Are you prepared for retirement?

As strange as it may seem, many people have conflicting feelings as they approach retirement. The prospect of not having to go to work each day can be hugely appealing, as can having more time to do the things you enjoy, with the ones you love. However, after 40 or 50 years where work is a cornerstone of your life, which dictates where you have to be, and when you have to be there, waking up one morning and realising that you have so much time on your hands can be rather unsettling.

The thing about retirement is that people do generally know when it is going to happen, which is why financial planning for retirement is increasingly common. However, few people also spend time planning how they will adjust to being retired, how retirement might affect their emotional and mental wellbeing, and how they will adapt to the extra time and changes retirement brings. This perhaps explains why Age UK has found that around half of adults aged sixty-five and over experience mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, with retirement cited as a key cause.

When it comes to retiring, everyone’s personal circumstances, finances and expectations for retirement will vary significantly, so there is also no “one size fits all” approach to make retirement successful and happy. It can also take people varying amounts of time to adjust to the dramatic changes that retirement brings, with some people never quite adjusting. However, research does show that those who plan for their retirement tend to have longer and more enjoyable retirements, than those who don’t.

With this in mind, Better with Money has developed a webinar aimed at employees who are due to retire in the not too distant future. Called Retirement In Sight, Better with Money’s webinar brings retirement to life in an accessible and interesting way, and provides useful tips, advice and resources to help employees understand how retirement will look like for them, how their finances will work and how they can get the most out of life as a retiree.

In the same way that people live their lives differently, there is no right or wrong way to “do” retirement. There is just the way that works for an individual. It is Better with Money’s hope that, by giving employees the opportunity to understand themselves, their finances and their future better, they will be well prepared for retirement, it won’t come as a shock, and they will have the kind of retirement we think everyone deserves – one that is happy, healthy and long.

If you would like to find out more about the courses Better with Money provides, please get in touch.