Retiring early? Nice work if you can get it: The new trend for spending more time with your bank balance

James Blunt has suggested he may quit the music industry at the grand old age of 38 to hang out in Ibiza with his girlfriend and sizeable bank balance. And he's not the only one retiring prematurely.

Last week it was reported that Greg Coffey, a London-based Australian hedge-fund trader, was retiring at 41 to enjoy his estimated £430m fortune.

"The demands of my growing family mean that I am unable to commit to the market with the same intensity going forward," the father of three said in his resignation letter. The man dubbed The Wizard of Oz is planning to return to Australia, where he owns numerous properties. All right for some.

Meanwhile, the population of the United Arab Emirates are calling for the national retirement age to be lowered to 45. An employee at the pension authority confirmed they were "studying the possibility of lowering the age, and wanted to know people's opinions on the matter."

But the luckiest early retiree is surely Frankel the unbeaten racehorse. Just four years old and having won all of his 14 races (bringing in almost £3m in prize money for his owner, Prince Khalid Abdullah), Frankel's appearance at Ascot on Saturday was his last.

The colt will now command a fee of £100,000 a time on a stud farm.

So while he is retiring from racing, in a sense he's still got his work cut out for him.