From Linda Priestley, Editor-in-Chief
You may or may not be counting the days, but you’ve almost certainly pondered your retirement. Most people start the countdown somewhere around the age of 50, carefully planning life after many years of commute/work/sleep/repeat. What do your retirement plans look like? Will you work as long as you can, like Margaret, who got her last paycheque well after 70 (and is still cycling at 85)? Or like Russell Kaye, a D-Day veteran from Moncton who turned 100 last February and whose suggestions for a long and happy life are to keep busy and avoid lounging in bed when you wake up in the morning?
Will you choose a phased retirement, with one foot in a dress shoe for the office and the other in a hiking boot or a fishing wader? Or will you live in Portugal, the El Dorado of retired people, according to the French magazine GEO? Will you take a non-stop cruise, like the Australian couple who, over 18 months, stayed on a cruise ship no fewer than 51 times because they found it less expensive than living in a retirement home? Or will you get involved in your community, like André, who is enjoying his unpaid role as the volunteer president of an association of retirees? (“Less pressure!” he explains.) And why not follow in the footsteps of Japanese, British, or American entrepreneurs who start their own businesses later in life? Here in Canada, 33 per cent of new entrepreneurs are aged 50 to 64, according to Statistics Canada.
These days, leaving the workforce doesn’t mean withdrawing from life, either professionally or in other ways: retirees are clearly reinventing themselves more creatively and more courageously than ever.
Whatever your plans, you’ll have to fund this major step (or second round or second chance—whatever you choose to call what you want to do). And you need to start that funding earlier and earlier, experts recommend, or else the cost of living will catch up with you. As we are living longer lives and in good health, you’ll need money for those 20, 30, or 40 years of a life that is both free of cares and in which you’ll want to savour every moment.
What will your financial game plan be? Work after you retire, defer your pension, leave the workforce in stages? Whatever you decide, the important thing is to ensure that you can maintain your future quality of life while enjoying the present moment. A pretty tall order, you say? Yes, but that’s why Good Times is here: to keep you informed, advise you, and support you in all areas of your life. In other words, we won’t be retiring anytime soon. For now, we’re focused on you—while we’re preparing for that eventual retirement!
