Dipping my toes into the waters of blogland.

Hello dear reader,
Firstly, I would like to say a huge thank you for taking the time to read my blog.
Hopefully you will enjoy it and want to come back to read more!

My name is Jules and I am a wife, mum, stepmum and nanna/stepnanna of 5 lovely but ever so lively (interpret the word lively as you will) grandkids.
I live very happily with hubby, our youngest daughter, a mad, high maintenance cocker spaniel and a plethora of uninvited wildlife in a 200yr old cottage (also high maintenance) that we downsized to on the Staffordshire/Cheshire border.

In 2016, my hubby and I took the massive decision to take early retirement from successful, fulfilling and well paid careers at the ages of 52 and 56.  This was not a decision that we took lightly and it was after much consideration and many heart to heart / cards on the table type chats that we made a decision together of how we would like to live the rest of our lives. The main consideration was obviously money versus quality of life.

We both had very demanding jobs in Special Education and although we had very much enjoyed those rewarding roles up until now, felt that it was time to move on, have more time to spend with our families and also more time to pursue our own various hobbies and interests. It is all too common whilst working that our own families, while happy that we have a good standard of living financially, often miss out in other ways such as mums and dads not being able to attend school concerts, sports days etc. We found this particularly frustrating. Also a common thing amongst teachers and those working in a school setting is that, by default, we tend to live our lives in 6/7 week blocks around the half term and full term holidays. This means that we often put off things like doctor / dentist appointments until we are on holiday and this isn't good for our general well-being. The alternative is asking for time off in a school day that is difficult to cover and very much frowned upon! Its very difficult for most people who work full time anywhere and have a family to get the balance right and most of my friends are in a similar position too. Life is hard!  As our children had grown up and were now financially independent(ish) -  there are always times when the bank of mum and dad has to help out but we did have a very frank conversation with the children before we retired and explained that we no longer would be conveniently at the end of the phone with ready cash and we now expected them to stand on their own two feet. A valuable lesson on both sides i think. It's what my dad would of called tough love! We had no mortgage or debt of any sort and some savings for emergencies. Apart from our youngest daughter, none of our other children lived at home and all had cars and decent jobs so we decided now was the time. After making the initial decision to retire, some 6 years before we actually did, we set out a plan or countdown if you like in which we paid off items such as the mortgage, put money aside to replace the car, had the bigger jobs done on the house, saved money for an emergency fund etc. When we gave 6 months notice at work, some people were absolutely shocked that we would give up our jobs and retire so early but we knew it was what we had dreamed of. We were asked "Will you be bored?" (nope) "Will you have enough money?" (yes, hopefully) "Will you get on each others nerves at home together all day?" (probably!) This is where you need to have your own hobbies and interests of which we have plenty. We are happy doing our own things and equally happy doing things together. It may not work for everyone but it does for us. Of course, we would miss some of our old lives, particularly the students and some of the staff but colleagues that we had formed firm friendships outside of work would continue to be in our lives and, hopefully, we would have more time to be better friends. In fact, being at home has given us time to catch up with lots of friends we haven't seen for years including ex work friends which is lovely. The children, after the initial shock of being told they were losing their cash safety net / free beer / inheritance were looking forward to more relaxed parents with extra time on their hands (more about that in a later post!) The dog, too, seemed excited at the prospect of an extra walk or two a day, hopefully somewhere more exotic than the local park and we were looking forward to lie ins and holidays that were not dictated by school term. So everything considered, it was decided that early retirement was the way forward. Well so how did we achieve it? Did it work out as planned? Were our calculations realistic? Did anything unexpected turn up and throw a spanner in the works? Hopefully over the coming blogs you will find out!
This blog won't just be about the means to retiring early but also the journey along the way and that will include family life, friends, pets, cookery, making and saving money, hobbies and interests and the general day to day stuff that happens in life.
Thanks again for reading and hope you come back again. I look forward to getting to know you.
Until next time,,
Jules

Feel free to leave a comment, it would be lovely to hear from you and I will try my very best to read them all and reply.                                                                Please be polite and kind. Thanks :)