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Want early retirement? How to ditch your day job and follow your dreams
'I just woke one morning with a strong desire to make historical women's garments," Rebecca Olds, 50, recalled.
Lesser urges must have occurred and passed unheeded.
But Ms Olds, a former paralegal, and her husband, Adam Bell, 55, a three-decade veteran of financial services, were at a point in their lives ripe to invest in 17th century apparel.
"Last year I had a lot happening," Ms Olds said. "My mother died, making me re-examine what I wanted from my work. I was also planning my marriage to Adam and designing my own wedding dress.
"He wanted to take early retirement and all those strands collided, so we sat down and asked, 'what would we like to be doing?' "
More of us will have the chance to contemplate the same. Britons are living healthier, more active lives for longer. Government research predicts that by the mid-2030s half of British adults will be over 50.
A million more over-50s will be working or available to work in the next six years, as fewer, out of choice or necessity, retire completely. Since just last year 240,000 more of those aged 50-64 were employed, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, an association for human resources professionals.
Mr Bell and Ms Olds chose to use financial security obtained through years in "sensible" careers to join a trend for choosing a first career for money, a second for love, and ditching retirement altogether.
Ms Olds said: "I was no longer getting satisfaction out of my 'intellectual work'. I used to make my own clothes and while I'd set that aside on leaving school 30 years ago I thought perhaps I'd be happier creating stuff than spending three hours a day commuting to an office."
Careful money management by Mr Bell meant the couple were able to abandon careers around London for projects of choice in the Sussex seaside town of Bognor Regis.
Mr Bell said: "I've got about £500,000 in money purchase [defined contribution] pensions and a small £2,000-a-year final salary scheme. Rebecca's pension pot is probably worth around £40,000 in total.
"Between us we have around £800,000 in three properties, mortgage debt of £140,000, which will go when two surplus properties are sold now that we live together, and £460,000 in Isas and cash we can invest for income."
Ms Olds said she "can't claim much credit" for their sound financial position. "Adam planned for the future much better. But then he was able to contribute to pensions and other investments most of his working life, rather than living pay cheque to pay cheque as I did."
Mr Bell, a keen cyclist, took early retirement from the financial advice firm where he was a partner and retrained as a cycle mechanic and teacher for the Bikeability scheme, which rewards youngsters for taking part in cycle training.
He said: "I enjoyed my job but I wanted to help people in a better way."
He is in the process of creating a community interest company to recycle donated bikes and offer them at a low cost, as well as setting up training programmes to teach people bike maintenance skills.
Mr Bell said: "Bognor Regis is very flat, so ideal for cycling. I'd like my business to be a social hub with a café."
The couple are in the fortunate position of not relying on their dream projects making a return, which they don't really expect.
"It would be nice to run a profit instead of a loss," Ms Olds said. "My goal is for it to break even by the 2020- 21 tax year. But I'm not counting on it."
Embarking on an exciting second career in later life is more comfortably done after sound financial planning during the first.
So how do you finance decades of a hobby retirement from the earnings of a typical 30-year career?
According to Mr Bell and Ms Olds, you live frugally, invest well, pay off debts and be lucky enough to benefit from rising house prices.
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Mr Olds said: "To some extent we are able to do this due to inheriting, while the boom in property prices over the past 20 years has definitely helped in our long-term plans for downsizing. I also worked in a well-paid industry, which enabled me to save for the future as well as ensure my children owned properties.
"But we've also made sure our day-to-day expenses once the mortgages are paid off will be very low at less than £15,000 a year, which should be covered by income from our investments."
Lisa Davies, an independent financial adviser at Suttons, said the couple were benefiting now from earlier prudence, although this was becoming harder to replicate.
She said: "It is much more expensive now to acquire property, even more so as a landlord thanks to increased stamp duty for buy-to-let or second properties. So property investing now to fund your future is perhaps less attractive.
"If you do decide to pursue this route, try to place any investment property on a repayment mortgage rather than interest-only, as many people do, in order to lower the debt and grow your equity in the property, which will leave you better off when you come to sell.
Remember to plan to pay capital gains tax out of any profits above your annual £11,700 allowance at either the basic rate of 18pc or 28pc for higher-rate taxpayers."
Coming at a 30-year retirement without a plan would be a mistake, warned Martin Stewart of advice firm London Money.
He said: "Your plan will go wrong anyway but it's better to have it and adapt as you go along. Money is really good for buying goods and acting as a security blanket. It is a great position to be in to be able to accommodate doing both."
laura.miller@telegraph.co.uk