Are you really ready to retire?

We recently produced a retirement planning work book that’s designed to help people plan their own retirement. It’s based on the idea that there’s more to retirement planning than getting your finances properly organised. This book helps you work your way through a lot of important lifestyle issues that very few financial planners talk about in any detail.

These days most people don’t have to retire at 65 and unless you get retrenched, you can generally decide the date of your own retirement. To help you to consider when you will be ready to retire, we have compiled a short quiz which we invite you to complete.

1. Do you really want to retire? Or is it something that others are encouraging you to do. Do you have some good reasons for wanting to retire?
2. Have you considered why you are planning to retire? Do you have plans that you want to pursue or do you just thinks “it’s time”. Does it have anything to do about being old enough to get the pension? Have you given any thought to how you are going to spend the next 20 years?
3. Are you retiring TO something that interests you or are you retiring FROM a life in the workforce which doesn’t interest you. It’s important to have goals and interests that you are looking forward to spending time on. These are the years when you can do many of the things that you have had to postpone because of work and family commitments.
4. How will you replace the things you liked about work? As well as financial security, work offers – challenges, job satisfaction, team participation, social contacts, networking opportunities, routines etc. Have you given any thought as to how you’ll replace these benefits when you leave full time work?
5. What new opportunities do you see in retirement? Are you looking forward to travelling to interesting places, following a passion, starting a new business, lowering your golf handicap, studying a subject that interests you or do you look forward to just taking it easy and “going with the flow”
6. what areas of your life need some planning? It’s likely that the organisation you worked in operated by having annual plans with goals and targets. If you don’t make plans for what you want to do with your life for the next 5, 10 or 15 years, it’s likely that someone else will and you might not like the result. Just operating on a day to day basis with no planning means that you have little control over your life and the likelihood of getting bored is very high.

So, are you ready to retire?