No. In fact, it’s wise for us to do as much as we can as quickly as we can while our health and other circumstances are in our favour.
 
We are all great procrastinators. Try a few small changes for a starter. But try something, now!

 No. In fact, the paradox of leisure tells us that we enjoy leisure so much because it is a break from work. If we had leisure 7 days a week for 30 years, where’s the break?

The attitude is: “Thank God work’s over! Now I can put my feet and play golf every other day.” The only question is which will kill us more quickly – boredom or obesity. Far from being something to be shunned and scorned, paradoxically work is one of the strategies that we can use to enhance our retirement but more of that later.

 No. In fact, retirement is a great opportunity to try out new things but remember that we are who we are and that generally if we don’t do something before we retire we will be less likely to do it after retirement. Since we are no different when we are retired than when we were working, we must ask ourselves if we are comfortable doing new things. If not, we have to create the positive strategies to do new things rather than assume that time is the only variable.

 One of my pet hates as a financial adviser is when a person comes to see you because they’ve been forced by their partner or employer to finally come and seek financial advice. They tell you they are retiring in 3 months or 3 weeks. Boy does that frustrate me and limit my value to the people.

Most people aren’t aware of this mistake because unwittingly they haven’t found a “real” financial adviser. They got a product flogger, probably working for a large well known financial institution. Forced by their many levels of management to work harder and faster to bring in the money to pay all the levels of management. They haven’t got time to listen to you or develop relationships to ask those difficult questions when you are feeling terrified about the unknown that is coming your way next Friday. No more being your important job title. Making you feel part of something. Sure you have enough money so what else matters? How about your life?

 No. In fact, people tend to spend freely in the first few years of retirement before settling into a pattern. As time goes on, spending tends to move more to family and health. Travel destinations become less stressful with a lot less travel in our 80’s.

New research is showing a drop in spending over time for older people. New developments in STEM areas also look like REDUCING the cost of living for everyone.

No. In fact, retirement is more likely to be a single women’s issue. The average age in Australia that a woman becomes a widow is 59. In Australia, 60% of women are single, widowed or divorced.

If you have children they probably have moved out and don’t depend on you any more or certainly not as much.

If you have a partner, are you still OK with each other? When was the last time you went away together AND ENJOYED IT. Maybe try this before you reach “retirement”.

Retirement means home life will be just business as usual. You’ll see a lot, lot, lot more of each other. Are you prepared for that? Guess what? ABS statistics say “grey divorce” is happening.

 Couples are not prepared for the dramatic changes in their home life.

 No. In fact, ‘retirement’ consists of several distinct stages as our health, that’s all three we talked about before, not just physical, and the health of our partner, inevitably deteriorates and we become more infirm.

 We’ve seen two types of progress, the old slow and steady downward decline from day one and the newer trend which is a flat line, living long and healthy, and then a fall off the cliff, dying quickly. I know which one I prefer.