Interesting thread. We've been on a journey on this over the last few years. Now in our mid 50s, youngest child just headed off to uni, Mrs PXW has just retired from her 65 hours/week teaching job, and I'm about to join her in retirement at the end of this year. Original plans were to work until I was about 65, at which point retirement would have been more than comfortable. However, health issues cropped up; I was diagnosed with lymphoma at the age of 52, which at that point gave me a median life expectancy of 70. Therefore working to 65 (with the prospect of repeated chemotherapy cycles in the meantime) didn't seem like smart planning. So, in with the IFA and on with the retirement planning - essentially working out our individual answer to the question "how much is enough?". As it happens, a highly successful intervention with immunotherapy has knocked the cancer back to zero, so life expectancy etc is not an issue any longer - but we have already got our heads in the retirement space, so we are going ahead. There will be some consultancy work (at least with my current employer, and possibly some others) and the scope to pursue a range of things we have wanted to do but professional careers, long commutes etc have prevented. We are fortunate - I have had some decent paying roles in the past, and we did downsize a few years back so we have no mortgage or other debts. The interesting thing is that I have yet to come across anyone who has chosen this course but now regrets it; I'm sure there are some out there (and there may well be on this forum too) but everyone I have spoken to has had no regrets at all.