Well done to Ian! I wish you a long and happy retirement. I hope you and your family are well and healthy as in my view there is
nothing more valuable.
My father had a comfy "middle class" "middle management"
* accountant's job. He came from the poorest of backgrounds with his father (shell-shocked, heavy drinking WW1 trenches veteran) unable to afford the rent on a two bed terrace and having to move into a riverside hovel with oil lamps and occasional flooding. He (Dad) came out of the forces, went to night school, qualified as an accountant and retired from his
*mc, mm, accountant's job at 62 and was dead at 65 ... ho hum.
My father in law was an indentured printer, left the print and worked on shifts in a chemical factory and retired on disability at 62, got his comfy works pension at 65 and was dead at 66. See a pattern here?
Unlucky things happen but in their cases I believe their incredibly stressful lives (for different reasons) hastened their demise.
So when I was able to sell up my shares from a struggling office equipment business I was restricted by covenant as to what I could do and did a bit of selling and a bit of window cleaning. The rest is history and if a custy asks (usually quizzically rather than snobbily) why I went window cleaning I give them the long or short version of the above story. Basically a stress free "steady" income, with no boss other than myself or my circumstances.
But above all I have been blessed with general good health (so far) for me and my family. It is partly luck but after conscientiously deciding to reduce stress in my working and religious life I have improved immeasurably. (What I don't tell custies is that the shaping of my religious background also had a lot to do with my career path - leapstall will understand - and when I bought into it hook line and sinker with every fibre of my being in my teens and twenties, well looking back that was pretty stressful too!
)
Well that was cathartic on a rainy morn, but it's passed over so off to work!
