The date question
Can I afford to stop at 60?
It's the most common specific question we get, and the answer is almost never the one people expect — because the cost isn't what they think it is.
It's the most common specific question we get, and the answer is almost never the one people expect — because the cost isn't what they think it is.
Stopping at 60 rather than 65 doesn't cost five years. It costs three things at once, which is why the answer surprises people.
The obvious one, and the smallest of the three for most people.
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 one that does the damage.
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.
For a lot of people, stopping five years earlier needs somewhere around a third to a half more capital. Not 5/30ths more — a third to a half. That's the arithmetic almost nobody does in their head, and it's why “I'll just work a bit longer if I need to” is a more powerful plan than it sounds.
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 years of work bought six years of security.
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. Most people assume it's linear. It isn't — 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. For most people it moves the answer more than any realistic change to what they save.
“Stop at 60” and “work to 65” aren't the only two settings.
Two days a week at 60 to 63 changes the picture dramatically — not because the money is large, but because it lands in the fragile years when you'd otherwise be selling investments to live.
Three days from 58 is often cheaper than full retirement at 60 and gets you most of what you actually wanted, which is usually time rather than the absence of work.
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. Whether that's worth it is a real decision and it's yours.
Most people's spending falls through retirement anyway. Planning for that honestly, rather than assuming a flat line, can move the date by a year or two.
Not the average return. The order of returns.
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.
This is the single biggest reason a projection with one flat growth rate can flatter an early retirement. It's why the Financial Plan runs your numbers two thousand times with the good and bad years reshuffled — so you find out whether stopping at 60 works, or whether it merely works if you're lucky.
Before you model anything, these four facts change the answer more than any assumption you might argue about. Most people are working from at least one figure that is wrong.
Free on gov.uk, five minutes, and a surprising number of people have gaps. 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.
Current values, not the figure on a statement from 2019. Old workplace schemes from jobs you barely remember are routinely the ones nobody counts, and they are usually worth more than expected rather than less.
Not what it pays at its own normal retirement age. Ask the scheme for the reduced figure in writing. The reduction for going early is scheme-specific and it is permanent, and building a plan on the unreduced number is a common and expensive mistake.
Almost nobody guesses this correctly, and the error is typically several hundred pounds a month. Over the twenty-five years after stopping at 60, being wrong by £400 a month is roughly £120,000 of plan that was never there.
That is a real input rather than a soft one, and it belongs in the conversation instead of being overridden by a spreadsheet. Working five more years you resent has a genuine cost, even though it never shows up in a projection. What the numbers are for is making sure you know the price before you decide, rather than finding it out afterwards. In practice, plenty of people who arrive believing the choice is between five more years and stopping immediately discover there is a third option in between. Two more years, or three days a week for three years, frequently delivers most of what they actually wanted, which is usually more time rather than the complete absence of work.
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, which is worth checking with the provider rather than assuming either way. The State Pension is a separate matter entirely and does not arrive until 66, rising to 67 and later 68. The more important point is that being able to access a pension and being able to afford to live off it are different questions with different answers, and the second one is what actually decides whether you can stop.
Enormously, and it changes the shape of the whole plan rather than simply adding to it. Guaranteed income that rises with inflation acts as a floor under everything, which means the rest of your money is buying choices instead of covering survival, and a bad run in the markets affects your holidays rather than your heating. Two details matter. Most schemes have their own normal retirement age, which is often not the age you want to stop. And taking one early usually reduces it permanently, sometimes by a great deal. The size of that reduction is scheme-specific and worth requesting 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 rather than £80,000, or taking it at 60 rather than 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. That means if you do go to an authorised adviser you arrive knowing what you are trying to achieve, rather than starting from a blank form and a general feeling that the cash is there.
The failure mode that actually matters is discovering at 75 that you cannot afford the next twenty years, by which point almost every option has gone. 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 gap between the two is the whole argument for modelling it while you still have levers to pull.
The projection runs in your browser in about a minute. Nothing is sent anywhere and no email is needed to see the answer.
Thirty minutes with a planner to work out whether you need a Plan at all. Some people leave that call having been told they don't.
One written document — every year to 100 with the tax done properly, what breaks it priced in years, and the ninety days after. £1,500.