Retirement - To Plan or Not To Plan - That Is The Question!

Did you plan for retirement?  Perhaps you're not there yet, if so are you planning for retirement?  Both myself and hubby didn't plan to retire when we did.  He worked for a large corporation and they forced the hand of the over 55's to get out or have a large chunk of their pension stolen.  It doesn't sound very legal but they got away with it.  It was too big a precedent for the lawmen to judge any other way.  I too worked for a large company aka local government and they also decided it was time to get rid of the old and mostly more expensive (experienced) staff.  We were given a choice and hubby and I decided it was time to leave paid work.  My pension was made up to the effect I worked till I was 60 though I was only 55 at the time and I also got a redundancy payment which looked good, but had I known then what I know now I'd have been much more careful.  I can only speak for the UK here and I'm not even sure if it's up to date but while I was working we were offered AVC's (additional voluntary contributions - I think) which were a way to top up your pension and were tax free.   I took advantage of them but not enough.  Had I been much more savvy, I'd have thrown as much as I could at the AVC's before leaving which would have benefited me hugely in retirement.  Retirement was not on my radar and neither were pensions or to be honest what that even meant to me!  At the time (2010) there was a lot of talk of pension schemes failing so without investigating it any further I took the largest cash amount I could from my pension and only kept a small pension - BIG mistake.  Well, it was a mistake in that I have now only a small work pension, however at the time I used that cash to start up my own business and also paid off some debt for a relative which I couldn't have helped them with otherwise, so it's swings and roundabouts I suppose!  Only after a few years did it occur to me that I would be in big trouble financially should anything happen to my hubby as I'd only be entitled to half his pension - this was something I didn't even think about before.  As I still don't qualify for the state pension yet, (66 in this country) I would have had to find a way to support myself.  My business did ok for a couple of years then when hubby got ill I took my eye off the ball and it went downhill fast!  I continued to make a small amount selling my stock at fairs etc but it wouldn't have supported me.  Nowadays, if anyone ever asks me about retiring I say, plan, plan and really plan for it!  Find out about pensions, don't walk blindly into it.  If you're self employed, get a private pension as soon as you can and make sure it's one that will suit you in the future.  My parents took out a private pension years ago because my dad was self employed but he was sure he'd be working till he died so he didn't pay too much attention to it and it paid them £200 each every 3 months and my dad's payment stopped when he died, my mum got nothing.  She still gets her own £200 but it's taken into consideration when she had to apply for pension credit and although £200 every 3 months might have seemed a great thing years ago, now it's a drop in the ocean.

Finances apart, time can sit heavy in your hands when you give up structured work patterns.  I found myself wondering what to do with myself when I had so much free time to begin with.  Although I'd previously only worked 3 days a week I had a structure to my days and weeks and I lost that structure when I stopped work.  It's fine for the first few weeks as it feels like a long holiday and its a novelty but the novelty wears off and then what?  I retired in the summer so I had plenty in the garden to do.  I also had friends who weren't working and some who had flexi hours at work and could meet up for lunch/coffee but the winter was when I began to struggle a bit.  Fortunately a friend of mine recommended I look at the daytime classes in the universities in Glasgow where they do a huge selection of classes for adults over 50.  I had long wished I could have done more art and when I discovered I could do art classes at the university I jumped at the chance and it was the best thing I could have done.  I met new, interesting, like minded people and thoroughly enjoyed spending my morning painting and drawing.  Even having just one day a week where I went into the city to do art made a huge different to the structure of my week and that led to other things.  A group of us kept in touch after that first class ended and we now meet every 6 weeks or so for coffee/lunch/gallery visits etc and we all still do various classes at the university - well we did till the pandemic and some have continued to do them online.  I have a friend who has decided to retire at the end of this year.  She's a teacher and is used to a very structured life.  I worry that she'll struggle with retirement as she hasn't any hobbies and she's not even looking at what she'll do yet to fill her days.  She says she can't wait to have more time to read but there's only so many days you can sit and read, isn't there?  Don't get me wrong, I love to sit and read, especially on cold winter days but I couldn't do it all the time.  

Is there a point to this post?  No.  I just read someone in a blog talking about planning to downsize and make sure they have no debt and own their house before retirement and it made me think that I probably should have looked at the implications more carefully when I was younger.  To be honest, we'll never downsize, unless for some weird reason we really had to, our house is suitable to grow old in and as it's been in hubbys family since it was built in the 1930's he'll never want to leave it.  I would agree that no debt and the house paid off is probably to be recommended but there is also a part of me thinks you shouldn't spend the whole of your life 'planning' for your retirement.  We wouldn't have taken the children to Disneyland in Florida if we'd planned too much, we wouldn't have gone a trip round the world if we'd planned too much, we wouldn't have gone a cruise to the Norwegian Fjords if we planned too much and we cannot plan for illness getting in the way of our plans.   I never imagined I'd get cancer which took a year out of my life.  I'm very lucky and it has not had a long term impact on me or my health and I hope to travel again once we get this virus under control - although at the current  time, the rate of control is virtually nil as far as I can see so it might be a while yet!  So, did you plan ahead, are you planning ahead or is/was your head firmly in the sand?  I'd love to know.