The Final Columns on the Spreadsheet & Financial Independence

My partner in travelling reached 66 years of age recently. He is fortunate to get his state pension at this age, along with his workplace pensions and his bus pass! This birthday was a huge milestone for us on our journey from being economically inactive to becoming pensioners.

When we both stopped working the nine to five in 2017 we had little income to speak of. What we did have was a spreadsheet [of course] with nine columns, one for each year until 2025. The spreadsheet forecast how much of our savings we would need to spend every year so that we could pay the bills and live our lives. We reviewed it regularly in the light of the actual amount we had spent and how much I had managed to earn as a travel writer. Every year on the 31 December I cheerfully deleted the column for the year that had ended. As our pensions have crept closer the trusty spreadsheet has diminished.

I met an old friend I hadn’t seen for a few years recently and she asked me, ‘Did the spreadsheet work?’ Her question made me smile; feel grateful that she had remembered all those conversations about early retirement we had; and also stop and think before I answered her. I realised, yes, the spreadsheet had worked and so much better than I might have hoped.

The spreadsheet started life in 2011 and until 2017 was used to track how much more money we needed to save until we could afford to retire. As the pennies became pounds the amount we needed before we could stop work got smaller.

From 2017 the spreadsheet’s use changed and a new section was added for cashflow, so that we never tied up any money long-term that we needed as our ‘income’ in the short-term. In constant use, the spreadsheet keeps us on track month by month as the details of our spending [mostly in our control and predictable] and income [unpredictable until my small NHS pension arrived in 2020] were updated. This enabled us to see at almost a glance what fiscal flexibility we had every year. Without this information, making financial decisions that were outside our budget would have been more difficult. In particular, the spreadsheet informed our decision to move house in 2019 [something we hadn’t planned for in 2017]. The spreadsheet has been our companion on our journey, growing and evolving as our life has changed, always helpful, sometimes accommodating and never draconian.

It has held my hand for so long, I have realised I will miss this spreadsheet when all the columns have been deleted in two years time. In 2026 all our pensions will have matured, I will also have a bus pass and we will have two fairly predictable incomes once again. Although we won’t be part of the workforce it will feel like we have gone back in time to the days of straightforward fixed incomes. Making sure our expenditure stays within budget will be managed by a different [and even older] spreadsheet!

I never guessed I was the sort of person who would become sentimental about a spreadsheet. Maybe it isn’t surprising when I consider how much it is a symbol of the big step we made in giving up our jobs in 2017. I think maybe my old friend would understand my emotions and I hope you readers do too.