Can I afford to stop at 60?
Stopping at 60 needs more capital than stopping at 65 because of lost earnings, lost contributions, extra years of drawdown and a longer wait for the State Pension.
Stopping at 60 needs more capital than stopping at 65 because of lost earnings, lost contributions, extra years of drawdown and a longer wait for the State Pension.
Often the smallest of the three costs.
Including anything an employer was putting in. For someone contributing £1,000 a month with employer money on top, that's a substantial sum plus the growth it never gets.
The pot has to last five years longer and is five years smaller when it starts. This is the largest of the three costs.
The State Pension doesn't arrive until 66, rising to 67 and then 68. Stop at 60 and you're funding everything yourself for six to eight years.
Stopping five years earlier can need around a third to a half more capital, far more than the cost of five extra years of spending alone.
Same person, same money, three different stop dates. £420,000 in pensions at 58, saving £1,200 a month, wanting £3,200 a month after tax, State Pension at 67.
Pot at 60 is roughly £477,000. Seven years of funding everything before the State Pension arrives. Money runs out around 84.
Pot at 62 is roughly £535,000, and only five bridge years. Runs out around 90. Two more years of work add six years before the money runs out.
Pot around £633,000, two bridge years. Lasts past 100.
The gap between 60 and 62 is far bigger than the gap between 62 and 65, because the early years are the expensive ones.
You can run exactly this comparison for yourself in about two minutes with the free projection. Put your real numbers in, then move the stop age two years each way.
Two days a week from 60 to 63 changes the picture a great deal, because the income lands in the years when you would otherwise be selling investments to live.
Three days a week from 58 can cost less than full retirement at 60 and still gives you more time.
Some people hold a couple of years of spending in cash before stopping, so a bad market at the wrong moment doesn't force selling into a fall. It costs growth, and the trade-off is your decision.
Planning for spending that falls with age can move the date by a year or two compared with a flat line.
A bad three years immediately after you stop does far more damage than the same three years a decade later, even though the long-run average is identical. You're selling investments to live at exactly the moment they're worth least, and the pot never fully recovers.
For this reason a projection with one flat growth rate can flatter an early retirement. The Financial Plan runs your numbers two thousand times with the good and bad years reshuffled, to show whether stopping at 60 still works when the bad years come first.
Free on gov.uk and takes five minutes. It shows any gaps in your National Insurance record. Voluntary contributions can normally fill the last six tax years only, with a deadline of 5 April each year, so a gap you leave alone eventually stops being fixable.
Get current values for every pension, including old workplace schemes from jobs you left long ago.
Ask the scheme in writing for the reduced figure at 60, as well as the figure at its normal retirement age. The reduction for going early is scheme-specific and it is permanent.
Work it out from your bank statements. Over the twenty-five years after stopping at 60, being wrong by £400 a month is a shortfall of roughly £120,000.
That belongs in the decision alongside the numbers. Working five more years you resent has a cost that a projection does not show. The numbers show you the price of stopping before you decide. There are also options between five more years and stopping now: two more years, or three days a week for three years, each of which gives you more time while some earned income keeps coming in. You can model each of those in the free projection by moving the stop age and adding part-time income, then compare the age your money runs out under each.
Normal minimum pension age is currently 55 and rises to 57 on 6 April 2028, so for anyone reaching 60 in the next few years the answer is yes. A handful of older schemes carry a protected earlier age, so check with each provider. The State Pension is a separate matter entirely and does not arrive until 66, rising to 67 and later 68. Being able to access a pension and being able to afford to live off it are separate questions, and the second decides whether you can stop.
Yes, a great deal. Guaranteed income that rises with inflation acts as a floor under everything, so the rest of your money pays for choices and a bad run in the markets affects spending you can cut. Two details matter. Each scheme has its own normal retirement age, which may not be the age you want to stop. Taking the pension early often reduces it permanently, sometimes by a great deal. The size of that reduction is scheme-specific, so ask the scheme for it in writing before you build any plan around it.
Whether you should take it, how much, and from which pension is a regulated advice question, and Buzz is not authorised to answer it. What we can do is model the arithmetic. Taking £40,000 or £80,000, at 60 or at 63, produces different answers for the age your money runs out and for the tax you pay along the way, and those differences can be shown to you in pounds and in years. If you then go to an authorised adviser, you arrive knowing what you are trying to achieve and what each option does to your projection.
The costly mistake is discovering at 75 that you cannot afford the next twenty years, when few options remain. You cannot realistically go back to work, the pot cannot be rebuilt, and cutting spending means cutting things you care about. Getting it wrong at 58 is an entirely different situation, because working one extra year, dropping to three days, or finding a few hundred pounds a month are all still available and each of them moves the answer materially. That is the reason to model it while those options are still open.
An hour with a planner on whether the Financial Plan suits your position.
A written plan: every year to age 100 with UK tax applied, each risk measured in years, and your next ninety days.