My name is Lee Noble and I recently attended an Agile Conference in Prague, Czechoslovakia. During this conference I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Samantha Laing. “Being Curious about You” Sam spoke about looking in the mirror and likening the person you see and living the life you actually want to live. Listening to what Sam had to say really struck a chord with me and made me realise that I was drifting towards retirement with no real plan. There it is was…..I had an epiphany!! It was then I realised that I needed to start seriously thinking about my retirement plans and what I wanted from the remainder of my life.
Until this realisation, I was working on the assumption that I needed as much money as possible to retire; working and saving as hard as I could to achieve that alongside many of us following that same pathway. The realisation that without a plan, I didn’t actually know what age I could retire at or how much I needed to achieve the lifestyle I was looking. I also realised that I was letting life pass me by and not concentrating on enjoying it – a big mistake!
I am a planner by nature and yet I had not planned so I decided that I needed to do what I do best and plan for when and how I intended to retire. It seemed almost obvious when I thought about it! I believed this would help me focus on a goal and also enjoy the journey to that end point. I decided to document this journey to help others in a similar place as me plan for their future too. In this blog I intend to detail how I went about my planning, what financial decisions I took and why, what other considerations I needed to account for, what impact it has and will have on how I live my life today and how I intend to action this plan. I hope that my journey will help others create their own plan so we can all enjoy our lives whist still planning for our future and not be a slave to retirement!
