Panama

I’ve got the hat, if that’s any help. 🤠

A friend of mine retired mortgage free at 48. 30 years in the police and off he went. Good pension and so on.
We don’t hate him as such, well, maybe a bit, well maybe a bit more than that actually, but y’know, we wish him well.
😬

I guess Mark's comment depend on what you do and how you do it. I'm planning to run a portfolio of rental properties to provide an income before my pensions arrive. Those properties, I hope, will be appreciating assets. So, the value of my assets should keep growing, in theory. And do you call that working? Not sure. If, for example, I took to doing some property renovations to flip them for modest profits (which acts as a tax reducing thing to do if your rental stuff is through a limited company, and you add a bit of renovations and sell-ons in to the mix), then maybe that's working still. But to me retiring is being able to live off your own means, and not have to turn up for some other berk at 9am to answer the phone and grovel.

My wife is cleverer than me. So clever, that she has managed to only work 3 days a week for many years.
I maintain that she could work full time so that I could retire, but it doesn’t seem to be getting through.
🤔

Never mind deposits, I could buy them a house each with the money I'll have spent on private education. In the South East, too. Now, though, they'll have to rack up debt to go to University, and we'll have to provide handouts from our limited equities after that to house them. There's a decent comp walking distance from here, too. This situation wasn't my choice, however, and I'm still not convinced we're receiving value for money on the education. The total sum spent (and remaining to be spent) is eye-watering, and I remain to be convinced that the academic results will reflect that investment. I think it's been a huge mistake, and I thought that from the outset.

My son was the first in any remembered generations in my family who was not privately educated at the same school in Edinburgh. He went to the local comp.
He’s also the first to get a double 1:1 at Uni so what that means I’d hesitate to to speculate.
It does however play well to my slightly lefty leanings.

When I was at The Manchester Grammar School, there were boys there who parents had scrimped and saved to get their children into private school so that they would have a better life than the parents.  Meeting some of the 'boys' years later, they were scrimping and saving to get their children into private school so that they would have a better life than the parents.  I do wonder why...

My friends and I who had a private education can see some of the benefits but mainly around our breadth of knowledge.  In real terms, most of us would have had similar careers if we had gone to a reasonable state school (although there were fewer then than now).  The only children I see now who really benefit from a private education are those very interesting and clever ones who also take advantage of improved IT, sports or non-academic subject facilities.  The son of some friends went to MGS and thrived, but then he was always very questioning and is now likely to study PPE at Durham or Cambridge.  He would not have lasted a term in the school my kids went to.  But I have no regrets at all about the education my kids received at high school.