As my retirement becomes imminent and my plans are falling into place I realise that I have not been adopting the Brexit approach. In fact I have done it wrong from the beginning.

Two and a half years ago when the possibility of early retirement became a realistic possibility I started to plan and take advice. I didn't make my final decision until I had investigated the options and weighed up the consequences. I consulted experts, collected and analysed data and examined projected scenarios. I agonised over the decision.

What an idiot? What a typical Remainer: always wanting to know how it will work; overly concerned about the practical details. Until this week, when the government explained why the Brexit impact papers can't be published and revealed that key Brexit ministers haven't even bothered to read them (watch here at 14:05), I didn't understand.

But now I do. It is SO SIMPLE. Apparently if you believe strongly enough that something is true and you avoid research reports which challenge it, then it remains true.  Bad things only exist if you acknowledge them. Brexit will only succeed if enough people believe in it and ministers maintain their "safe space" to negotiate, so don't ruin it by casting doubt in peoples' minds or by confusing busy ministers with inconvenient facts. 

I endangered my retirement by researching its impact on my finances, my self image and my life style, but phew, I've had a lucky escape. Belatedly, thanks to Brexit, I know now that I should have just believed in retirement, burned my bridges, spent my pension pot (in advance) on repairing my boundary walls and then discovered whether my new situation was sustainable or not.

I clearly hadn't valued liberation from the shackles of my employment  highly enough. I had not added my personal sovereignty and taking back control over my own time to the balance sheet.

Furthermore, I had underestimated my ability to pick fruit and to make jam. But not just that: I had not declared loudly enough that as I am an expert in my field, they would miss me more than I would miss them and that plenty of other organisations would be queuing up to do business with me.

I will be able to pick and chose and enter into new, much more lucrative deals on my own terms! Oh why didn't I latch on to the lessons of Brexit sooner? How much easier it would have been not to concern my self with facts and figures when I could have just done it all on belief in my own importance.

I'll know next time. If there is one.

Oh, and in case you are wondering, my boundary wall has been knocked down in several places by hit and run drivers. In one case they quite literally ran away but were soon caught by the police. I don't know where they were from but for the sake of argument and in honour of the Daily Mail, lets pretend they were immigrants, definitely from outside my 10 mile radius, because I need someone to blame for landing me with the cost of repairs.