Surrounded by friends and family, my 45th birthday will be a night of laughter, love and relief.
Not because I have worn another of the spectacular costumes for which I am known, but because this party will also mark my farewell to work life.
That’s how it is; My 45th birthday celebrations will also serve as a retirement party. Right now I’m only 35 years old, but I have no intention of working for more than another decade.
After all, the average life expectancy is only 82 years, which means that if I had a normal working career, I would have only 15 years left to enjoy retired life. That’s not what I want for myself. In fact, my plan means I will retire before my 56-year-old mother can claim her state pension at 67.
Of course, this has involved meticulous financial planning. But the key that will make all of this possible is sacrificing my prospects of having children so I can enjoy my hard-earned money.
I know I’m not the only one who doesn’t want to work: 14 percent of Generation Z (those born between the late 90s and early 2010s) aspire to retire between 40 and 50, but what led me to take such drastic measures? ?
I knew that to achieve my early retirement goal, children wouldn’t be a possibility, says Jessica Lorimer
My parents separated when I was little and my mother raised me alone, working low-paying jobs in the military. I saw how difficult it was for her to raise the money just to pay for the weekly shopping. When he bought me a Barbour jacket for my 21st birthday, I cried; He knew how long he would have been saving to pay for it.
So as soon as I was old enough to understand our situation, I vowed to do everything I could to make my life very different, and at first I thought giving my all at work was the answer.
As a millennial, I grew up in a ‘boss girl’ culture that preached that as feminists we should reject domesticity and dedicate ourselves fully to our careers.
But this has its own cost; Recent research found that 50 percent of workers ages 18 to 34 reported feeling burned out, compared to 34 percent of those ages 55 and older.
I know it better than anyone. When I was in my early 20s, I was working more than 60 hours a week as a recruitment consultant on a paltry salary of £24,000. I had no hobbies, no relationships, and no life outside of work. At only 23 years old, having pushed my body and mind to the limit, I was experiencing constant pain and debilitating fatigue.
After I was diagnosed with MS, better known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the neurologist told me that if I didn’t slow down, I would be in a wheelchair by the time I was 35. This was a wake-up call, showing me how quickly life passes you by.
My experiences growing up had already assured me that I didn’t want to spend it like Mom did, struggling to put food on the table for my children. But now I realized that I didn’t want to reach my 60s so devastated by work that I couldn’t enjoy the little life I had left.
Working for myself was the only way to earn enough to stop while I was young enough to make the most of it. So that year I launched my own business, offering sales strategy training. It wasn’t a walk in the park, but at least I was working for my own benefit, knowing that my business would one day be my pension.
However, I knew that to achieve my goal of early retirement, children would not be an option.
There are countless social and economic reasons for not wanting to have children, which are contributing to the falling birth rate in the UK. I see friends struggling to pay daycare fees in London, scrimping and earning good salaries just to survive. Why would I risk my early retirement to have a child when I’m more than happy without him?
My husband and I want to take at least two vacations a year when we retire at 45, says Jessica
When I was single, I was honest with potential partners that having children wasn’t in my financial plan. Fortunately, my husband, who I met in 2021, was on the same page and plans to retire at the same time as me.
We are happy to be the ‘fun uncles’ and are loving godparents to two children. It costs much less to buy them birthday and Christmas gifts than the estimated £160,000 it costs to raise your own child. Plus, when they are older and their parents are exhausted in their 50s, they will have an active (and rich) godmother in me.
You’re probably wondering exactly how we’re going to manage this financially. Well, this hasn’t come without some unusual decisions, and not just the decision not to have children.
While many couples in their honeymoon period would spend money on champagne dinners and romantic weekends, I bought my husband and I financial lessons, which taught us how to manage our savings and investments in specific pension opportunities.
We then spoke to a financial advisor, who helped us determine that we would need more than £1 million in the bank to live the life we wanted. We would like to have at least two holidays a year and no less than £60,000 a year to live on.
Although this is a lot of money (especially if we both only have a decade left to accumulate it), I am confident that with hard work and careful financial planning it is possible.
Although it means hard work for the next ten years, knowing that all the money will go into my pocket, rather than some anonymous CEOs, and that the end date is within reach, makes it worth it.
The advisor was surprised by my attitude or, more accurately, by my age. Most of their clients are around 50 years old.
But I wish someone had sat me down and talked to me about money when I was younger. Recently, I went to a school to give a talk as part of a showcase of different career paths. I want young people to know that when they make decisions in life, the money they want to earn should be a primary consideration.
One teacher was horrified and then reprimanded me, but I want younger people to know that financial freedom means personal freedom.
In fact, one of the things I’m most excited about during my retirement is having the freedom to offer society something in return. I’ll be stuck into voluntary work for the Royal British Legion and Soldiers’ Charity.
I’m also a keen runner and fitness fanatic so I’ll be heading to the gym to train for charity marathons and hosting my local Parkrun.
People challenge me, saying I’ll get bored, but my schedule is already packed and I’m still ten tears away from retirement!
Mom, in general, supports me. She was devastated when I announced, when I was 20, that I would never have children. Since I am an only child, it means she will never have grandchildren.
But the pill was sugary when I hired her to manage customer service at my business. She encouraged me to make altruistic decisions, like hiring single parents. She is helping me create a different kind of legacy.
Sometimes it can feel like you’re in a race to complete your life, the years eaten up by time spent on the coal face. But I don’t want to live in regret; Life is too short for that, isn’t it?
As told to Samantha Brick