When should you start thinking about retirement planning?
When you turn 50? Time enough to check the finances and still make up some more pension?
At 60? Time when your parents would have been actively retirement planning?
Or is retirement something you don’t plan to do at all?
What does retirement mean anyway?
I went to a business network meeting recently and a man introduced himself as ‘having retired 9 years ago’. There he was learning how to develop a strategy for his consultancy business!
One of the delegates on my workshop said proudly that he ‘had retired 3 times’. As he still hadn’t got it right, he wanted some help on what to do next.
My local charity trust board would surely not survive if it were not for the team of ‘retired professionals’ all giving their expertise and time for free.
And of course there are many happy people I know who have rekindled their love for hobbies or who travel and simply enjoy more leisure time.
So what does retirement mean to you? Should we reshape retirement or find a new term to describe today’s reality?
Life expectancy is increasing all the time (do you know that on average globally each of us gains 7 hours per day?). That means that most of us can expect a period of 20 years or more in good health after a traditional retirement age of 60. Time to have a whole new career or set up a new business. Not to old to learn and develop new skills. Years in which to discover something new about yourself and take advantage of new opportunities.
Lots of potential but it’s up to you to create it. There is no statutory retirement age so you can work as long as you like or as long as you need to. Your family and friends might have ideas about what you should do but really it’s for you to shape your future around the things you value and enjoy most.
Taking responsibility for your future may be an exciting prospect or quite frightening. Either way what I discovered is that there is nothing to really help you work it all out. I didn’t want a pre-retirement course; it sounds too much like preparing for old age. It’s not quite career guidance as I already have a wealth of knowledge and experience to make use of. It’s not therapy or counselling because basically my life was OK; I didn’t need transformation.
What I wanted was something practical to help me take time out to clarify how I wanted my life to change. A way of understanding myself better so that I knew what was important and what would make me happy. Help with making decisions (I am notoriously indecisive and full of ideas!). And then help to work out how to make the change and stick to it (I’m also guilty of procrastinating if not given a nudge every now and again!)
So I decided to create a life planning programme and that’s how Time of your life developed into something I can share with you.
Have a mooch around the website to see if it’s something that could help you, your friends or your colleagues.
I think I have helped to reshape the future but disappointed not to have found an alternative word for retirement yet so if you have any great ideas……..
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