Jambo,
The decision you will ultimately make is a personal one, all you can do (as indeed you are trying to) is gather as much information as possible and make your own choice.
However, when you describe one reason for staying in as "the obvious one of a damn good wage" consider the following. I recently retired at 55 on AFPS05, and my immediate pension net income was approx. 62% of my RAF net income just prior to retirement. In other words, I only lost 38% of income by retiring! Therefore, assuming broadly similar figures for yourself, one could argue that by staying in you are actually doing so for approx. one third of your current wage. You are working all those hours to only be better off, in comparison to retirement, by about one third of your net salary. As one illustration you're working all those hours to be better off, compared to retirement, by a JNCOs salary, a figure which you probably don't consider "a damn good wage". Yes, there might be other benefits from staying, for example continuing to accrue pension rights, or maybe job satisfaction, social life, etc, but I would argue that "the obvious one of a damn good wage" might actually not be so obvious at all!!
Just checked my records, and here are the actual figures:
Last months RAF pay, net: £4170
First months pension income, net: £2670
My statement above was slightly inaccurate, the pension was actually 64% of my previous RAF pay. Thus if I had stayed in (not an option for me at age 55 prior to the latest extensions to 60) I would have been working a 40+ hour week in the RAF to be £18,000 a year better off than in retirement. Hopefully this illustrates my point that staying in for "a damn good wage" is very open to debate!
You are probably correct in describing staying in as "the easy option"!!
Last edited by Biggus; 2nd Mar 2015 at 20:51.