In short
Early retirement planning and execution at age 48, including the “nobody tells you” parts: stress, risk management, market drawdowns, and how retirement spending actually changes.
Guests
Gareth (host/viewer). Guest is a UK finance professional who trained at PwC (accounting), moved into IT consultancy, then Microsoft roles: head of compliance for EMEA, then UK financial controller, then commercial executive/sales manager. He retired at 48 after building investments from 2019–2020 onward.
Key claims
- “You can’t buy time” advice drove his plan to accumulate enough to retire and spend more time with family.
- Mortgage payoff reduced stress psychologically, even if it may have cost investment returns.
- Stock picking worked for him, but timing and luck mattered; he later de-risked and avoided leverage after a major silver/market hit.
- Retirement spending rose versus expectations because life becomes “every day is a weekend.”
Notable examples
- Built a spreadsheet using return assumptions; target pot initially £700k, later revised to £750k; retired with ~£650k then ~£700k after a Microsoft redundancy package.
- Investments: Fidelity global technology fund; Games Workshop (Warhammer) based on hobby competence; also B&Q and Howden.
- January: made ~£100k in 3 weeks, then lost ~£80k in two days after silver crashed and Microsoft dropped; lesson: no leverage, use stop losses.
- Retirement structure: health day, wealth day, day with wife/parents, and “giving back” via finance education sessions and SEIS-backed startups.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOGareth's Early Retirement Ambitions
0:23 to 2:19
Gareth shares his initial thoughts on retiring early and how his plans evolved over time.
“Gareth, when did you first decide you wanted to retire early?”
Career Path and Financial Decisions
2:19 to 4:33
Gareth discusses his career trajectory and significant financial decisions he made leading to retirement.
“I mean, I always had looked at money very carefully.”
Transition to Sales and Work Stress
4:33 to 6:43
Gareth reflects on his transition to sales and the associated stress factors in his career.
“And so, yeah, joined that team as a commercial sales guy, contract negotiation kind of stuff, and then became sales manager kind of three years later.”
Calculating Retirement Numbers
6:43 to 11:03
Gareth explains how he calculated his retirement number and the importance of financial planning.
Real Estate Decisions and Financial Freedom
11:03 to 14:00
Gareth shares how selling his house contributed to his financial freedom and early retirement plans.
“Um, I kind of figured I'd probably have about a third of, of, of that in my Microsoft shares, which is broadly how it turned out.”
Reflections on Mortgage Decisions
14:00 to 17:30
Learn about the psychological and financial impacts of mortgage decisions.
“done to it's amazing um so like well how about you buy mine and um i'll buy the one over the road that's 200 grand cheaper.”
Reflections on Mortgage Decisions
18:10 to 18:45
Learn about the psychological and financial impacts of mortgage decisions.
“which covers you in case an accident means you're unable to work.”
Navigating Early Retirement Conversations
18:46 to 21:25
Understand the importance of teamwork in financial decisions and retirement planning.
“And their consideration and risk averseness or whatever is part of it.”
Investing Strategies and Stock Selection
21:26 to 25:12
Explore the speaker's investment strategies and stock selection process.
Market Timing and Investment Luck
25:13 to 28:00
Examine the role of luck in investing and how market timing affects success.
“It's the only business really within that kind of space.”
Show all 26 chapters
The Impact of Timing in Investing
28:00 to 29:00
Learn how the timing of entering the investment world can affect success.
Lessons from Personal Experience
29:00 to 30:20
Discover how personal discipline and experiences shape investment strategies.
Engagement in Investments
30:20 to 31:50
Understand the importance of being engaged and informed about investments.
“it hockey sticks in that period, doesn't it?”
Navigating High-Risk Investments
31:50 to 33:50
Explore the challenges and risks associated with high-risk investment strategies.
“Did you ever think that your approach was a little bit high risk?”
The Rollercoaster of Stock Picking
33:50 to 36:20
Hear about the highs and lows of stock picking and the psychological impact.
“But I was buying low, selling high, almost on a daily basis.”
Deciding to Retire Early
36:20 to 40:00
Learn about the considerations and emotional aspects of deciding to retire early.
“But this level of volatility actually is too much for me.”
Adjusting Financial Goals
40:00 to 42:00
Discover how life events can lead to adjustments in financial goals and retirement plans.
“if you're only thinking, are you running it to zero?”
Facing the Reality of Retirement
42:00 to 44:45
Discover the initial fears and financial adjustments after early retirement.
“by the time you, you know, take the package and everything.”
Navigating Market Fluctuations
44:45 to 47:22
Learn how to stay calm and adapt during market crashes and their effects on wealth.
“And I knew how much, like, effort and work it would take.”
Adjusting Spending Habits in Retirement
47:22 to 49:55
Understand how expenses can change during retirement and managing them effectively.
“And it was always my original plan that I would be pulled back a bit in retirement or spend less in retirement.”
Creating a Balanced Weekly Routine
49:55 to 52:23
Explore how to structure your week to maintain a healthy work-life balance post-retirement.
“It took me a few months to kind of, you know, for a few months I was just bubbling along going, well, I'm just doing different things and like.”
Lessons from Life After Retirement
52:23 to 56:00
Reflect on the emotional and practical lessons learned since retiring early.
“So is it like every Tuesday I do the health stuff or is it?”
The Transition to Retirement
56:00 to 1:01:50
Exploring the emotional and social adjustments after retiring early.
Health Improvements Post-Retirement
1:01:50 to 1:04:22
Discussing the improvement in health and lifestyle after retiring.
“I mean, and you can, you know, so, you know, how I tracked every transaction in Microsoft Money.”
Future Aspirations and Goals
1:04:22 to 1:06:58
Reflecting on personal goals and aspirations post-retirement.
“Probably the next one on the list really is teaching my son a whole bunch of stuff, which he's just finished his A-levels, so I'm going to be able to...”
Insights on Early Retirement
1:06:58 to 1:08:17
Understanding the experiences and lifestyle of someone who retired early.
“And thank you for just being so transparent and honest and having the humility to sit there and go, you know, I worked hard.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Many of us dream of retiring early, or at least of having the option to. Gareth, one of our viewers, retired at just 48. But what happens when the plan you've spent years building is finally put to the test? Some of the eagle-eyed of you might notice that in this episode, I've made a miraculous recovery. In the next few episodes that are coming out, they were actually filmed before I broke both my arms. So yeah, don't worry, I'm still injured. Gareth, when did you first decide you wanted to retire early? Well, if I think about like when I first started to think about that, it was a long time ago.
0:35I mean, I was famous amongst my little group of graduate accountants for saying, I'm going to be mortgage free by 40. And, you know, I had this ambition that actually I was going to give up work and my wife could, you know, we could live off my wife's teacher's wage. And I'd look after the kids. That was my kind of, you know, big original ambition back in my, you know, when I was in my early 20s. But I mean, obviously things changed. we had kids we had a lot of money um a lot of big house um so you know that became a kind of unrealistic as a as a name but um then farther down the track uh i guess it i got to about 2019 and i put my first 20k in an ISA a couple of years later it was doing quite well i was looking at my pension and I was like you know what this is actually uh pretty good um I should start thinking about you know uh you know could I could I retire and I had this conversation with my uncle Paul who's this great Welsh guy um owns a farm um but the the piece of advice his dad gave to him that really stuck with me um kind of on his deathbed almost was um you can't buy time um and that really stuck with me and i was like right okay you kind of can though because if i could accumulate enough money i could live off that and then you know use my pension to retire and you know i could actually have more time um with my kids and my family so i was like right okay let's let's try and do that by about your time so why do you think you you are like that as a person because from the briefing from some of the stuff we can get into you've clearly been obsessed with this for a long age from a young age sorry i i i i mean i wouldn't say obsessed i i would say I've seen the presentations you put together.
2:41I mean, I always had looked at money very carefully. But I don't think, you know, if you were talking to me in my late 20s, early 30s, retirement was not on my mind at that point in time. My professional life had taken off. I was thinking about, you know, potentially moving to the States and being a finance director for Microsoft over there and, you know, having this, you know, fantastic lifestyle. Actually, that was kind of what was in my head at that time. So it's kind of been, yeah, early doors, very much thinking about it. And then, yeah, then when it was later in my career and I saw the prospect of it potentially being a thing I could actually do, then really engaging with that again and trying to make it happen.
3:33You're traditionally a finance professional. You worked at PwC, one of the big accountancy firms, and you moved to Microsoft. Can you run us through the jobs you had and what the earnings were at Microsoft and why you made those jumps? Yeah, I could certainly do most of that. So, I mean, I started at PwC, trained as an accountant, decided I didn't really want to do it. Moved as quickly as I could into IT consultancy. consultancy. But then I moved to Microsoft as head of compliance for EMEA. And then about 18 months into that, I got the chance to be the UK financial controller. But I love that job.
4:14I kind of turned it into a bit of a COO type role. When I was financial controller, I got to sign off the payroll. So I saw everybody at Microsoft Earn. And I identified this role called commercial executive and it seemed that they were earning lots of money um lots more than i was on as financial controller you know my package is financial controller yeah it was you know i think it was a little over a hundred but uh base plus bonus and then you've got some other benefits on top but it wasn't much more um and then these guys were earning like you know 150 grand 200 I thought it seems very similar to the kind of skill set that I need.
4:58And so, yeah, joined that team as a commercial sales guy, contract negotiation kind of stuff, and then became sales manager kind of three years later. Sales guys always get paid well. They know the numbers, though. You can't say to a sales guy, are you only going to earn 100 grand when you've just bought in a 100 million pound deal? Yeah. I always say to people, if you want to earn good money and you don't know what to do, just get yourself into sales. But it's not for everyone. Like you said, I think you've got to be built for sales. I think people overhype it. I think people think it's like you're kind of like bullying people.
5:36But if you work for a good company with a good product, you're not really selling it. You're just having conversations with people, chatting and working through problems for fulfillment. And then your account managing them and just going, if there's an issue, call me, I will fix it. so it's more about your internal relationships and making sure that the business works for your clients it's very rare the hardest sales is door knocking and those guys in the street that are selling for charities that is raw dogging sales that's the hardest sales if you start with that everything is easy from then on if you're working at microsoft or like a leading company you're basically just people are coming to you and going can you fix what we need and i think that is like anyone could do that job as long as they just can talk to people yeah and i think sales people try and make everyone think that their job is super hard because they earn loads of money for it.
6:23And the only reason they earn loads of money is because they see the money coming through the door. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've seen, it is relationship management. And I've seen people at Microsoft who are great at it. And I've seen people at Microsoft who are actually not really that great at it. You didn't hate work then? No. You weren't always trying to run away from work or have that kind of motivation? No, no, no, not at all. I think there was that early period when I was training as accountant. I was going like yeah I'm not really sure this is what I want to do and sure enough I moved into IT within PwC which I was more interested in so there was there was that initial element of not sure this is what I want to do with my life and then there was you know kind of later down the line actually I don't have to be doing this and and all the jobs I would say I did were came with the level of stress.
7:16I mean, particularly when I moved into sales for the first time, and I'd just taken out a big 400 grand mortgage, and it's cutthroat business, you can be out in your ear at Microsoft after two quarters of underperformance, and I knew that going into it. So there was a time where I was quite stressed about that, having gone from finance to marketing to sales um i wasn't you know necessarily sure i was gonna be great at it um and actually if you much of this hair loss on the top there that all happened in like about 18 months during that kind of first sales period where i was literally like i i was i was at the desk and i was i would do that i'd be getting in at like seven in the morning um and um you know i'd be there at the desk and i'd do that and like there's all this hair on the desk like oh this must be just what happened at the time i just assumed oh this must just be what happens um when you know when you get to a certain age you lose your hair um but as it turned out i didn't lose anywhere near as much hair after that you know i've lost a little bit since then but um it was mainly actually during that 18 month period i think my blood pressure was way too high and uh you know i had a mild heart problem um so so all from the sales sales role i think it had been way before that because actually when i was financial controller um i'd had this period where my blood pressure was 200 over 150 and they'd said and i i just i'd gone to visit um one of my members of staff who was at their little health center we had there at the time and she was unwell i said do you mind just doing my blood pressure while i'm here uh and they said oh yeah it's 200 over 150 so um you can either uh book an appointment with your doctor this afternoon or we're going to send for an ambulance.
9:09So it's up to you. I was like, oh, I can't take that time off. So it's budget season, which is why I was so stressed. So yeah, I then went, right, okay. Yeah, I'm making an appointment with a doctor and I've been on some blood pressure tablets since. But yeah. So there was a lot of stress within the roles that you did. But I really enjoyed, like the last few years, I actually really enjoyed the job. um for the most part yeah um it's great when you were like okay i'm gonna i'm gonna go for this now um i want to retire early was it an age was it a number how did you piece that together um so i mean i i put together in a number in my head that i wanted to to hit so i kind of put together a little spreadsheet um you know i was trained an accountant right love spreadsheets Even as a sales guy, I wasn't really true sales.
10:04I was commercial sales. It was about negotiations and putting together, you know, huge bills of materials and negotiating. So I got my spreadsheet, went, right, okay, well, I need a level of return based for shares I own, level of return for assumptions for interest rates, for savings, level of return and inflation rate. Put all those kind of together and then kind of build out next 15 years. is what do I think I'm going to have in the pot each of those years? Play with those assumptions and go, right, okay, so what number do I need at the bottom to make sure that, you know, after 10 years I've got more than zero and probably comfortably more than zero because, you know, I didn't really want to have to go back and start work when I was already in a very well-paid career, like trying to restart that like eight years in or something would be painful, I think.
10:58So what was your number? Um, so I kind of set my number initially at 700 grand, uh, you know, in kind of 21, 22, I kind of set it at that, that level. Um, I kind of figured I'd probably have about a third of, of, of that in my Microsoft shares, which is broadly how it turned out. Um, and then, yeah, I, you know, from 2019 onwards, I was kind of maxing the ices for a while. So I guess when I retired, I had put in about 180K into ISAs, and I'd turned that into kind of, what, 400 kind of-ish. So yeah, kind of a bit more than doubled. You were bridging, essentially, the gap. Yeah, bridging to my pension.
11:46Were you fairly confident that your pension would be okay? Yeah, I mean, I kind of looked and went, you know what, I'm probably going to have like the kind of government maximum, just over a million quid from a tax point of view. So it was like, right, okay, well, that should be good enough to see me through from there. My wife's got a little pension from when she was a teacher. We should be close to a full state pension. So if we ever get those, I mean, I'm not counting on the state pension still being there, but yeah. Did your wife agree with this plan of early retirement or was it, yeah? Yeah, yeah.
12:25I mean, I think she was, there was plenty of time for her to get used to the idea. So it wasn't like I just sprung it on her one day saying, you know what, I'm going to retire. So, you know, we had talked about it for, you know, a couple of years before it happened. For me, it looks like you went quite hard, quite quickly in a sense of, you only started the ice in about 2020. So, which I think is when a lot. And in the 2019 was when I put my first 20K in. Okay, yeah. And then you built that quite quickly. Why weren't you using the stocks and shares ISA before that point? Good question. I think we'd just been paying off the mortgage.
13:07So there were a few kind of decision points, I guess, things that helped me get there. The first one was actually selling my house to my best mate. um so you know we lived in this uh well we moved to this tiny village um but there was only one house in the market at the time it was this big house big and needed a lot of work doing to it but we're like we want to move to this village for schools so we moved there um did it up and then a year later my best mate who lived half an hour away uh was like yeah yeah he's looking for a house and like oh you should try and you know move to the village it'd be great um and uh but you know he again there was only one house on the market it was actually four doors down so it's like perfect um but uh it wasn't quite big enough he had three kids i had two um so i was like what do you think of our house uh and he's like yeah i love it it's great you know what you've done to it's amazing um so like well how about you buy mine and um i'll buy the one over the road that's 200 grand cheaper.
14:12So it wasn't like at the time I was like, I don't really want to be like shelling out stamp duty two years in a row because it was pretty hefty and just done all the work to the house and made it nice. But the chance to actually get your, you know, your best mate living right next to you, you know, was too good an opportunity to pass up. So that was the the motivation but it meant that i had 200 grand less mortgage and actually the the stress as well that went away when i had 200 grand less mortgage was significant um because you know i knew i'd you know find a way to cover that whatever happened really um so i then started to pay that off at quite a rate um because i'd just moved into sales i was the highest earning the sales guy for three years doing the role i was doing there's about 30 of us doing that role um and And so, I mean, I earned 300 grand one year and, you know, 200 odd in the other two.
15:09So it meant that there was money to put somewhere. So not knowing what better to do with it, I was paying off the mortgage going, yeah, yeah, get rid of that. You know, don't want debt. Now you kind of reflect on that and go, there's probably better things I could have done with that. You said you could have. But if I put it into an ISA earlier and got the kind of returns I got since I did start investing, then obviously I could have retired a couple of years earlier. But you don't think about that at the time. Having not invested before, I didn't know, hey, I could be making 20 % instead of paying off my fixed rate 3 % or 2.89 or whatever it was.
15:51So yeah, hindsight. Yeah. I've got two questions. So first of all, with your mate living opposite in the house that you redecorated, do you ever go around and be like, why the hell have you ripped up the beautiful stuff that I've done? Do you know what I mean? He'd be like, I cost me 10 grand that floor. Do you know what I mean? And he's just like, mate, it's grim. I mean, there are some things that, you know, he's changed, but, you know, he's got to make it work for him. And there were still things that we wanted to do to the place ourselves. You'd only been there 12 months. So it's almost like a temporary home, isn't it?
16:24If you'd been there 15 years, you'd probably feel a lot more attached. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think... I do miss the Sonos system. I put Sonos in ceiling speakers everywhere through the house. Well, I would have taken that out. Yeah, rip all that out, mate. And take the copper wire out the walls. It'd be back to brick. Black slave for you, lad. See you later. There you go. I did ask him if he wanted it. I was like, yeah, yeah, all right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well. Wow, it's a cool thing. So do you think overpaying the mortgage was a mistake then? I mean, you know, if you reflect back, you go, well, you know, yeah.
17:05It wasn't the best financial decision to have made, but I didn't know that at the time. But I don't think you can underestimate the psychological impact of not having that mortgage, particularly for my wife. You know, if I was still here, retired, doesn't matter how much money we've technically got in shares, knowing that we still had a couple hundred grand a mortgage would really, you know, put her off. This ad's brought to you by Hiscox. So this year I made myself a promise to go on more holidays as I tend to just overwork. So last month I went to Bali with some mates. On the flight I was buzzing, 10 days in the sun, but then life happened.
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18:45You're in a relationship is right. Yeah, you're a team. so you've got to make the team work and you can't just be like no no no look trust me i know what i'm doing yeah yeah absolutely i'm quitting my job and we're going to live off this magic pot of money yeah yeah yeah honestly yeah yeah yeah and don't worry about i've sold our house to our best mate don't worry about it yeah that was an interesting conversation at the time but um but yeah um but yeah you're totally right you're a team you've got you've both got to be in there We've both got to be happy. Yeah. And their consideration and risk averseness or whatever is part of it.
19:19You can't just go, you're wrong, I'm right. Yeah, yeah. Because if it went wrong, you're suddenly very wrong. Absolutely. And it can go wrong. Absolutely. I guess you can sleep better at night with no mortgage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Less stress for both of you. Absolutely. I mean, we've still got like, you know, 10 grand left because, you know, I'd heard that it was good for your credit rating. And, you know, if we ever, for some reason, wanted to, you know, increase, get an increased mortgage to buy a house for a family member or something or help them out with bridging or something, then, you know, having that credit record might be useful.
19:50But, yeah, so still got 10 grand. Well, I think, you know, being worth a couple of millions is pretty good for your credit rating as well, to be honest. I mean, yeah. I think it'd be all right. Like, yeah, are you good for it? They might be like, well, where's your income? That might be a hard thing. Yeah, yeah. I remember recently, one of the credit card companies did send me through a survey to say, can you just confirm where your money's coming from? I was like, I've never received that before. They must somehow, I think it was for HMRC, they must somehow know that I'm not employed anymore.
20:21Don't worry, I'm good for it. I wonder what this, so I looked at statistics around early retirement, because I think many people think early retirement is normal. And if they're not in a position to retire early, that they've somehow failed, right? And when I say early retirement, I think many people think like 55, 60, blah, blah, blah. Hardly anyone retires at 50. You're talking like a fraction of a percent of the UK population retires at 50. Or even identifies as being able to be able to retire. So they say, I could if I wanted to. It slowly starts to kick up from 55. And then basically once people can access their pensions at 57, you see a big increase.
20:59But only about 20 % of people at that point say, I could retire. the main one is state pension you know that's when you go into the the high like 80s 90 percent yeah so you're in rare air were you 48 48 when you checked out in that sense so yeah i mean i can imagine that the credit card companies would be like what the hell he's dealing drugs
21:26yeah i want to talk about how you actually did it because i think some of it's quite interesting um so first of all you were picking stocks to invest in you weren't just buying a global index inside of your eyes so you were picking some companies weren't you yeah i mean well the first you know my first 20k i put half into fidelity global technology fund um because i thought cloud computing's you know done is going to do great basically um and you know i've got all my money in microsoft i want to diversify that a little bit to other cloud companies because you know we're not going to make all the money and i'm already fairly heavily well invested in microsoft shares and also my career at the time so i wanted to diversify from microsoft but also thought cloud computing would do well and it did um and the other one was uh i put money into games workshop who make warhammer so these little miniatures that uh you know you play with and and um because i was heavily into that hobby which armies did you like uh well i've basically got all of them now but space space wolves will always be your missus is having a battle with you i'm gonna i'm gonna move us into a smaller house i'm gonna need half the house to put all my little figures in yeah yeah i mean i mean you're not far off i was into i was into chaos marines back in my youth so see my son does all the all the chaos armies he's an evil guy like me yeah i play all the good guys basically i've got all all the non-baddy factions um all the goody factions I've got and he owns all the baddie ones now so uh so yeah that's pretty much how it ends up being split um but I I knew that that was going to do well because I was so into into the hobby uh and um you know I think it did something something like the best performing share in the UK over the next three or four years so how did you know it would do well though I mean a lot of people into a lot of things and normally like my friend's son investing like oh I like this video game so I'm gonna invest in this video game company and it might not do well so how did you Were you confident or do you think you were a bit lucky?
23:22On that particular one, confident. Confident. But did you do research on the company? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I looked into that. I was doing my first investment and I'm an accountant. I had their balance sheet. I had their profit and loss statements for the last few years. I was looking at PE ratios. So you did 90 % more than most people who are looking for stocks. You actually did the numbers. The amount of people that I speak to that go, oh, I like tech, so why invest in tech? You're not valuing the business. You have no idea if Apple is correctly valued. Just because you like iPhones doesn't mean you know the business.
23:56Whereas it sounds like actually, because one of the things I was trying to figure out was, did you just get lucky because you liked Games Workshop and you worked in tech? Or have you actually done the work to value these businesses? I got lucky in knowing the hobby really well. And so I knew that it was about to, you know, kind of go up quite a lot based on my work in the hobby, not because I'd read backward-looking financial statements. All that told me was, you know, they hadn't done very well a couple of years ago, which, you know, I knew anyway. But yeah, it was more about that. I could see the potential.
24:32I could see, you know, they were launching a new edition of the game and it was being taken up and everyone's like, this is great, it's amazing. And I could see how much money they were going to be making out of it. But I think as they continued on that journey, it becomes harder to say, is it going to do better than it's done before? I think they're trading it now, like 30 PE or something. So now I'm like... Momentum takes over, right? Yeah, exactly. It becomes a story where people... So I got out, you know, a little while ago out of Games Workshop shares because I just, you know, wasn't sure.
25:03Well, I mean, I think you say you've got to look at your sphere of competence, right? It's I know this kind of world, so I'm going to go look and see if I can find a business within it. It's the only business really within that kind of space. I'm sure there's other hobbies similar. but yeah you know it's like i work within tech i know it i'm an accountant i'm going to look for the best cloud businesses within that and you you go through the range of businesses that's how most people if they're going to pick stock should should probably go at it yeah i mean i then i went for like my high street bank um because i thought i think they're going to do well and and like you know put some money into b and q and covid here because i thought you know people are going to be you know doing out their home offices and stuff like that and yeah sure enough you know that That did quite well.
25:50And Howden's put some money into that as well. Do you think there was an element of luck here? Have you been kind of – because you've ridden a very good market at a very good time, and you've also worked for one of the best businesses on the planet over that period, maybe the best. You've got Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA. If you were in any of those businesses in the last 10 years getting share options, you've done all right. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't do share options. They just did shares. But I mean, there is a point where we could maybe make here on the Microsoft shares, because if I'd actually never sold any and just, you know, managed to get to last year at its high of kind of 5.30 and sold all my shares then, I'd have had 4 million quid.
26:35I just want to see the conversations you have with your wife. Trust me, I'm selling it now. One year later. Oh, shit. I'm buying a Chaos Defiler with it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you think you would have still bought Microsoft if you didn't work there? If I hadn't worked there and I knew what I knew, yes, definitely. Would I have known what I'd known if I hadn't worked at Microsoft? No, probably not. So, yeah. No, I was recommending to other people, you know, well before cloud really took off, hey, I'd be buying like Microsoft, you know, at 30 bucks a share. I thought this is going to, you know, this is going to rock it.
27:14Then you get the AI, which you couldn't have really seen coming, right? That was the next win behind it because people started going, what are the gears for these guys? And then here it comes. And who knows, in a couple of years' time, we might be sat here going, well, that was all a bubble. And it's collapsed and you were just in a different period. Yeah, I mean, my view on that, it is in a bubble. I mean, I've diversified out of most of tech, apart from my Microsoft shares. I actually think Microsoft is, well, it's certainly less overvalued than some of the others, certainly less risky. But yeah, I've been trying to get out of that over recent months as much as you can actually achieve that when you're in a bunch of funds for pension.
28:01yeah i guess the question then is if we took away the timing element of you know i think i was lucky that i started a youtube channel in 2020 just as the whole world started going oh what let's sort out my finances because i've got nothing better to do they were they were building garden extensions and stuff and they were they were starting to invest there's always an element of luck and i don't want to downplay what you've done there because you've had the commitment and you've done the work but do you think if i plunked you in any time period that you would be able to do what you've done um i funny after those two things may be linked uh probably not because the i think the reason why i did particularly well is because of all the finance content that i consume from people like yourself in 2020 you're welcome so thank you i'll take share options if you got some for me um so so i mean but you know seriously that's interesting that you know that's where i learned about you know i did those first 20k but didn't really know anything about investing most of what i've learned about investing has actually you know come from watching you know people like yourself uh you know ramen um in pension craft and people like that you know consuming a lot of that content has been something that i've you know done more and more of um since about 2020 i think most people started around 2020 that i speak to it was that kind of covert surge game stop was one of the biggest things yeah people saw that and thought oh this is a way to print money and a lot of people got burnt by it and then get involved in that no no well they're sensible i think but it was a massive catalyst and then a lot of people went okay how do i do this properly you know a lot of people it's scared off forever unfortunately and i think they're like i won't ever buy stocks because they're it's like a pump and dump or something you know whereas a lot of people were like no no i want to figure this out properly now so there was a few catalysts there i do think it's it's so interesting about your story when i was looking at it because i looked i was like this guy's tracked every expense ever since his 20s you were like listing your haircuts in 1996 1998 no yeah yeah yeah and and i was like bloody hell but the investing stocks and shares only has happened in the last five six years and that You sent this chart of your net worth and it just goes, it hockey sticks in that period, doesn't it?
30:24It does, yeah, absolutely. It's interesting that you had this lifetime of discipline, but actually you did all the moving in the last five, six years, basically. Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because that was when I started to invest. I didn't realise what I was missing out on by not investing, really. Because, I mean, I'd had, like, you know, pension investments for a long time and they'd never really done anything, but then I wasn't paying any attention to what I'd put them in. You know, when I did my original PwC pension, you know, I think that had about, when I finally moved it over, after it must have been sat there for 10 plus years, you know, it was worth 12 grand.
31:05At the time, it felt like the money I'd put in was significant because that was, you know, kind of mid-20s. But, you know, it didn't do anything. because I hadn't thought about what I was investing in. Then as I started, I started to get more interested in pensions before I got interested in, you know, investing in shares. And I started to like control what I was actually investing in, in my pension. It shows how even a high earner, if they're not engaged with where the money ends up, can not make much progress, you know. And once you got engaged, you basically did more work in five to six years than you had in 15, you know and i think that's it doesn't matter what you earn it's it's how you're allocating and deploying that money and it's why you know saving in cash and paying down your mortgage versus investing it's night and day even for people that don't have high incomes you can outlap someone with an income five times the size of yours if you're engaged with the riskier assets of the stock market and things yeah absolutely go on mate you said you listen to a lot of youtubers Damien, Ramin, all these people, a lot of them talk about, you know, global index fund.
32:14Did you ever think that your approach was a little bit high risk? Did it ever keep you up at night? Yeah, I don't know if you watch my contest. I know, I stopped picking that up. You saw you were paying attention to what you were saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But did you ever feel risky or did you ever have bad experiences? Could you sleep at night? So, I mean, it is funny because, yeah, I do. I watch all this content. And if you, so I do free finance education sessions for people since I retired to help them. And, you know, I'm telling them the same stuff as you're telling the viewers, right? I'm not saying, all right, what you need to do is, you know, pick a load of stocks and be lucky.
32:50That is not my advice. Mine's like, yeah, best thing you do, particularly if they're not particularly engaged, you know, just stick it in global index fund, you know, averaging over time, you know, all that stuff. That's the advice I give. I don't say, yeah, do as I did. I do think I was, you know, fortunate in terms of the timing. You know, I was investing in a time when stock markets were going up nicely anyway. You know, I outperformed probably the S &P over that time, but not by a lot. And in the meantime, I was, you know, picking lots of different things and just kind of getting a bit lucky with it.
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33:30So, yeah. Have you, like, simmered that down now? now that you're not in accumulation and you're in a decumulation phase have you stopped the stock picking um no yeah in in summary no but or or yes but only because it's got worse um so i don't know what that means drinking yourself sober there mate and actually i can come back to the point you were raising before about you know if i ever felt like too much risk um so uh i kind of i've dialed back the stock picking a bit because i've got more heavily into commodities only since i've been retired um so it didn't didn't get me there but um but yeah so i've got more into that and yeah they've been um again i wouldn't recommend this to most people um but But in January this year, I'd made like 100 grand in the first three weeks and I was feeling like some sort of Nick Leeson affair going on.
34:37He sat in that seat. I know. I saw it. But I was buying low, selling high, almost on a daily basis. I was feeling like, you know, I'd started buying leverage funds. Don't worry, honey, I got it. I'm like let me do what I do let me cook this is what I do yeah yeah every day I was going like oh yeah I've made 10 grand I was telling my daughter you know her eyes because I started to put a bit oh you know you're up two grand today she's like yeah great dad um so um yeah but you know we have that lovely rise and I was starting to feel good but and I actually I gave myself a real talking to one night and went, you know what, you've made 100 grand now in a month.
35:26Just cash this out, out of this more volatile stuff and put it into something safe. And, you know, just bank that 100 grand. You're in a nice safe place. You can de-risk it. And what I didn't realize was overnight in the US, they'd had their biggest fall in silver. uh well the second biggest fall ever in silver first biggest fall since the 80s um and i was heavily into silver so i um between that and the fact that microsoft added then a bad really bad two days in two days i lost 80 grand oh and if you like you made the decision and if you just pulled the plug a day earlier you'd have been all right yeah and uh it was also because um like what i'd been doing through most of that period was putting stop losses in as i bought so i could only lose so much um if it did start to go down um and because i'd been busy in london with some political stuff um uh tax wealth not work um i i i'd just been a bit busy and hadn't put the stop losses in um and like i normally did and and yeah it was that day that it decided to crash can't tax your wealth if you piss it all away mate yeah but i like how i like how laissez-faire you are with it and a bit like oh well it's such as life but yeah it's uh it's nice to do that you admit that you were humbled in that sense oh yeah how do you approach it now though do you think oh well i can get it back up again have you got that gambling mentality or you're like that is the lesson i needed yeah so the the lesson i i really took from that um apart from get your stop losses in uh if you're gonna such an important lesson trump taught me that one did one tweet and just wiped out my trade i'm like always use a stop loss or how about we just don't do this activity but uh yeah i was to not do leverage um because that that was what really amplifies it in that period uh and i i thought you know this this level of all i'm i'm good at absorbing losses and you thinking about the long term, et cetera.
37:37But this level of volatility actually is too much for me. That's beyond my psychological level of coping. Because I was still there going, I was pretty upset for a couple of days with myself. I was trying not to show it, but in my head, I'm like, you've lost 80 grand in two days. Yeah, especially when it's like you've already made the decision and it's a couple of days and it swings completely the other way. I think people don't consider that point. So I want to come to the actual decision now, speaking about making decisions. You decided to retire early. You hadn't hit the number that you'd set, though.
38:16Could you just remind us, what was the number, first of all? Yes, I set myself initially a couple of years before. I'd set it at 700 grand. So I thought that's - For the bridge. That's the right number. Yeah, 700 grand, and then plus what I've got in the pension then that I can take from like 58. So I was like, right, okay, 10 years, 700 grand should be enough. Let's go for it. So that was the theory. Then just before I retired, I took a sabbatical for three months, mainly to kind of look after my dad, who'd had a couple of strokes and he wasn't walking around much. It was difficult for him. So I was like, all right, let's spend a bit of time with him, which was great.
39:01you know fantastic glad i took those three months but it was also a little bit of a test of like you know i'm getting near to this retirement potential point would i actually like retirement am i going to get bored you know if i'm bored in three months i'm not going to like you know 30 years or whatever um so so so i was able to test that but that also then made me revise what i'd been thinking in terms of my expenditure so i i upped my number to 750k because we'd had quite a lot of inflation since the Ukraine war had started and I felt I'd be spending more in retirement than I really had planned for.
39:41So I upped it to 750 to give me a little bit more breathing room. But yeah, then the opportunity came to actually retire and I was at 650. So 100 grand's a lot, you know, that's okay, four grand a year in income. Well, your withdrawal rate's probably, So the amount you draw off the pot is probably quite a lot higher than 4 % if you're only thinking, are you running it to zero? So over 10 years, say, or 20 - It's not the plan. No, but you wouldn't be at 4%. You might be 8%, 9%. Yeah, I mean, if I think about what I'd planned for, I was planning on a 70 grand a year spend. So almost 10 % of the pot a year.
40:20Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, you can have high withdrawal rates over shorter periods of time. Yeah, it was 70 grand inflation link. so yeah i think i looked at it for a 10-year bridge so you can be at say 13 percent and and but you run it to zero when you do that was it your dad that made you stop um i mean maybe it was the uh the reason why i made the decision at the time but like i was i was offered the the package at the time um and it just so happened when i was offered that like two days earlier i've been with my dad and you know he was his ability to walk around had really gone downhill since my sabbatical ended a few months earlier and i was like i've got to find a way to spend more time with him again this is not you know this is not great um so then when this opportunity to take apache to leave came i was like initially i was like oh i'm not sure i'm ready i wasn't quite you know and then no no you gotta do this this you know it's like a sign like yeah exactly you got i i was telling myself i gotta find a way and i've just been handed away and just just do it uh so it was microsoft so like a redundancy kind of package yeah yeah was a lot of people so that also meant that like you know i i was then trying to eke out the time frame when it would actually like come to pass so you know when i actually left and see if I could, you know, can I do anything about negotiating the package up slightly or the time a bit longer so that I qualified for more of my shares and stuff.
41:57So I managed to, you know, actually retire with 700 by the time you, you know, take the package and everything. Were you scared? Like, were you worried that it wasn't enough? I, not then. But roll forward three months after I've actually, like, retired and, you know, I'm on holiday, seeing puffins on Skomer Island. We're out in the middle of the sticks and Donald Trump has his big tariff board and he's presenting and my stocks are doing that. It wasn't how you ground him two days. But at the time, you know, I'd been watching this number go up, right, for like my whole life basically because i've been tracking this since 1998 uh you know i've seen my net worth tracking up every uh every month for you know however many years and now suddenly it was it was going down and then it went down big because of the you know the trump dump um so at that point i was like oh i'm now i'm now now behind where i'm supposed to be according to my plan um and you know tariffs coming around all around the world cannot be good for shares almost anywhere so this is this was not part of my plan what what what what am i going to do now um so i started to think about you know other things otherwise i could uh you know potentially raise money um such as uh well i i uh i actually created a channel healthy wealthier and wiser for YouTube, but I never posted anything there.
43:41But I got as far as thinking. Not a single video. No, no. I think you can access it and see all the videos that I've posted, which is just like your videos and stuff under Wealth, other people under. Oh, like playlists. Yeah, so you can access playlists that I think I've put there. But yeah, I never actually created a video. I once created a video for Gareth's Economics, which is kind of a bit of play on Gary's economics, but going into wealth taxes. A bit like Barry. Yeah. Barry's economics. Funny enough, we both come up with it like at the same time, but I didn't go through with mine. I saw myself on video.
44:18I was like, no, I'm not doing this. Barry's doing very well, I think. Yeah, he's doing very well. Yeah, he's got a big channel now. Yeah, I think it's not easy making videos, is it? And then once you see yourself and you're like a rabbit in a headlight and the lighting looks awful on you. This is not for me. And obviously, you know, the market picked up. I recovered, you know, all of what I'd lost and was making money again. You know, I had more than I retired on. So, you know, I was like, yeah, I don't need to do this. And I knew how much, like, effort and work it would take. And I had created this kind of really nice balance in my life that I was happy with.
44:55And I knew that if I ended up spending, you know, taking out an extra day or, you know, day or two a week to you know start doing youtube videos or anything um that you know that was going to detract from everything else in my life that i was really enjoying if do you think you're ready if the market has a crash now like do you think you'll panic like worry again and then consider how i can make revenue again um i mean i think it's it's always it's always there as a as a possibility and then there are you know there's other ways i can make money but um but yeah i i think things would have to get quite bad for an extended period of time before i'd really start to worry i think i'm you know i i think i'm well positioned for the medium term almost whatever happens um but that doesn't mean that it's not going to be you know really terrible for a year or something so that's it's like it's until you get there and you actually have to suffer a year of everything's going down, I don't know how I'd actually feel.
45:56Because, you know, I can sit here and go, yeah, no, I can deal with that now. But let's see if you actually end up there. What about three or four years? Like you lived through the dot-com bubble. That was like a three to four year downturn. And then like a 10 year stagnation within the American markets, the lost decade. Could you handle that? um so i mean i i think so but i think after a big crash things pick up so yes i might be down but i can still be making money from that new much lower position i think um so i think as long as that's going on i'll be fairly comfortable and and happy um i've deliberately like de-risked myself from you know all of the big ai companies which i think is where most of the bubbles at um and you know if people if that happens i think eventually you'll see precious metals pick up um which is where a lot of my wealth is sat so yeah and i think people listening who might be like oh ai bubble i'll get out you're not in an accumulation phase you're in a decumulation phase you need to protect the wealth that you have and i've still my pension has still got some of that in it yeah um but you know that's in the i don't need that for 10 years so they can they can crash and get back yeah yeah i think i think the thing is it you've got it's this period of time isn't it it's just this kind of i mean how long have you been retired for now uh 18 months 18 months so what have you got like a another eight to nine years before before the pension kicks in so that's that's the period of like that you're trying to bridge yeah and you know could you cut your expenses a bit as well yeah i mean again because i've tracked you know every penny i've spent basically for any number of years um i can you know i know where the money goes i know where we can cut um you know i i'm kind of very conscious of of where i can cut and where it's going to be difficult um and i know i could you know cutting 10 grand out what i spend a year is not hard at all cutting 20 it's not too hard really um and you know if i had to i think i could cut 40 grand out of what i spend a year if i had to um but that would mean telling you know telling the family right you know you're not doing that you're not doing that no we're not doing that you know cut back on the takeaways um etc um so yeah um doable but you know as long as i'm still in a phase where i'm making i've got more money than i retired on then i'm you know like yeah just spend i mean i'm doing you know loads of lovely things you know in retirement you know i've got you know men's finals tickets for wimbledon i'm going to the british grand prix you know so i'll take that the other week um in southampton they were amazing um you know a few concerts and comedy gigs that you know i'm signed up to in the next few months around my 50th birthday so yeah are you are you spending as much as you thought you were spending retirement or spending more spending less more i think that's a lot of people spend more yeah uh no definitely more um but because you know i can i mean i think if the Trump dump kind of effect had continued, I'd have been pulling back.
49:25And it was always my original plan that I would be pulled back a bit in retirement or spend less in retirement. I thought I'd be like, oh, I won't have my commute costs. That'll come out. I'll do that. But it gets replaced by, well, actually, now I'm going out and seeing people and doing things all the time. Every day's a weekend. Every day's a weekend. Every day's a weekend. Exactly right. um so yeah the amount i spend on on meals and seeing mates i mean the you know retirement's been great for actually my network and um and seeing friends i haven't seen in years you know seeing loads of them um and you know really enjoy that what does your week look like then how do you structure it yeah so i mean i did actually uh kind of come up with this structure for my week if you that has worked out really well for me.
50:15It took me a few months to kind of, you know, for a few months I was just bubbling along going, well, I'm just doing different things and like. But over those first few months I kind of worked out, actually, this is when I'm happiest. So I spend a day on health, a day on wealth, a day with or for my wife. So either kind of going on a date day. I thought you said with all four of my wives. I thought you said the same thing. No wonder you're so happy. I've spent a day with all four of my wives. No, no, no. Just a bit. Just a bit. I mean, at university, I did live with three Sarahs. Three Sarahs?
50:50I was engaged to one and I married the other. But there's no four wives, just the one. Just in case of one Sarah married the other Sarah. Psych, wrong Sarah. On the wedding day, switch them up. Oh, dear. But, yeah, no, just with or for my wife. Health, wealth, your wife. My wife. day with my parents mostly my dad admittedly but my mum's got her own challenges at the moment health wise and then a day giving back and there's a bunch of stuff I do for that the finance education sessions I mentioned earlier there's a couple of businesses I'm invested in with SEIS funding which is great things getting involved in start ups and helping them out um you're patriotic millionaires you're a patriotic millionaires um so so yeah lots of stuff i'm involved with and that that's probably the the and that's the challenging one in the all all of these things i mean they they would happily take most of those other days away if i let them and i kind of know when when they're doing that because there's the the the two things that are always sacrificed first is the health day and the day with my wife.
52:07And the health one, I feel round my middle. So I've been underachieving on my health day for about six months now, and I know that. And my wife lets me know if I'm missing out on that the other day quite well. What's a health day look like? So is it like every Tuesday I do the health stuff or is it? No, no. So the only day that's really set is the day with my dad. Um, that's, that's pretty set. Um, but I try and be flexible with the others. Um, cause actually if you get rigid, I don't know, you know, you start not enjoying yourself again. Um, but the, you know, the day on health is actually like, you know, Monday morning, I, I'll, I'll go for a run and do, do some weights.
52:49Um, you know, uh, I'll do badminton on a Tuesday evening, badminton on a Thursday evening and Thursday mornings I go down the spa and, um, do a bit of weight training, but it's, but it's about a day. It's about a day's worth of time that you spend a week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the wealth days, is it like investing? Yeah, that's far more spread, but yeah. Research still looking for random stocks to pick? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not entirely random. It's mainly based on value. Yeah, yeah, no. I've made lots of mistakes on things that were not value. You do your research.
53:25You do your work. I did sometimes do my research. I did my research in those cases. there's plenty of times where I haven't done my research we can just ignore those yeah they're generally the ones that have not gone well yeah Premier African Minerals looking at you African Minerals Premier African Minerals yeah Lithium Miner my mate at work sounds like something T had tried and peddle me I've got this lithium mining company in Nigeria that's about to take off let's go to the moon yeah yeah my mate had said oh yeah yeah that's great it's going to do this they're about to get these contracts and it did I made I made, you know, 500 quid on my five grand investment in about an hour.
54:05And then, yeah, it went downloads. And then I put some more in later. And anyway, it's gone to basically nothing. If you make 10 % in an hour, you extrapolate that out over a year. You're like, this is like the best return I've ever made. I should probably get out of this thing. But yeah, I hope when my son's your age, he spends a day a week with me. I think that's a really nice thing that you do for your dad. Yeah. Yeah. My son doesn't have a choice, mate. Yeah, he will do one day, mate. Weekends are really good now as well because, you know, they're basically for the family as they ever were, but now I'm so much more present there and I'm not trying to get the shopping done and do all the chores around the house and stuff because I've got those done during the week.
54:51Yeah, you kind of have kids at the wrong age in a way. You know, there's a lot of pressures for work and to raise money and it's like you want to be there and present. You want to be retired with kids. I think that's why being a grandparent is such a nice thing for people because they get that, you know, and they get to come back at the end, which I think is a key bit. It's like, yeah, I'm done now. I'm taken back. Yeah.
55:13Yeah, I wish that I had been more financially secure younger with my son so that I could have been there. And I also wish that, like, I also hope that I don't look back on this time in my life in years to come and think, you shouldn't have worked so hard. You should have been more with your son. You know, it's like you provide a good life. Like the work I do is basically going to change the trajectory of my son's life. It'll mean he'll never struggle financially like I had to. I want him to struggle a bit, but do you know what I mean? He's not. No, exactly. I will be there and there is a safety net.
55:46But you do think like, is that what he even cares about? He just wants the time. Yeah. I mean, I'm so lucky I get to work from home. I just think anyone. That's a great thing about COVID. Like a lot of people now work from home because working with your kid running around, it's very annoying very distracting but like every day i'm like i'm so grateful that i can work and he's there and he can jump on my zoom calls and annoy me but like at least he'll remember my dad was always around but sometimes i'm like i need to go to the office to get some work done because i've got i've got podcasts tomorrow i need to prepare so yeah it's a double-edged sword but it is it is nice to be there for your kids are you happier now yeah than when you were working definitely do you enjoy it yeah love it um yeah i've never been happier best decision i ever made was to retire early um yeah you know i had that kind of one moment during the trump dump when i was like you know was was this the right decision but aside from like that like momentary thought i've been really happy um with you know the decision and yeah it's been great um but you're better than i thought honestly you're clearly intelligent you you operated at quite a high level and you earned a lot of money in like a competitive environment you know sales team at microsoft is like apex sales team right and you were like the top guy do you ever feel like you i've checked out on your potential i think like there there is that kind of there was that slight professional thing of like i never made director um and i was always one like i was one level below director basically from uh i guess when i was at pwc in like 2005 45 i was one level below director and i've been one level below director essentially my entire microsoft career how i've managed to achieve that without ever like you know getting you know i did i i took a i took i went down a level when i moved to sales then then got promo to manager but i've always been one level basically below director uh so that that has always grinded at me very slightly but aside from that no but there is that when you retire there is that who am I now yeah like and during particularly my garden leave period um after I'd made the decision and I'd officially gone I had three months where I'm not allowed to speak to my team I'd spent you know the last few years speaking to them every day my whole world was about developing them and helping them with all their problems that was basically what i did i didn't have much of my own role at that point it was all about developing them um and you know suddenly they're all gone i'm not allowed to speak to them for three months so is that so that you didn't poach them to another company or poach them into retirement yeah yeah that's that's kind of that's kind of why why they why they have that rule it's standard they're just paranoid you're going to steal them yeah yeah but it's you know it's it's absolutely standard but that that was a weird time since you know i've gone back in touch with all of them i've spoken to them loads but um but yeah um what do they think about you i'm just going to straighten your mic there we go thank you oh no she likes to hang to the left this one there you go for the audio listen to this i'm getting the eyebrows across the table here i'm not just the early congenera you give us you give me some strong wobbly eyebrows there gareth that's pretty good so yeah yeah i mean they were they were you know they were really happy for me you know um they were you know and obviously there was a lot of sadness when i was initially like going and you know like you know do you have to etc but um but i think that you know they've seen how i've been since and you know they're really really happy for me a couple of even followed yeah i mean what i meant was so you know you say the director like i never made it to director i wonder how many directors are looking at you going bloody hell i'm nowhere near being able to retire and someone under me has has what have i do you know i mean i mean i've spoke to quite a few of them before what have they said um well they were just like how yeah how and can you give me some advice and like you know because yeah i mean i'm not i wasn't the you know within Microsoft sales I was not the highest earning you know kind of person over a long period you know there's lots of people above me um but I focused on investing and got really good returns when most of them are like well I've got a financial advisor you know the best one you know the best ones have got a financial advisor but they don't really know what they're doing or who their well their financial invest advisor is doing with their money you know they get a you know kind of check in once a year and he says yeah it's gone up five percent well done um like great inflation's what
1:00:38um so so yeah um yeah and a lot of financial advisors they want they want as big an assets under management as possible right so they might not be going oh you could stop right now they'd be like oh you work for another 20 years oh we can 10x this pot like you know and a lot of them you know they've got much more expensive properties in london huge mortgages um uh a lot a lot of them have most of them have better cars and go on nicer holidays than than i ever did you know i generally holidayed in this country you know i love the isle of white and wales so um so so you know i made different choices along the road that enabled me to be you know maxing out my icer every year for a few years yeah because i think like you know there's a lot of people that will listen to this that go oh well of course you weren't 300 grand in a year and you worked at microsoft and you earn lots of money but actually people are more money than you and probably a lot more money than you i bet there's people within your sphere that added a zero onto that pay packet yeah and they are not in that position yeah yeah yeah they're still working for but i a lot of them it's because they choose to be still working it's not that they couldn't do it financially but just that you know that's not where their priorities are yeah you said that when you retired the question is who am i so who are you uh who am i yeah so my you know initial response to that is generally you know to try and proudly say oh i'm retired um and you know when i just meet people randomly um but it is it is weird when people you're just meeting people for the first time say who are you what do you do and i'm like oh yeah i'm retired they're like you're too young to be retired so what do you mean um and then you know you get the follow-up aren't you bored kind of questions um but so i kind of i thought about this question for a while um you know when i was doing my linkedin kind of profile you go okay well what i need to take out you know microsoft sales manager i'm not uh so what what am i and i kind of framed it as you know i'm trying myself and others healthy wealthier and wiser so that's that's how i kind of uh have kind of positioned you know that's how i think of myself now um i think you use the retired thing for another 10 years because i there'll be a common point where people go all right okay yeah yeah you won't look you're gonna be using that card every day business card retired what do you mean you know what i mean you know i've done well that's basically what you're saying i've done all right Do you think your health has improved since you've retired, like mentally and physically?
1:03:17Yeah, yeah, both. I mean, and you can, you know, so, you know, how I tracked every transaction in Microsoft Money. Well, I also, you know, when I retired, I set up a spreadsheet and I started to track my weight, my blood pressure, and actually I was doing, you know, kind of checking in at my physio. I was actually booking in kind of MOTs every three months with Dom at Podyset, great guy. And so he was doing all these strength testing exercises so I could check in on actually how was I doing in various spheres and how was my right versus my left and stuff like that. he'd be uh checking in with me so that i could see you know how i was improving um so yeah on all measures like i was improving particularly over that first kind of nine months uh i did let it go a bit at christmas this year and then i recovered a bit but i didn't recover to the point where i was kind of last summer i was gonna say we're nearly closer to next christmas are we yeah yeah exactly um but i mean i improved a lot from christmas um but yeah uh but yeah you know lost five kilos very quickly when i retired and you know was focusing on health um and blood pressure much better have you got any like big goals or new things that you're going to start trying to do because i think if i think of oh if i retired what would i do i'd probably all the things i've like i'll actually learn to play guitar i'll run a marathon you know have you got anything like that in your life i mean so i had funnily enough i had a bunch of those kind of ideas of things that i wanted to do like that but i haven't got to them like you know i've got a guitar never played it i mean i've strummed but i've never never properly played it um i've got a desire to to learn the guitar still that's still there um uh warhammer there's a bunch of armies that i really want to paint um and i haven't got around to doing those i'm barely painting and playing at a much higher rate than I was before I retired a little bit but not not not not not hugely um uh and so yeah there's a whole bunch of things I'd like to be doing um as well as you know I kind of had this list of like artists that I wanted to see live and I'd been you know ticking through that list quite nicely um so yeah but I'm lots of events lots of things I want to do and I think I'll get to some of them.
1:05:50Probably the next one on the list really is teaching my son a whole bunch of stuff, which he's just finished his A-levels, so I'm going to be able to... He's the right time and place if you can get him early. I've got a few months. He'll be retired by 30. I've got a few months before he starts his accountancy apprenticeship. You're sending him down the route. Exactly. Then he goes and works in Microsoft for a bit. Yeah, yeah. The funny thing is I tried to put him off. Like for years, I was trying to put him off going into accountancy, but he's ended up there anyway. It's such a useful skill. Yeah, I mean, with AI coming, I don't know that it's going to be that useful for that long.
1:06:28That's what I was just thinking. But I think, you know, he can learn those skills. They will be – it's very useful grounding for the next few years before maybe he goes on and does something else that's grounded in finance. um i've got a last question for you oh my dream was to retire at 40 when i was younger i was like yeah i'm gonna quit retiring i'm gonna be a quick work i'll be a philanthropist um and now that i love my jobs i've got a couple um i don't think i'll ever retire i might just like dial back and work from a beach have you are you living the dream he's doing that now i'm on a beach right now this is ai have you have you achieved your dream are you living it yeah i kind of feel i am you know would i have liked to have done it a few years earlier to get the kids a bit younger yeah but you know the is this my dream life that i could live at this time it pretty much is you know a bit more money would be nice but i really don't need i don't need any more money you know this is great i'd just like to say thank you for being so transparent with us in the briefing sending us all the financial information you're you're clearly a geek for it and i love to see I loved your little one about my career and you had all the little emojis on it and stuff.
1:07:42I thought that was amazing. And thank you for just being so transparent and honest and having the humility to sit there and go, you know, I worked hard. I earned a lot, but I was also quite lucky. I think that's really refreshing. Well, you're very welcome. And thank you for all of your help over the years. It's been very helpful in getting me there. So cheers.
1:08:04you know i thought was pretty cool that we always talk about retirement and like what people are going to do when they retire but he actually retired early and to see his lifestyle and what he does on a weekly basis in retirement without getting bored having the nice balance of family exercise wealth it was really interesting yeah and it's it's lumpy it doesn't go right sometimes and he's still surviving and he's pretty chill about it i thought it was quite inspirational or he in the briefing he sent us loads of information and that he he seems quite chill but he's planned everything quite aggressively and he has that finance background that kind of allows him to do that all the spreadsheets and stuff he put together we have a financial planning tool that you can use we'll link it below if you want to ask questions about your own goals and see what that spits up at you yeah have a go let us know what you think this episode was made possible by Vanta.
1:08:54If you're building a business and you need to prove that you're compliant with security standards like GDPR or SOC 2, then Vanta can save you a lot of time and money. You can book a demo using the link in the description.
1:09:09Normally, this is where we'd say this isn't financial advice, and it really isn't. But if you want to speak to a good financial advisor, then we might be able to help. We've partnered with a few advisors to offer a range of services, from one-off flat fee guidance to ongoing advice. I'm actually using the guidance service to sort out my finances. If you'd like to understand your options, there's a link in the description where you can answer a few questions and then book a free call with my colleague, Will, so you can figure out what might be right for you. This episode was produced by Ruth Edwards and it was filmed and edited by Ben and Jack at Flowspire.
1:09:40See you next week.
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