Session 1 - Different Ways to Retire

t seems to me that there are two different ways to retire and depending upon who you talk to each one has some merit. You can either retire as early as possible to give yourself more time between leaving work and enrolling at that big retirement home in the sky or work for as long as possible as this is supposed to keep you active and delay even further the enrolment. But the decision is not always in your hands. This is the situation as I see it.

The first option is that you reach 65 years of age on a Friday, the big boss, Assistant Credit Controller, Major Accounts, Outer Hebrides, who you have met once at a conference on ‘Network Externalities and The Economics of Universal Access: UK Regulatory Issues’ comes to make a presentation. You don’t remember him because you travelled down the night before the conference, met lots of colleagues and consumed an extreme amount of free alcohol and are now trying to keep out of his way while talking loudly to the bottom of the toilet.

But on retirement day he is there to present you with a leaving gift bought with the £17.60 plus two buttons that have been collected from your entire building. He thanks you for your contribution to the company over the past thirty years and congratulates you specifically for organizing the collection of the staff coffee money each week, to say nothing of arranging the annual Welfare BBQ for the past ten years. Your colleagues gather round and say nice things and promise to keep in touch and shortly after you are ushered out the door and that is it. You have gone, no more work. In two weeks time your colleagues are wondering who used to sit at that desk, but they are not really bothered because you have been replaced by a beautiful twenty two year old female graduate who drinks pints with the blokes and talks about men with the girls and is on a fast track to stardom. You are forgotten. 

The second option is to be a few years younger with a reasonable pension plan and take early retirement with an excellent redundancy package. This seems to happen to fewer retirees but they seem happier than the others. As soon as the redundancy notice goes out across the company your mobile phone starts to ring. Each call starts with the words “You Spawny Bastard…..” or words to that effect. Some I can’t possibly print here, others that I don’t know how to spell or in the case of Harry from Liverpool I don’t even know what they mean. People leaving with this package still have the presentation but this time it’s the Credit Manager, Corporate Finance, Head Office who comes along to say nice things. He thanks you for being the First Aid representative, Emergency Evacuation Officer and Welfare Committee Chairman for fourteen years. He also remembers you made some contribution to Credit Control by retrieving some £1200 of the quarter of a million owed by the latest company to go out of business.

Is one of these ways of retirement better than the other?

Well if you consider that in both cases, although you think you are indispensable, as soon as you walk out the door you are forgotten and any contribution you made is now only a distant memory, it seems to me that going with wedge of dosh makes sense. So this way has my vote but even this presents a problem. What do you do with the money? Do you invest it to replace the salary you no longer have, or do you just give it to the wife and let her go shopping? One day could do it if she is like Christine, my wife. So advice is needed it’s time to see the financial advisor as quickly as possible.

But for both cases that is it, come the next week, no work, no structure you are a pensioner or as we now like to call them Senior Citizens. Comments can now be passed to ‘Wake up to Wogan’ because you are now officially a TOG. It’s now in order to walk to the shops in your slippers, M&S furry ones, to collect your newspaper. You can queue at the post office at eight thirty on a Wednesday morning for your pension. Why do people do that? Do they think the post office will run out of money? Savings can now be put in the pot on the windowsill for next years bus trip holiday to Bournemouth with other pensioners.

            Two major issues need addressing Financial Planning and Time Planning. But first it is leaving day......!