Planning your retirement

When people are planning for retirement, what priorities do they have? Obviously financial aspects are significant, but apart from that what do you most want to get out of your retirement? Do you have specific aims/plans or do you just wait and see?

Re: Planning your retirement

Ania I have already retired but hadn't made any specific plans because I had not intended to retire quite so soon .
When the option came to take redundancy or change my hours completely I chose the former.

I had lots of ideas for things I wanted to do but many of these were put on hold when the twins arrived two and a half years ago quickly followed by Hannah

The main thing though is most of the time I don't have to do anything, unlike being at work no one is making demands of me so I can be spontaneous and do as as I please .

What do I want most from retirement, exactly what I have got the freedom to please myself

Re: Planning your retirement

I decided to retire early because my wife, who is several years older than me (believe it or not I was her toy boy when in my 30's..), was worried that her health might fail before we could spend a few years together just pleasing ourselves. We were very lucky as it happens, in that the decision was made and I wound up my small business just as the recession hit, so if we had not made that decision when we did we would have gone bust!

But in answer to the question no, we had no definite or grandoise plans for our retirement, just a desire to do what we fancied, when we fancied, and that is how it has turned out, so really the greatest gift of retirement for us is freedom..

Re: Planning your retirement

I'm retired also and apart from doing the best about a bit of a pension, I didn't make any specific plans. My husband retired early, a good few years before I did and I didn't want to retire really, so I worked beyond the required 60 years for a female. My daughter has young children found she was on her own and needed to be in full-time work (I didn't) so I decided to retire and help look after her two boys who at the time I finished were not yet at school. No real regrets about that, but it does mean any plans of ours have to be worked around the children and my daughter's needs - it is a necessity at the moment. I've adapted now and there are days when we can please ourselves, but we have fallen into a pattern we can work with and made the adjustment.

Re: Planning your retirement

We've both been retired for a few years now and had no definite plans for our retirement. We just enjoy the fact that our lives are not governed by the clock.

Re: Planning your retirement

I am way off retirement, but worry what will happen when I become Non Productive. (sorry for going against the grain).

Re: Planning your retirement

Well ... as I've no private pension scheme ... and the goverment keep moving the goalposts and my retirement age , once 60, has already been hiked to 65, could be 66 now ... I tend to think of it as something that is rapidly receding over the horizon.

There is only one good thing out of this though ... in a converse sort of logic it makes me younger ... like a perpetual youth.

Re: Planning your retirement

What I want from retirement is Freedom I want to get a life! I want to be able to please myself. There are so many things I want to do which I can't do now, like read a book, go out with a friend, make friends, go to the gym, visit friends and family down south, sit in the garden and relax, the list is endless There's no way I'm going to carry on working until I'm 66 in 9 years time, I'll be fit for nothing by then I have 3 private pensions which I should be able to manage on at 66 and will have to sell my house for a cheaper one to fund the early retirement unless of course I win the lotto So I'm already starting to think about this now

Re: Planning your retirement

I say go for it guys and enjoy it ... if the goverment had their own way we'd all be working till the day we drop.

Re: Planning your retirement

Morticia, I think I will never retire, but if that means I will expire on my feet, still functioning under Gods sky, then so what, so many have exited, oblivious to their place in time, it will be a small mercy. (sorry for the Double Dutch). Lol