One in five retirees is more stressed than when at work
RETIREMENT is supposed to be the time when we take things easy and relax after the pressures of work.
But a study has found that nearly one in five of those who retired in the past ten years is now more stressed than when they were in employment.
They blame many of their problems on financial pressures and being treated as free childcare by relatives.
And nearly a quarter of retirees wish they had stayed at work for longer.
Eighteen per cent said they were more stressed since retirement, while 13 per cent said their health has suffered since giving up work.
Newly-retired women were more likely to report feeling more stressed, at 23 per cent, compared with 13 per cent of men. Missing former colleagues was reported as the biggest retirement let-down, with 35 per cent saying they miss the social interaction of work.
And one in five retirees feel they have lost part of their identity since leaving the workplace.
For many pensioners, their depleted finances were the source of most anxiety. The survey by Prudential found that 29 per cent miss their pay packet, while one in eight complain their adult children still expect subsidies from the ‘bank of mum and dad’. A fifth also said being a source of free childcare is a cause of stress.
Of the more than 750 retirees surveyed, only 13 per cent said they are disappointed with how their retirement has turned out.
But 24 per cent wish they had worked for longer, and 11 per cent said that with hindsight they would have found another job or been more active in the early years of retirement.
Vince Smith-Hughes of Prudential said: ‘Often when we think of retirement planning we concentrate exclusively on our finances, but what these findings show is that there are many other things involved in helping to make us happy in retirement. As we have found, giving up work can be a shock to the system even before people start to come to terms with the inevitable change in their financial circumstances.
‘However, as we see people easing themselves away from the world of work through a period of “pretirement” and more people saving from an earlier age as a result of automatic enrolment, we hope that the new retirees of the future will be better placed to cope with their changed circumstances.’