The Green Light: Financial Freedom and Peace of Mind About Money

Introduction

Every early retirement in this book has one thing quietly underneath it: money that is, at last, sorted. Not necessarily a fortune, but enough. Enough to cover the bills without dread, enough in the bank to absorb a broken boiler or a bad year, and a plan that stretches from the day you hand in your notice to the day your pensions begin. For many people that moment, when the numbers finally say “yes”, is the green light that turns a daydream into a date.

This chapter treats that moment as a benefit in its own right. The relief of no longer worrying about money is not just a precondition for the other freedoms; it is one of the freedoms. People who have reached it describe sleeping better, arguing less and feeling, often for the first time, that their time belongs to them rather than to the next payment. And the research suggests they are not imagining it.

It is also the most personal chapter in the book, because it begins with my own story. After a working life in the emergency services, it was getting our finances in order that let me pack away my stethoscope and the green armour of a paramedic.

We will look at what the research says about money worry and health, what “financial wellbeing” really means, why preparation matters, and why so many people keep working “one more year” after they have enough. We will set out the practical UK landscape of State Pension age, pension access and the “bridge” years, and where to find free, impartial guidance. Then we meet four more people whose money journeys gave them the freedom to stop, including one whose plan had to change. We finish with an honest look at the limits, and some practical ideas and questions.

A word of caution before we start. This chapter is education and signposting, not financial advice. Nobody here can tell you what to do with your money. The stories are people’s own experiences, and the methods they mention are described, not recommended. For decisions about your own finances, use the free, impartial services listed below, and a regulated financial adviser if you want a personal recommendation.

A note from the author: packing away the green armour

After twelve years in the Fire and Rescue Service, several years in Further Education, and then ten years in the ambulance service, armed with a stethoscope and the green armour of a paramedic, I have spent most of my working life in the emergency services. I gave everything I had to help people in need. But I finally reached a tipping point: I no longer felt I was truly helping. You only have to look at the ambulances queued outside our hospitals to see that the service has finite resources, and too often it can’t reach the people who are having real emergencies. This isn’t meant as a list of what’s wrong with the NHS, or of the times I felt under-used in the fire service. It’s simply that, after years of giving of myself, my bucket was full from all I had witnessed. I was tired.

So when I realised that our finances were clear, strong and resilient enough to bridge the gap to our pensions, the choice was made. All it needed was the courage to step off the hamster wheel and into the freedom to do as I pleased. At 55 years and 9 months old, I did it. My resignation letter was in, and my financial plan was clear and had been checked, line by line, with my good friend Claude. I didn’t rely on that alone: I checked my State Pension forecast on GOV.UK, and I went through the plan with an independent financial adviser. Management had even agreed to no nights and half my hours, but the seed had been sown: I really didn’t have to do this any more. I will miss the drive in me that longs to be there for people in need. I won’t miss the “jet lag” of night shifts, or knowing that the stress and the broken sleep were shortening my life.

How did I know we could bridge the gap until our pensions start? Since around 2004, after a chance encounter on satellite TV, I have followed the American money broadcaster Dave Ramsey. His motto sums it up: “Live like no one else now, so later you can live and give like no one else” (Ramsey Solutions, n.d.b). I’m 56 this year, I’m loving my freedom, and our Baby Steps are almost complete. Even before the last step, the light at the end of the tunnel was bright enough to make a radical change in our lives.

My wife and I have carried on living like students long after graduation. We have held to strong principles: never having credit cards, and never borrowing money for anything except the roof over our heads. Saving up for things, keeping an emergency fund and keeping a loose account of where our money goes have been the key. I say loose, but if you don’t give money a purpose, it will simply go. Now I have endless days ahead of me that I no longer feel guilty keeping for myself, to swim, to walk or to go metal detecting.

If I were to give one piece of advice to anyone reading this, it would be this: have a plan, and be willing to make sacrifices, as we did. Don’t worship at the altar of debt; be free from its control. As the old proverb puts it, the borrower is slave to the lender (Proverbs 22:7). Decide the age after which you no longer want to work, and take back control.

This is my own story, not financial advice. Dave Ramsey’s plan was designed in the United States, and UK rules on pensions, tax and borrowing are different. For free, impartial guidance on your own situation, see the sources at the end of this chapter.

What the research tells us

Money worries weigh on mind and body

Anyone who has lain awake doing sums at three in the morning knows that money trouble is not only a financial problem. The research agrees. In a systematic review and meta-analysis, Richardson, Elliott and Roberts (2013) brought together 65 studies of personal unsecured debt and health, ranging from national surveys to studies of students, debt-management clients and older adults. Most found that more severe debt went hand in hand with worse health. Pooling the results, people in debt had around three times the odds of a mental disorder (odds ratio 3.24) and nearly three times the odds of depression (2.77), and debt was also linked with suicide, problem drinking and drug dependence. The authors were careful to add that causality is hard to establish, and called for longitudinal research to untangle which comes first (Richardson, Elliott and Roberts, 2013).

British data point the same way. A nationally representative survey of 8,580 people aged 16 to 74 in England, Scotland and Wales found that people on low incomes were more likely to have a mental disorder, but that this link weakened once debt was taken into account and disappeared when other social factors were also controlled. The more separate debts people had, the more likely they were to have a mental disorder, even after allowing for income: those with six or more debts had six times the odds (Jenkins et al., 2008). In other words, it may be the strain of owing money, rather than low income as such, that does much of the damage. The effects are not only psychological. Among 8,400 young adults in the United States, high debt relative to assets was associated with higher perceived stress and depression, worse self-rated general health and higher diastolic blood pressure, even after controlling for earlier socioeconomic status and health (Sweet et al., 2013).

The relationship runs both ways. The UK’s Money and Mental Health Policy Institute reports that almost half (46%) of people in problem debt also have a mental health problem, and that over 1.5 million people in England alone are experiencing both (Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, n.d.). Public health guidance for NHS and care staff in England now describes money and health as “intertwined” and encourages professionals to ask people about their finances and signpost them to help (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2025).

None of this means that early retirees are typically in debt; many are the opposite. The point is the reverse image. If money strain is bad for us, then the lifting of that strain, the moment when the bills are covered, the debts are gone and there is a cushion in the bank, is a benefit worth naming in its own right.

What “financial wellbeing” actually means

For a long time money was measured in simple terms: income, savings, net worth. Researchers and governments now also talk about financial wellbeing, which is as much about how secure people feel as about how much they have. In 2015 the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, after nearly 60 hours of in-depth interviews with consumers, proposed that financial wellbeing is a state in which you have control over day-to-day and month-to-month finances, can absorb a financial shock, are on track to meet your financial goals and have “the financial freedom to make the choices that allow you to enjoy life” (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2015, p. 5). In the UK, the Money and Pensions Service defines it as feeling secure and in control of your finances, both now and in the future: knowing you can pay today’s bills, deal with the unexpected and stay on track for a healthy financial future (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2025).

These definitions matter because perceived financial wellbeing seems to carry real weight in how satisfied we are with life as a whole. Netemeyer et al. (2018) developed and tested measures of two related feelings: stress about managing money today, and a sense of security about one’s financial future. Across surveys and experiments, perceived financial wellbeing was strongly related to overall life satisfaction, with an effect the authors described as comparable in size to the combined effect of job satisfaction, physical health and satisfaction with relationship support (Netemeyer et al., 2018).

A buffer of readily available money appears to matter in particular. In a field study of 585 UK bank customers, researchers paired answers to a standard life-satisfaction questionnaire with anonymised account data. People with more “cash on hand” in current and savings accounts felt better about their finances, and this in turn predicted higher life satisfaction, even after taking account of income, investments, spending and debt (Ruberton, Gladstone and Lyubomirsky, 2016). A Canadian study of housing and psychological distress found a similar gradient for the roof over our heads: people renting reported the most distress and home owners without a mortgage the least, with mortgaged owners in between (Cairney and Boyle, 2004). Both studies are observational, and people who are debt-free or hold savings differ in other ways too. But they are consistent with what many early retirees describe: the quiet relief of an emergency fund and a paid-off home.

Preparation, not just possession

The closing chapter, Reading the Evidence Honestly, shows that financial resources are one of the foundations of a satisfying retirement. Two further strands of research suggest that preparing financially, and feeling secure as a result, matters too.

Using the US Health and Retirement Study, Noone, Stephens and Alpass (2009) compared what employed people were doing to prepare for retirement in 1992 with how they rated their retirement satisfaction and physical and emotional health in 2004. Those who had discussed retirement with their spouse and had a pension or savings plan in 1992 reported greater wellbeing twelve years later, even after controlling for health, the reason for retirement and income. Because the planning was measured years before the outcomes, this is stronger evidence than a one-off survey, though it still cannot prove cause and effect (Noone, Stephens and Alpass, 2009).

Financial security also shapes who retires early in the first place. A meta-analysis of 151 studies, covering 706,937 participants, examined the factors associated with early or voluntary retirement. Financial security was among the factors with a moderate (“fair”) association, alongside organisational pressures and poor physical and mental health, whereas the association with income on its own was negligible (Topa, Depolo and Alcover, 2018). The distinction is telling. It is not simply earning a lot that opens the door to leaving work early, but having enough set aside to feel secure. For many people that feeling is the green light that turns a daydream into a date.

“Enough”, and the pull of one more year

If financial security makes early retirement possible, why do so many people who have reached it keep working? Early retirement writers have a name for it: “One More Year Syndrome”, the habit of moving the finishing line back just once more. Fritz Gilbert, whom we met in Chapter 5, admitted in 2017 that he suffered from it himself, and asked why so many people “continue working, even after they’ve achieved Financial Independence” (Gilbert, 2017). There is little formal research on the syndrome itself, but laboratory work on the psychology of earning offers a clue.

In a set of laboratory experiments, Hsee et al. (2013) let participants divide their time between “leisure” (listening to music) and “work” (listening to an annoying noise), with work earning chocolates that could only be eaten in the laboratory (Erkut and Shalvi, 2019). Participants overearned: they worked to accumulate more than they needed, even at the cost of their own happiness. People tended to work about the same amount whatever the rate of pay, which the authors put down to “mindless accumulation”, a tendency to work and earn until feeling tired rather than until having enough. Encouragingly, prompting people to consider the consequences of their earnings, or denying them excessive earnings, disrupted this pattern and made them happier (Hsee et al., 2013). Two cautions apply. Laboratory chocolates are a long way from a pension pot, and a later attempt to replicate the original experiments did not find evidence of overearning (Riedel and Stüber, 2019, cited in Erkut and Shalvi, 2019). Still, the idea gives a name to something many would-be retirees recognise: the risk of carrying on because stopping feels uncertain, not because more money is needed.

Chapter 3 described research by Ashley Whillans and colleagues showing that people who prioritise time over money tend to be happier (Whillans, Weidman and Dunn, 2016). Put together with the overearning studies, it suggests that defining “enough” in advance, in writing and ideally with a partner, is not only a financial exercise but a psychological one. A clear number, or a clear set of conditions, gives you a way to recognise when the job of accumulation is done.

The UK landscape: the bridge years and free guidance

Whatever the psychology, early retirement in the UK rests on some practical facts, which the Introduction outlined and which are worth gathering here. You cannot draw your State Pension before you reach State Pension age (GOV.UK, n.d.a). At the time of writing, GOV.UK gives the full rate of the new State Pension as £241.30 a week (GOV.UK, n.d.b). You usually need at least 10 qualifying years on your National Insurance record to get any new State Pension, and the amount depends on that record (GOV.UK, n.d.b). Personal and workplace pensions can usually be accessed from 55, depending on the scheme’s rules (GOV.UK, n.d.a), rising to 57 from April 2028 (HM Revenue & Customs, 2021). GOV.UK also notes that a pension pot will probably be smaller if you retire early, because it has had less time to grow, and warns that offers to release pension money before the minimum age may be unauthorised payments taxed at up to 55% (GOV.UK, n.d.a).

For many early retirees this creates “bridge” years: a period between leaving work and the point at which pension income can begin, which has to be funded from other savings, part-time work or both. Working out whether the bridge will hold is exactly the kind of question where accurate, personal information matters more than rules of thumb.

Several free, official sources can help. The GOV.UK “Check your State Pension forecast” service shows how much State Pension you could get, when you can get it and whether you could increase it, for example by filling gaps in your National Insurance record. GOV.UK notes that because State Pension age is regularly reviewed, the results may change (GOV.UK, n.d.c). MoneyHelper, which public health guidance describes as free and impartial help with money, backed by the government (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2025), offers guidance on pensions, budgeting and debt, including a debt advice locator. Its Pension Wise service gives free guidance to help people decide what to do with money in a defined contribution pension (GOV.UK, n.d.d). You can start online at any time, and if you are 50 or over you can book a free appointment, online or by phone, to talk it through with a specialist (MoneyHelper, n.d.). Guidance of this kind explains options; it does not tell you what to do. For a personal recommendation, GOV.UK explains how to find a financial adviser, whose advice is paid for (GOV.UK, n.d.d).

Step by step: popular money plans in context

Many people who reach financial security describe following a structured plan, and one of the best known is Dave Ramsey’s “7 Baby Steps”, promoted by his US company, Ramsey Solutions. As set out on its website, the steps are: save $1,000 for a starter emergency fund; pay off all debt except the house using the “debt snowball”; save three to six months of expenses in a fully funded emergency fund; invest 15% of household income in retirement; save for children’s college fund; pay off the home early; and build wealth and give (Ramsey Solutions, n.d.a). The debt snowball involves listing debts from smallest to largest, making minimum payments on all but the smallest and attacking that one first, then rolling the payment into the next (Ramsey Solutions, n.d.a).

The appeal of such plans is easy to see in the light of the research above: they put a cash buffer and freedom from debt first, which is where the evidence on financial wellbeing points. But they were designed in and for the United States, and UK circumstances differ. The dollar amounts, US retirement accounts and the American system of paying for college do not translate directly. UK workers, for example, have their own State Pension, and employers must automatically enrol eligible workers in a workplace pension, usually with employer contributions on top (GOV.UK, n.d.d). This book describes such methods because readers will meet them and some, as we will see, credit them with changing their lives. It does not endorse any particular method, and nothing here is a recommendation about what you should do with your money.

Lives enriched: real stories

Toni Graham — from £70,000 of debt to “ten happy years”

At 48, Toni Graham looked like a success story. She was a single mother of two from Yorkshire who had gone back to college, earned a degree and then a master’s qualification, and worked her way up to a senior management role in the public sector. Underneath, she was struggling. She was under great pressure at work and fighting a drawn-out custody battle, and she was slipping deeper into debt, partly to keep up the image the job seemed to demand. “I was living paycheque to paycheque and I wasn’t enjoying life at all, not at all,” she said. At 48 she had a breakdown and could not work for nine months (Routledge, 2025).

The turning point was a couple of sessions with a life coach, which she calls “The best £140 I’ve spent in my life.” When he asked what she wanted from the next stage of her life, she joked that she wanted “to retire”. He took her at her word and they drew up a plan. She owed £70,000, including car finance, credit cards and loans. She set herself clear targets and cut her spending hard. She also took every chance to earn more: she did overtime, lectured at a local college on her day off and sold things she did not need. She cleared the debt in five years. “I was living on about £10,000 a year basically and paying everything else off, and I loved it,” she said (Routledge, 2025). Six years after the breakdown, at 54, she gave up work “mortgage and debt free”, living “on a few savings and a small work pension” (Graham, n.d.).

Her income is still modest: a pension of less than £600 a month. As soon as it arrives she moves some into savings or an emergency fund, so that an unexpected bill no longer means borrowing (Routledge, 2025). She admits rising bills have forced further economies. She writes that the separate incomes she and her partner live on “remain lower than the benefit system would offer. However, I have never felt as rich, or as content and happy.” She is “not trapped in a cycle of materialism and debt”, and her health has improved physically and mentally (Graham, n.d.). About to turn 65, she summed up the decade: “I feel richer now than I’ve ever felt in my life. I have more choice now, I have more freedom now than I’ve ever had in my life, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything” (Routledge, 2025). Her route is an extreme one and will not suit everyone. It does show that getting free of debt, not the size of her pension, is what gave her the green light.

Donna and Frank Mountain — saving steadily, a paid-off mortgage and every pound logged

Donna and Frank Mountain, from North Yorkshire, both worked in the public sector. Frank served more than 22 years in the RAF and then became a site manager at a special needs school, where Donna worked as a secretary and later as a teaching assistant. Donna stopped working at 55 and Frank retired at 57, years before either could draw a State Pension (Braeger, 2025). “We were fortunate to be able to afford early retirement due to my husband’s Ministry of Defence pension, along with our local authority pensions and savings. We wanted to stop working and enjoy ourselves,” Donna said. Public-sector pensions are usually taken at 60 or later, but they can sometimes be taken earlier at a reduced rate (Braeger, 2025).

Luck was only part of it. “Leading up to retirement we saved approximately £1,000 a month,” Donna said, and that saving let them pay off their mortgage before they left work. Their essential outgoings, including bills, council tax, food, the car, phones and insurance, come to about £1,000 a month, and they keep a close eye on them: “We use an app to log all our expenditure and make sure we don’t exceed our income. The rest of our money is spent on enjoying ourselves and/or saving.” They top up their income with part-time house-sitting. It earns them about £2,000 a year from roughly eight assignments, and it doubles as a way to see new places: “We enjoy sightseeing when we’re in a new area – it gives us the opportunity to travel more affordably” (Braeger, 2025).

What stands out is how little they felt they had given up. “We didn’t have to make any major lifestyle changes, maybe a few less foreign holidays and less expensive meals out. We’re just aware we have limited income.” They do not rely on the State Pension and see it as a future safety net: “We are confident that our financial planning will ensure our pension will sustain us for the rest of our retirement. When we begin to draw our state pension, we will be even more secure” (Braeger, 2025). Their story is an ordinary one: two public-sector careers, steady saving, no mortgage and a clear view of what they spend.

Adrian Haines — “more than enough” for a simple life

Adrian Haines, from Crawley, worked for 38 years as a lead material supplier in engineering. His wife died in 2020, and he was later signed off work for months with long Covid. He tried going back. “I didn’t completely plan it but I went back to work [after being off from long Covid] and I lasted two weeks. I saw my health deteriorating again and I quit on the spot and I haven’t looked back. I live a simple life,” he said. He retired in July 2022, at 55 (Khan, 2026).

The decision was sudden, but decades of quiet saving made it possible. He joined his workplace pension at 18, paying in about £15 a week at first, and his contributions grew with his earnings. In the five years before he retired, after learning about the tax advantages, he paid in £100 to £150 a week. After his wife died he converted his final-salary pension into a pot he can draw from flexibly. The i Paper notes that such conversions are often not worthwhile, and that when the pension is worth more than £30,000 the law requires advice from a regulated financial adviser first (Khan, 2026). He now draws £20,000 a year, which he says is more than enough. “I haven’t got a mortgage, apart from my athletics and buying a bit of gear and going into competitions I don’t really spend a lot,” he said. His 21-year-old son lives with him, and anything left over goes into savings.

The freedom went into running. “When I retired, I became a full-time athlete,” he said. He races the 800 and 1,500 metres in masters athletics and has won medals at European and world championships. He was also part of a team that set a 4 x 800 metres world record in the M55 category (Khan, 2026). His message to anyone hesitating is about fear as much as figures: “I feel that a lot of people think they’re not prepared to take the plunge and retire because they’re too worried about the finances, and obviously it depends on your outgoings and how you want to live. But I’ve found that it’s easily manageable.” His verdict: “Retiring early was the best decision I ever made” (Khan, 2026).

Beverley Slocombe — when the plan had to change

Not every plan holds for good. Beverley Slocombe, who lives in Rhondda Cynon Taf in south-east Wales, retired at 59 after decades in the travel industry. “I originally retired as a travel agent when we moved house, and I wanted to be more available to help care for my granddaughters,” she said. Her husband owned a company and she had a small private pension, so the couple were financially comfortable. She “really enjoyed retirement”: “I realised how lucky I was to be able to spend precious time with the children as they were growing up and to be such a big part of their lives” (Braeger, 2026).

Then things changed. Her granddaughters needed her less and she missed having a purpose. Her husband also became unable to work, which left the couple living on his pension alone. She doubted anyone would take her on: “I knew I needed to find work, but I felt unsure where to start and I was worried I would not be a good candidate for many roles.” The answer came from a bereavement charity where she had volunteered for several years. They asked her to help with administration for a couple of weeks, and she kept being asked to stay. She went back to paid work at 64, in 2020, and was soon made permanent. At 70 she works full time and is the couple’s breadwinner (Braeger, 2026).

She regrets neither chapter. “Returning to work has honestly been one of the best things I could have done,” she said. She added that “financially, it has allowed us to rebuild a little of our savings and given us the opportunity to travel and enjoy experiences that simply would not have been possible on state pensions alone” (Braeger, 2026). Her story is a useful counterweight to the others. The security behind an early retirement can rest on things that change, such as a partner’s business or health, and going back to work on your own terms can be part of the story rather than a failure.

A balanced view

Money is not everything, and the research on income and happiness is more nuanced than either “money buys happiness” or “it doesn’t”. In an influential 2010 analysis of more than 450,000 US survey responses, Kahneman and Deaton found that life evaluation rose steadily with income, but day-to-day emotional wellbeing stopped improving beyond about $75,000 a year (Kahneman and Deaton, 2010). Later experience-sampling data from 33,391 employed US adults found no such plateau (Killingsworth, 2021). In an adversarial collaboration, the researchers concluded that the flattening applied mainly to the least happy people, while for happier people wellbeing kept rising with income (Killingsworth, Kahneman and Mellers, 2023). The practical message for this chapter is modest: a secure income clearly helps, especially in avoiding misery, but beyond the point of security other things, including health, relationships and purpose, do much of the work. That is why the rest of this book exists.

A long early retirement also carries particular financial risks. Sequence of returns risk is the danger that poor investment returns arrive at an especially unfortunate time, such as the start of drawing on savings, when losses can do lasting damage to what can safely be withdrawn (Clare et al., 2020). Inflation matters too: in the 12 months to October 2022, UK consumer prices rose by 11.1%, the highest rate in the official series that began in 1997 (Office for National Statistics, 2022). A retirement that lasts 40 years or more may have to weather several such episodes, which is one reason why the Introduction’s cautions about the 4% rule matter.

There is an opposite danger, too: saving so hard, or staying so long, that the freedom is never enjoyed. UK data suggest that many retirees keep saving rather than spending down. For people born in 1939–43, the share saving some of their income rose from 59% at age 67 to 69% at age 75, and the average share of income saved rose from 2% to 15% (Crawford, Karjalainen and Sturrock, 2022, p. 3). There may be sensible reasons for such caution, but together with the overearning research it is a reminder that security is the means, not the end.

Financial freedom is also unequally available. In Great Britain between April 2020 and March 2022, the wealthiest 1% of households held 10% of all household wealth, the same share as the least wealthy 50% combined (Office for National Statistics, 2025). For many people, early retirement is simply not possible, and nothing in this chapter should be read as suggesting that those still working have failed to plan.

Finally, most of the studies here are observational: they show associations, not proof that becoming debt-free or building savings causes better wellbeing. Several are from the United States or Canada, and some use young adults or students. And, as throughout this book, nothing in this chapter is financial advice. It is education and signposting. For decisions about your own money, use the free, impartial official services above and, where you need a personal recommendation, a regulated financial adviser.

Putting it into practice

These are ideas that people who have made this journey describe, and that the research supports. They are not financial advice.

• Check your State Pension forecast. It takes a few minutes on GOV.UK, and it tells you how much you could get and when (GOV.UK, n.d.c). Rob, Donna and Frank all built their plans around it.
• Know where your money goes. A simple log of your spending, on paper or in an app, is the foundation of every plan in this chapter. As Rob puts it, if you don’t give money a purpose, it will go.
• Name your “enough”. Write down, ideally with your partner, the number or the conditions that would mean you could stop. It is the best defence against “one more year” (Hsee et al., 2013; Gilbert, 2017).
• Build a buffer. The research on “cash on hand” suggests that a cushion of readily available savings matters to how secure people feel (Ruberton, Gladstone and Lyubomirsky, 2016).
• Face any debts squarely. List them. If they feel overwhelming, free debt advice is available through MoneyHelper’s debt advice locator (Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, 2025). Toni Graham’s story shows how much can change in a few years.
• Map the bridge years. Work out when each source of income can start (private pensions usually from 55, rising to 57 in April 2028) and how you would cover the years in between (GOV.UK, n.d.a; HM Revenue & Customs, 2021).
• Use the free guidance. MoneyHelper’s Pension Wise explains your options for a defined contribution pension: you can start online at any time, and from 50 you can book a free appointment online or by phone (GOV.UK, n.d.d; MoneyHelper, n.d.).
• Get regulated advice for big decisions, especially about transferring or drawing pensions, and be wary of anyone offering to release pension money early: such payments can be taxed at up to 55% (GOV.UK, n.d.a).
• Plan for the unexpected. Beverley Slocombe’s story is a reminder that health and family circumstances can change the sums, so build in a margin.
• Remember what the money is for. Security is the means, not the end: time, health, people and purpose are what the rest of this book is about.

Questions for reflection

1. If your finances were completely sorted tomorrow, what is the first thing you would stop doing, and the first thing you would start?
2. What does “enough” mean to you, in a number or in a way of life? Have you ever written it down?
3. How much of your current stress is about money? What would change if that pressure lifted?
4. Which debts, if any, feel like the heaviest weight? What would it take to clear them?
5. Do you know your State Pension age and forecast, and when your other pensions can start? What are the bridge years in your plan?
6. Are you in danger of working “one more year” out of habit or fear rather than need?
7. Who could you talk your plans through with: a partner, a friend, a free guidance service or a regulated adviser?

References