Mustard Tree

I had this conversation recently with a family member. Neither of us has a pension pot worthy of the name, and we fell to speculating about those who had. Or rather, thought they had, until recently. The small print on all those adverts suddenly sprang to mind: "Prices can go down as well as up," or whatever the paraphrase was. Or perhaps, "Prices can go down as well as plummet." Many people only slightly older than myself are now looking at seriously reduced pensions, and contemplating working until their 70s simply because they can't afford not to.

This is certainly one way of looking at the problem, and in many ways it's very positive, with one major proviso: that you are able to continue to do some form of work that you enjoy enough to get you out of bed every morning and that provides some kind of purpose and meaning, as well as some money. I personally couldn't imagine being one of the growing band of greyhairs manning the counters at a home improvement superstore.

Of course, this begs another question: if there is something that you'd be happy to do in retirement that fitted in with your deepest values and life purpose (assuming you know what that is) and that was able to support you in reasonable comfort, why aren't you doing it now? Well, you say, the answer is obvious - you can't afford to, because you're paying off your mortgage, saving for...er...your pension, putting your kids through school, and so on. All true enough, and worthy objectives.

But you can resolve this problem another way. If you were to trade down, have no mortgage, live more simply doing something you genuinely loved, you might never need to retire. We're all in danger of falling into the trap of waiting for retirement to do the things we really want to do. We should start framing this whole exercise as a kind of early semi-retirement that starts now. 

A couple of years ago, the father of a friend of mine collapsed in his mid-eighties while preaching a sermon, and died a short time later.  I don't recommend that you all become preachers, but you can't deny that this old saint died in harness, with boots firmly on.