Health Warning, please take care but there is help

[Stickyfinger]

[CitroJim]

Very good!

I partially relieved the symptoms I was suffering by going part-time. Honestly and seriously the very best thing I ever did..

My work-life balance is now pretty good. It'll be better when the girls are earning their own livings and I can then go even more part-time...

That's a better solution than booze and possibly about the same in financial terms...

[addo]

My parents both got "thingy" about retirement and quit well before sixty. They had taken really lacklustre financial advice, and a couple of market shifts coupled with inflation and insane capital growth (which increased "spot prices" for their cost of living) mean they are now quite seriously underfunded less than twenty years later. If they didn't have a tradesman in the family to cover all the domestic maintenance issues, they would be likely having to sell up and relocate for the balance of their independent lives.

[CitroJim]

To be absolutely honest I don't want to retire completely. I still enjoy going to work and I still enjoy what I do...

I really like the people I work with and work to me has a bit of a social element.

Three days a week reducing to two eventually will suit me perfectly...

[addo]

I think it's a great working model, the "enemy" is a young cock in management somewhere who has no value idea of age-bred experience.

[CitroJim]

I think it's a great working model, the "enemy" is a young cock in management somewhere who has no value idea of age-bred experience.

Yes, we oldies (and I've been called Methuselah a good few times) are not always valued, especially those of us who work in an area dominated by bright youngsters. We do still show them on a regular basis that with great age comes great experience and knowledge and all that stuff learned the hard way at the control panel of a long-obsolete mainframe is still relevant today.

And we suffer too from those silly sausages who work round the clock to make themselves look good to management and presumably have no life outside the office... Makes it hard on those of us who get in on-time, work our hours and go home again because we have a life outside work. We who just do our hours get branded as lazy or not team players.

Back in the olden days of my working life there was an old saying that those who worked excess hours had to do so because they were not competent enough to get their work done in their normal working hours... Therefore they were inefficient and/or lazy..

I still see evidence of that these days..

All I know is a good work/life balance is essential to health and happiness and gosh, I should know...

[addo]

Yes, the long hours brigade are a shonky model, I have to deal with a couple of them. They take these horrible, intense "holidays" for a couple of weeks every few months and then come back to be just the same arses to everyone as before they went off to relax. No respect for culture. One even told me I knew nearly enough to take on a position like his. No thanks! It would drive me to suicide or insanity, whichever came first.