Why should you be shy of retiring?

Early retirement is something we all like to daydream about. For people who have their own businesses, it often becomes a sudden reality when they get an offer they can't turn down.

Some ambitious types start their careers with the goal of earning a certain amount by a certain age. And they work incredibly hard, sometimes sacrificing relationships and friends to get there.

We may envy these success stories, but would we really like to retire early? All that freedom might be a bit much. For a start, none of our friends would be around to do things with. We'd have to build up a whole new network of similarly unemployed "playmates".

Nick Duff, a partner at Financial Vision, financial advisers, took early retirement when he was 33, in the early 80s. He and his partner made a fortune trapping possums and selling the skins for coats.

After two years out of the workforce he had had enough, he says.

"It seemed like a great idea but in reality it was just bloody boring."

"Instead of looking forward to the weekends they did not make any difference. And socialising - we basically ran out of friends. We were hard to keep up with, we wanted to drink gin til 4am on a Monday morning," says Duff, now in his 50s. "Apart from getting the kids off to school we had nothing to do the next day," he says.

"Your job gives you structure," adds the financial adviser.

Being a bright guy, who was planning to be an academic, he didn't let his brain get lazy, swotting up on topics such as the theory of relativity.

"I did a lot of reading when I had nothing to do. Among other things, I had a good look at the theory of property and I got a very good grasp of trading futures."

His partner Pam, now a high-earning real estate agent, spent her time getting professionally fit. A marathon runner, she took it up competitively and ran the New York and London marathons.

Casting around for something to do after the two years out was difficult, says Duff.

"I had a little bit of a problem that I wanted something to do that was interesting and challenging and did not involve hard work," he says.

He finally began to run a series of seminars on stock market share trading, earning $10,000 a day. He started taking his own advice and built up a portfolio of shares which he sold before the market crash in the late 1980s.

Now as a financial adviser, when his clients talk about taking early retirement, he warns them to think carefully.

"I generally counsel people to think a lot first and to discuss it with their partners - is that what they really want? You are the only guy who can go fishing on Tuesday morning."

The end goal of earning a certain amount by a certain age is not all it's cracked up to be, says financial author Lisa Dudson.

The focus should be on the journey not the destination, she says.

"When you get to the destination it is overrated."

She says she and a friend had similar financial goals, but when they reached them, they passed by them without even thinking about it.

For people who spend every waking hour trying to earn enough money to retire, there can be some grizzly consequences.

"They retire at 45, they have the money in the bank but they are divorced, their health is crap and they have no hobbies," she says.

"I have got a few clients in their early 50s who are worth a lot of money but they are in a big pickle. They don't know what to do, they've lost their friends over the years, they've been so focused on the business, they have no hobbies."

People who have always been so driven can panic when there is nothing to concentrate their energies on. And they'll often buy another business just to keep busy.

Dudson tries to dissuade her clients from making rash decisions after they have collected their money.

"You have to find a strategy for what you will do. I am working through the process with some clients of mine, finding out what is important to them, what they want to be doing. Otherwise they will find another business that will bind them."

For those determined to retire early, in their 40s for instance, it may be difficult to figure out exactly how much money they will need for the rest of their lives, particularly if they live until they're 90.

Dudson suggests people get financial advice on this and says it pays to be conservative.

"A lot of people go on overseas trips. You are using less money because you don't need corporate clothes but you are spending just as much because of all those hobbies."

Of course, there are people blissfully enjoying early retirement without a backward glance.

Ted Connor, 45, a former business owner, has retired to Queenstown on his proceeds and has no regrets.

But he has seen early retirement bring his friends nothing but grief. And most have gone back to work.

"They had more drive than me. One is on his second marriage, he lost everything in his first marriage, including his kids. He was paid out in excess of $5 million and barely took time off. He started up a new company."

He and his friends have all made fortunes by selling their businesses. "The big payout is when you sell up. I always intended to retire by 40," says Connor.

What makes the retiree sad is that his parents didn't benefit from his wealth much before they died.

Not one to be idle, for the past five years Connor has designed and built his dream home with the help of a qualified builder. He got on so well with the builder, that he gets a call every now and again to do some labouring for him. The Connors' lifestyle is not an opulent one. The most extravagant thing they do is drink a bottle of wine every night, says the 45-year-old.

On the other hand, to make his wife's drive to work more interesting he bought her a top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz. Connor has had a couple of job offers since he retired, but he says: "I have no interest in proving anything else." To him it is such a relief to be away from customers and problems.

"People say having your own business has certain perks but that's a fallacy, you never get to take that day off. When mobile phones came in I was on call 24/7, I started to get a panic attack every time the phone went in the middle of the night."

The former businessman says he and his wife are introverts who avoid parties, so early retirement suits them: "I am a house husband, all the housework's done when she gets home and I cook dinner four or five times a week. I never stop working, I have a complete workshop downstairs."

Although his fortune extends well into the millions, Connor manages the money himself, investing it in a number of blue chip savings.

They live mainly on his wife's salary for day to day expenses.

For those out there who can't quite envision having no structure in their lives, Martin Hawes, author of Twenty Good Summers, has a solution.

"Early retirement is a dirty word," he says, preferring to call it easing back. "It's about doing less and still carrying on," says the 53-year-old president of Save the Children.

Retirees are "sidelined by the community", he says. "You aren't rated as a fully engaged member of society. Most people don't want to withdraw, most just want to do less."