How to stop work & start living!

YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO A GOLDEN RETIREMENT

It’s the biggest life-change of all – and one so many struggle with. But in a major new series, CELIA DODD reveals ...

ThEORETICALLY, it should be one of the most eagerly anticipated times of our lives — an exciting era of new possibilities, of finally being able to say ‘yes’ rather than ‘no’, of at last getting round to all those activities we’ve put on hold for years.

So why is it that so many people find retirement unbelievably tough? Why should giving up paid employment — which is stressful, exhausting and relentless — become such a challenge?

‘Work gives you a huge sense of fulfilment which is almost impossible to get from anything else,’ says midwife Linda Abbott, whose retirement was watched by millions on TV’s One Born Every Minute. ‘I think the shift from that sense of purpose is a very difficult one to make.’

Peter, a former TV executive, agrees. ‘I’ve seen friends and acquaintances go downhill really quickly when they retire,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a chum who’s aged ten years since he stopped work two years ago.

‘he’s well qualified and intelligent, but somehow he didn’t have the wherewithal to build on what he had and make something of it, or simply enjoy the freedom to do nothing. It’s so sad, because he’s missing out on so much.’

Part of the problem is, I believe, that even in the 21st century the image of retirement remains firmly stuck in the past. It feels out of sync in a world that places such a high premium on being purposeful and busy — and where being stressed out is not only the norm, but a marker of success.

‘We have become so obsessed over the past few decades with working hard and the idea of being a “go-getter” that retirement — because it’s the antithesis of that — is seen as giving up,’ says Ian Stuart-hamilton, professor of developmental psychology at the University of South Wales.

‘There are more than enough role models now of people who are ploughing on long past retirement age, like the U.S. business magnate Warren Buffett, who’s 88.

‘The danger is that once you get trapped into that mindset, retirement then seems like a kind of failure.’

So what can we do to change that mindset? Today and next week I will explore how we can, with careful planning and honesty about our long-term goals, turn the potential negatives of retirement into positives.

I will look at the thorny issues that trouble those about to retire: how and when to take that all- important step; reinventing ourselves for the next phase; keeping physically and mentally alert; and, yes, rekindling our marriages, too.

WINDING DOWN OR A LEAP IN THE DARK?

TIME was when the decision about how and when to stop work was easy. The retirement age was fixed at 65 for men and 60 for women, and those milestones remained comfortably in the back of your mind for the whole of your working life.

But with a change in the law in 2011 abolishing the default retirement age, the certainties have been swept away.

In theory, we can all carry on till we drop. Indeed, the numbers choosing to work on after 65 have doubled to a record 1.19 million over the past ten years.

So of all the numerous retirement options that now confront us, which one is best?

Phased in: reducing your hours gradually by working parttime before leaving? Cliff- edge: stopping work overnight? Portfolio: a mixture of part-time, consultancy, self- employment and/or voluntary work?

The list goes on. Should I defer my pension? Should I take it as a lump sum, or as an annuity, or drawdown?

Retirement has gone from being a single, easy-to-grasp concept to a mind- boggling mixed bag of possibilities.

On the face of it, stopping work overnight sounds like a seriously bad idea. But it doesn’t have to be. It’s true that many retirements get off to a bad start when the change is too sudden. Yet the surprising truth is that for others, it works very well.

‘You remember that wonderful feeling when you were a child and the summer holidays seemed to stretch in front of you endlessly?’ says Lily, who took early retirement from the Department for Work and Pensions in Sheffield. ‘That’s how I felt the day after I left work.

‘It was as though I’d been given a gift. To begin with it felt like annual leave. But after a few weeks came the realisation that I didn’t have to go back. It was wonderful.’

The key to making cliff- edge retirement work is preparation, says Chris Phillipson, professor of sociology and social gerontology at Manchester University.

‘The assumption that cliff-edge is bad is just that — an assumption,’ he says. ‘It may not be bad if you’re supported, or it may well be very bad if there is no support.’

For others, the idea of weaning yourself off work gradually over a period of months or years is more appealing. There are two ways to do this: either by negotiating phased retirement with your employer, or by leaving your full-time job and finding new parttime work or self-employment.

‘On the whole, it’s been very good,’ says Irene, an administrative assistant who has reduced her days in preparation for her retirement. ‘If I had retired suddenly, it wouldn’t have given me a chance to see what I’m going to do with my time.

‘It’s taken me a while to find new clubs and classes I really like and activities I want to do. Now I’m in the swing of it, I’m really looking forward to retiring.

‘Also, if I’d gone for cliff- edge retirement, the money would have been cut off straight away. As it is, I’ve gradually got used to not spending so much.’

But phased retirement is not without its flaws. For some people, it turns out to be an unsatisfactory limbo where they end up with a foot in both camps, and not enough time or energy to give their full attention to either.

‘It can be difficult because your position in the workplace is immediately changed,’ says Professor Phillipson. ‘You’re half in and half out.

‘Some people are comfortable with the changed relationship they have with colleagues, but some aren’t. If that’s the case, they are dragging out a change they might be best doing straight away.’

What’s increasingly popular is a mixture of part-time work, paid or unpaid consultancy and volunteering — which hopefully leaves time to have fun, too.

With this option there’s a flexibility that allows people to shift the balance between their different activities as their priorities change. Reducing your workload in your main career is a good way of moving into a mixed portfolio.

It may sound strange, but some of the best retirement decisions are not entirely rational.

It goes against what everyone tells you about carefully considering all the options, but sometimes a risk pays off.

By this stage in life, with years of rich experience behind us, we’re in a good position to trust our instincts. If you follow your heart, things often fall uncannily into place.

BE PREPARED AND PLAN AHEAD

ONE of the best feelings in the world is having loads of things you’re looking forward to doing when you’re less busy.

The only problem is that when you finally have time on your hands, you’ve either forgotten what they were or they’ve lost their appeal.

That’s why it’s a good idea to pin your ideas down by planning

ahead. Coming up with a realistic vision of what you want to do and achieve in the next few years gives you the vital sense of control you need at a time of huge change and upheaval.

It’s generally agreed that the ideal time to start thinking yourself into your new life is a couple of years before you stop work or go part-time.

Some people go on professional retirement planning courses, but it’s perfectly possible to work things through yourself.

A few years ago I heard about a friend of a friend who had done just that.

Margaret was a full-time lawyer (today, at 69, she’s still working two days a week) when she and her husband James decided the only way to hammer out their often conflicting views of the future was to spend a weekend in a hotel discussing their plans in detail.

She calls the process ‘visioning’ and it has proved a huge success. So much so that she and her husband have done it again almost annually since they started seven years ago.

There is a tight structure to the weekend, with a huge number of categories to cover, explains Margaret. These include health, relationships, leisure, well-being, voluntary work, their house and intellectual pursuits.

‘On Saturday morning we start by discussing where we hope to be in ten years,’ she says. ‘We then go through each of the categories.

‘It’s critical to start with ten years’ time, because everything flows from that. It enables you to hone in on what is realistic and what you really want. So, for example, if you dream about living on a houseboat in Thailand, it gets you asking why — and why you’re not doing it. And if that’s still your goal you need to work out how to be fluent in Thai in five years.

‘So then you discuss your fiveyear, three- year and one- year vision, finishing with a 90- day immediate action plan.

‘As soon as we get home I write up the minutes and book the next year’s weekend.

‘It gets us thinking more strategically, rather than simply problemsolving and firefighting.’

Preparations and visioning for retirement could include thinking in advance about what you are going to miss most about work and how you might recreate it, be it water cooler moments, working in a team, even commuting.

Think about what an average weekday would ideally be like once the initial honeymoon period of retirement is over.

Specific ideas are more useful than vague ambitions. Where will you spend most of your time? What will you be doing? With which friends do you want to socialise? How will weekends differ from weekdays?

If you plan to volunteer, work part-time or set up your own business, find out what skills or qualifications you might need.

Finally, look at roads untravelled. We have all had interests that fell by the wayside because of time pressures while we worked and brought up children. Now is the time to revive them.

MANAGE THE TRANSITION

THE latest research suggests that the best way to cope with retirement is to treat it not as the end of the road, but as a major life transition, on a par with leaving home or facing up to an empty nest.

And the good news is that by this stage in their lives, people have what it takes to cope successfully, according to psychology lecturer Dr Oliver Robinson.

‘We can learn a lot from previous transitions,’ he says. ‘Many of the same issues come up in major life crises, such as identity, meaning, purpose. If you navigate through a crisis successfully and grow out of it, it should mean you’re well prepared for the next one.’

Ellen Langer, professor of psychology at Harvard University, agrees. ‘Retirement can be a dirty word, because people see it as the end; a phase where you do nothing,’ she says. ‘If you change jobs, you go from Job A to Job B. But retirement has no B attached. The antidote is to see retirement as a change, rather than a movement towards nothing.’

This new and illuminating approach focuses on how the psychological qualities we have developed during previous transitions and throughout our working lives — attributes such as resilience, adaptability, flexibility, openmindedness and a ‘can-do’ attitude — can stand us in good stead for the challenges of retirement.

John, who took two extended breaks from work to go travelling, first in his 30s and then in his 50s, when he went to Barcelona for a few months to learn Spanish and ended up staying away for seven years, is a case in point.

‘I think both experiences helped me when it came to preparing for retirement,’ he says. ‘You realise that you have to make things happen. You can’t be passive.’

He is so right. It’s true that the happiest retired people are often the ones who are most proactive about looking for interesting stuff to do. If there’s no birdwatching or film club in their area, they don’t hang around; they set one up.

When one friend of mine retired to the countryside, she really missed her book group. So she bravely went up to anyone she liked the look of and asked if they would like to join hers.

If you’re lucky enough to come across someone like this, see them as the true asset they are.

IT’S TIME TO CREATE A NEW YOU

RETIRING involves one of the biggest shifts of identity we ever go through — as momentous as becoming a parent or leaving home. After years of being seen, and of seeing yourself, as a shopkeeper or a nurse or an engineer, you suddenly become an ex-whatever it was. It’s common to feel, as Nadia does, ‘that you’re 60 and you’re just not in the world any more. You don’t matter.’

For her, the loss of status she feels is acute.

‘I don’t like being invisible when I walk into a room,’ says Nadia. ‘At work you have a formal place to assert yourself. You get paid.

‘Then all that structure is shipped away and you’re left just sort of flapping around, saying: “I used to be a . . .”

‘ Everything you’ve built up throughout your career disappears, and suddenly you’re just another old lady looking to do a bit of volunteering.’

For women in particular, work bestows an independent identity quite separate from home and family life. When that disappears — and it often coincides with losing the hands-on parenting role — it can leave people feeling doubly discombobulated.

It may be that you don’t even want to think about a new identity before you retire. But if you are aware that work dominates your life ( or your partner’s) to the exclusion of other interests, it’s worth starting to develop at least one new activity beforehand.

Supportive networks that run parallel to work and that will continue beyond it can be a huge help.

People will start to see you not just as a brilliant brain surgeon, but as a wicked darts player or a fine guitarist.

Playing in a band, taking an evening class, working on an allotment, being a member of a sports club or a book group can all form bridges between the old you and the new you.

It’s also important to reinforce this new identity with other people. Rather than apologetically saying: ‘I used to be a . . .’ when asked what you do, it feels much more positive to say: ‘ I’m studying astronomy,’ or ‘I’m planning to start a rag-rugging business.’

Soon, other people in your immediate circle and beyond will get used to seeing you in a new light, and that, in turn, reinforces your own new view of yourself.

Liz, who retired two years ago, got round the problem by telling people she was taking ‘a pause’, rather than that she had finished work. ‘If you tell people you’re retired, their eyes glaze over a bit — especially younger people,’ she says. ‘I didn’t enjoy the glazing.

‘However, when I started exploring a new part of myself and tried out different things I really enjoyed, I became comfortable with the idea of a different identity. Now I’m happy to say I’m retired.’

It’s a process that happens organically, but sometimes it needs a bit of a push.

As your work persona gradually recedes, it leaves space for a different side of life to take centre stage, and you can spend more time on activities that resonate with your core values. And how much of a privilege is that?

Not Fade Away, by Celia Dodd, will be published on Sept 20 by Green tree at £12.99. © Celia Dodd 2018. to order a copy for £10.39 (a 20 per cent discount), visit mailshop.co.uk/ books, or call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15. offer valid until Sept 22, 2018.