From Nine to Noon
How much thought have you given to what retirement might look like and how you'll fill those freed-up days?
Detailed planning is the best way to set yourself up for a fulfilling retirement, say mother and daughter Di Murphy and Kristin Sutherland.
To help Kiwis get the "scaffolding" in place for an enjoyable post-work life, they've developed the online platform SMART Retirement and written a new book Dare to Retire Free.
Murphy's husband John had only been retired from his busy law job for one day when a stroke sent him from a restaurant to the A&E.
After tests confirmed that John was fortunately going to be OK, a nurse posed a question to him that got the whole family thinking.
"[The nurse] said 'John, have you done anything different in the last couple of days? And he said 'Yep, I retired'. She said 'Do you know this week, we've had five other people exactly like you - three have gone out in body bags, and two have walked out'.
"That was quite amazing to us. We've always heard about people who retire then on the first day of the retirement or within six months they die. Why on earth does that happen?"
Sutherland told RNZ's Nine to Noon programme today that watching her father's experience got her seriously thinking about her own priorities.
"How tied am I to my career? What plans have I got for my life, but then also for my retirement?'
"It sort of set me on that track of thinking where do I want to be in those years of retirement? I'm going to think about it as much as I can and plan for it."
She and her mother started looking for resources to support people as they transitioned out of the working world.
They found that while there was plenty of advice on the financial aspects of retirement, there was very little on the well-being side of things.
To prepare as best you can for the actual day-to-day of retired life, it's essential to write up a practical and realistic written plan, Sutherland says.
"How do you want to spend your time? What are your relationships going to look like? What is it going to look like just to get up each day and what are you going to do with that? Where are you going to live? Are you going to change where you live? How are you going to look after your health?"
Sutherland and her mother knew from John's rocky road out of a working life where he was used to clients "propping their problems on his shoulders" that finding a continued sense of purpose was essential.
People should also prepare for the reality that relationships change when you're no longer working, Murphy says, and not always in the way you think.
"We'd all like to think that those workmates are going to stay as friends but that may not be the case, and quite often it's not."
In the lead-up to retirement, it's wise to start developing a social network outside of work if you don't already have one, Murphy says.
If you're assuming that free days will mean spending more time with certain friends or family members, it's helpful to float this idea ahead of time, Sutherland adds.
"You might be thinking you want to spend lots of time with your grandchildren, but your grandchildren might not be thinking that. They might be past the point where they want to spend lots of time with you, but they'd really treasure it if, you know, once a month you do something together.
"Having those conversations with the surrounding network - be that friends or family - is really important."
