE movement, Financial Independence, Retire Early. Cut your spending to the absolute bare bones; find ways to bring in extra money (why not rent out that spare bedroom); save 70% of what you bring in and plan on drawing no more than 4%pa of what you’ve accumulated when you stop.
In principle retiring early with true financial independence is a fine thing however, trying to do so in your early 40’s or even 30’s is going to be a big ask. FIRE seems to be a heady mix of simple living now, for say 20 years, to have the financial freedom to do what you want for the next 40, 50 or even 60. So long as you can do what you want within 4%pa of what you’ve saved, this being their magic number withdrawal rate, and don’t mind not doing now what you can do in 20 years’ time.
The bit that worries me most about this approach is not the question of whether it is truly financially possible to retire that early and be confident that the next 40, 50 or 60 years will be without money worries. The bigger concern for me is what it says about that first period of your life.
Work becomes solely something that is there to enable you to leave it as early as possible. Life becomes something to spend as little as possible on and do as little as possible with simply in order to be able to do things later on in life. I presume that having a family is to be avoided, because supporting children for 20 to 30 years is going to put a serious dent in that “save 70% of your income” objective. It takes away any sense that you might achieve something worthwhile, something to be proud of, through your work for example, even if what you do is valuable to other people.
For the vast majority of people, retiring has to come at some point. Whether it is at 40, 60 or 80, when you stop working has to be based on knowing what you enjoy and knowing what you want to do with your time if you aren’t working and getting there ought to be of value and enjoyable in itself.
I appreciate that this cannot be the case for everybody, but to take as your starting point that the sole purpose of life before retirement is to squirrel away money for retirement just seems to me to be a sad view of life.
So for me, Steve Hackett would be the have to be the example to follow rather than the FIRE movement (OK, I accept I’m on the old side for FIRE anyway, but the principle remains!), but then I’m also lucky enough to be paid to do something that I enjoy.