How to retire successfully

Retirement means different things to different people. Until recently, it meant finishing work in your sixties and then living a life of leisure but we are living longer these days and many people do not have the income to sustain them in retirement or do not want to live just for leisure.

Many people are continuing to work well after their official retirement age while others are developing a portfolio career which might include some paid work, some voluntary activity and a range of social activities.

The transition to the new retirement begins early for a lot of people and it is not unusual for those in their early 50s to start thinking about how they will structure the 30 remaining years of active life.

The key to a successful ‘retirement’ according to recent research* is to prepare well and consider 4 factors:

• Who you are
• What you do
• Who is involved
• How you structure it

For each of these four factors there are a number of questions to answer for yourself which will allow you to create a structure that works for you and avoid the cliff edge that so many people have faced.

*Thanks to Pauline Johnson-Zielonka for the identification of the 4 factors from her research

What gives your life meaning?

Many people reach a point in their life at which they ask themselves “What’s the point of it all?” It might be that they have been made redundant, have suffered ill health, arrived at the menopause or separated from a long term partner and have begun to re-assess what they are doing with their life. Some people just start to feel that the work they have done for many years does not give them the satisfaction it once did.

For me, the trigger was ill health but the cause went much deeper. As a young Housing Officer, I once interviewed a young couple who were living and looking after their disabled child in one room of a bed and breakfast hotel and their struggle was easy to see. The day I was able to give them the keys to a brand new flat was one of immense satisfaction to me because it was to make a difference for people like them that I had chosen to work in housing.

When, at fifty five, I suffered a stroke that caused me to be off work for four months and required me to learn how to walk again, I looked at my life and reviewed my priorities. The result was that I gave up my well paid and stressful life as a Housing Director and retrained as a coach. One of the reasons for making the change was that I felt I had lost touch with the very thing that had given meaning to my work – the fact that what I did made a difference to peoples’ lives.

Whether the reason is one of feeling trapped, stuck, unhappy or that a life event has given cause for thought, people look to either rediscover the meaning they once had or to find a new meaning for what they do with their life.

Martin Seligman in his book ‘Authentic Happiness’ describes four types of Happy Life:

The pleasant life: “a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past and future.”

The good life: “using your signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in the main realms of your life.”

The meaningful life: “using your signature strengths and virtues in service of something larger than you are.”

And finally, The Full Life which combines all three and “consists in experiencing positive emotions about the past and future, savouring positive feelings from the pleasures, deriving abundant gratification from your signature strengths, and using these strengths in the service of something larger to obtain meaning.”

For Seligman and for many people the essence of meaning is about using our strengths and talents not just for our own benefit but also for the benefit of others or something that is bigger than just us.

Implicit in this meaningful life is that we may not always be happy because to have meaning we must care and that can cause us to sometimes feel unhappy “Meaningful involvements increase one’s stress, worries, arguments, and anxiety, which reduce happiness.” However, over the long term, living a life of meaning increases happiness as it makes us feel better about ourselves.

In one study 577 volunteers were encouraged to pick one of their signature strengths and use it in a new way each day for a week. They became significantly happier and less depressed than control groups and these benefits lasted – even after the experiment was over, their levels of happiness remained heightened a full month later.

What gives meaning to your life and gives you happiness?

How to Prepare for your Third Life

The Third Age is an emerging life stage, running roughly from ages 50 to 75, made possible by our longer life expectancy. In essence it grants us a life bonus of 30 years not available to previous generations. Rich in possibilities and potential, this Third Life involves the creating creation of new roles and identity, a search for new meaning and profound change.

Many people are still reaching retirement from full-time employment having worked for over 40 years and the only preparation they have undertaken for their later years is to try to make sure they have a large enough pension.

Increasingly, people are beginning to realise the opportunities that their Third Life brings and are starting to make decisions about what they want to do with their lives, not just when they retire but also during their fifties and early sixties. Very often this involves a change in career, retraining or becoming self-employed rather than carrying on with whatever they have been doing.

Be prepared for the trip of your life

There are different approaches we can take to preparation for the journey. Some people prefer to do little preparation and take whatever comes when they get there. Some people like to plan meticulously so that they know what they will do and where they will go before they leave home. Some take the view that it makes sense to plan their trip but they like to have the flexibility to be able to change plans according to what they find when they arrive.

In preparation we might learn some of the language, ensure we have had the right jabs, understand the culture and lifestyle, take some local currency, find out what foods are eaten, identify places to visit, research the weather and decide what clothes to take. The extent to which we will enjoy our trip will to some extent be dependent on our preparation and also our mindset in terms of our expectations and ability to be flexible. We will also be helped if we have a decent guide book to the region we are visiting.

The same is true of our Third Life. If we don’t plan, we may find that we arrive at retirement having missed out on the opportunities that were available to us or, that we are not in a position to have as fulfilling a life as possible because we did not take the necessary action in advance to enable it to happen.

So, as well as thinking about our finances and legal issues, we also would benefit from thinking about what we want to do about work, our relationships with those around us, our health and wellbeing, our mental and spiritual life, our social life and leisure activities, where we will live and our ongoing personal development. For many people, the meaning and purpose of their life is strongly tied to their career and the key to a fulfilling Third Life is how and where we find meaning outside of our career.

The Huntcliff Third Life Audit takes an overview of all these areas of life and helps people to be able to see where they have prepared effectively and where they would benefit from spending some time thinking about what else they need to do to be ready.

It is the starting point for your own guide book to make sure you know where you are going, how to get there and that you have everything you need in your backpack or suitcase.

The Secret to a Fulfilling Third Life

The Third Life is that period in our lives when we are free from the need to drive a career and still healthy enough to do the things we want to do. It used to be said that there were three ages: Growing up, Working and Retirement and the University of the Third Age was founded on the premise of catering for people in their Third Age.

Today, we can say that there are four ages in our life and we are realising more and more that this Third Life brings many opportunities for fulfilment.

The Baby Boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) grew up at a time when our futures were pretty clear. Men went out to work and after forty years or so we would retire and spend the rest of our time in a life of leisure. Women would learn the essentials of making a home from their mothers and after leaving school they would marry and spend their time raising children. Of course, not everyone conformed to this stereotype but it was the cultural norm in post war society.

Now that we are in our fifties and sixties, the world is a very different place and the old certainties have long since disappeared. For some people, life has taken the path they expected and after working possibly for the same employer, they have reached the point of retirement and are now wondering what to do next. For others, particularly those still in their fifties, work has probably been for a variety of employers and even in more than one career. For both groups, retirement is looking very different largely because there have been massive improvements in health care in their lifetimes and most can look forward to an extended period of good health in their later years and will live longer than their parents’ generation.

How do we make the most of the opportunities the Third Life brings? Those who have already retired may have already developed a lifestyle that brings all they need or it may be that they are still looking for the purpose and meaning that went with full time employment. The youngsters, who are still in the latter stages of their working life, may be wondering whether they want to keep doing the same job for however long it is until they reach official retirement age. The last ten or fifteen years of work can be different and many people are choosing to change career or to become self-employed so they can get more enjoyment from work.

Most people will have given at least some thought to their finances especially in the last decade or so with state pension provision under great pressure and increasing emphasis has been given to occupational pensions. Some people will also have thought about what happens to their assets when they are not here and may have written a Will. That is the extent of planning for Third Life for the majority of people.

If we are to enjoy our Third Life to the full, a life that has purpose and meaning, it is important for us to think about what we want that life to be and plan to make it happen. Huntcliff aims to do just that. We can help you to think through what it is you want, what that Third Life might be like and what you can do to make it happen.

 

 

Who do you say hello to in the morning?

Guest Blogger Simon Eedle writes about his experience of retirement.

It is two and a half years since I volunteered for redundancy and took early retirement from full time paid work and said goodbye to my employers of seventeen years. In the months leading up to my departure I embraced the idea of relinquishing the responsibility that goes with management of two services and the feeling that the future employment of my staff depended on my success in securing funding.

I am one of the lucky people who, thanks to less lucky life events, do not identify themselves with what they do for a job, so no great loss of identity and the searching question of “who am I now that I no longer work?”

I looked forward to having the time to do the things I enjoy: the leisure activities, the DIY projects, spending time with my partner and my family. And to a large extent I have succeeded in those things and undertaken new projects to both fill my time and feed my soul.

So why did I feel at a loss? Why, when the stress had receded and my days were more relaxed and healthy in so many ways, was I beleaguered with minor ailments? Prior to giving up paid employment going to see the doctor was a ‘blue moon’ event for me.

My GP is a personal friend who has no qualms in telling it how it is and he was aware that I had engineered my retirement. He also understood my positive approach to using my time, time that I now had control of rather than dancing to an employers’ schedule.

“But who do you say hello to in the morning?” he asked and it dawned on me that in my desire to embrace this new life of autonomy I had failed to give thought or time to what I had lost.

Not my identity nor a sense of worth or value because I feel amply valued and worthwhile outside of work. What I realised I had lost was the daily, friendly contact with others. It may only have been “How was your weekend?” or “Did you see that programme on TV last night?” but it was an unfailing daily connection with others – guaranteed.

I had spent years working with and supporting others on issues of loss and I knew that all change brings with it loss in some shape or form. I also knew that loss unacknowledged and unmanaged can have unhelpful, if not harmful, side effects. Despite that, I had not only failed to recognise the losses I was experiencing but also failed to mourn them and in doing so, learn to live with them and ensure that they did not affect me unduly.

So when you think about giving up work, think also of the seemingly innocuous losses you may experience and that may make the longed for life of leisure less pleasurable.