The Retirement Newsletter: Planning for your retirement — a summary
Issue Number: -129 — a summary of plans
Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash
Welcome
Welcome to issue -129 — yep, still counting down the weeks until I retire.
This week, I will finish off 'planning' — that is, how you can plan to get to your retirement date — with a summary of the process I am following.
Planning — the summary
OK, I have explained how I have planned to get to my retirement date over the last five newsletters. However, you should remember that plans are fluid. They do not have to be adhered to — they are subject to the 'winds of change' in your life.
And, as I found, there is also a cyclical nature to a plan — a feedback loop. For example, my first retirement plan failed. However, my last failed plan helped identify my best retirement age in terms of my pension pot. That is, if I hadn't attempted the first plan, I would not have noticed the 'quirk' in the way my pension worked. This discovery fed into my final plan, the one I am now following.
OK, so let's break down the four key steps:
Identify your retirement date — see issue -134
Do a SWOT (optional) — see issue -132
Make your plans — see issue -131
Action and Review your plan — see issue -130
Identify your retirement date
As I have said before (a couple of times) — there are four possible ways to identify your best retirement date:
Money — you retire when you feel you can afford to retire — when you have enough money in your pension pot.
Health — you retire at an age you feel will give you the best number of years to enjoy being retired before your health becomes an issue and prevents you from doing those things you want to do.
The government or your employer says you have to retire — becoming increasingly rare, but it can happen.
You have had enough and feel you can no longer do the job, or you need a change, and there are other things you want to do.
The above was covered, in part, in issue -134.
SWOT analysis (optional)
In a SWOT analysis, you identify the:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
of a project.
I found doing a SWOT analysis of the project to be very useful. You may not — hence, it is optional.
For more details on SWOT, see issue -132.
Making the plans
As I covered in issue -131, planning is crucial. You need a plan!
The best approach I have found to planning for my retirement (and the big projects I have been involved with during my career) is to do a 'brain dump', and you can read more about that in issue -131.
However, remember, your plan is NOT written in stone. If your life circumstances change, and they impact the plan, change the plan.
Action and Review
The final key stage is to do an action and review your plan.
For my action and review, I use reminders in Evernote, and I use them in two ways:
Reminders to start, action, or complete a task on a set date.
Reminder to review the plan — usually quarterly.
As I said above, if your life circumstances change, then use the review date to adapt and change your plan.
You can read more about this in issue -130.
That's a wrap…
OK, so that is it. That is all I will say about planning, other than to go back to it occasionally in future newsletters to comment on how it is going and look at any changes I have had to make.
Good luck with your plan. Let me know how it goes.
The Future — what are you going to do?
OK, so in the first few newsletters, we have focussed a lot on planning to get to your retirement date, but you should keep in mind that you also need to prepare for what you are going to do once you have retired, and that is something I will keep coming back to in future newsletters — what's next?
Health
Do you try to do 10,000 steps per day? I used to, and then life got in the way, so I now aim for 70,000 steps per week by going for long 20,000 plus step walks at the weekends. (Does that make me a 'binge' stepper?)
However, have you ever wondered where that 10,000 came from?
I had always thought it was from some medical study, but that appears not to be the case, and it is just the name of the first commercially available pedometer.
You can read more about this at: Forget 10,000 steps — here's how much you should walk per day, according to science
Nostalgia corner
It's summer, it's hot, and my home office windows are open.
My next-door neighbour has recently retired and has taken to gardening big time, and with the windows open, I'm sure he can hear my confidential work calls and meetings.
So, to help keep things private, I bought a new pair of headphones for use in online meetings, and I have just used them to listen to Pink Floyd — The Dark Side of the Moon.
I had forgotten how good that album is…
Over the last 30 years, I've listened to The Dark Side of the Moon in the car, but I haven't listened to the album on headphones since I was a teenager. Wow, it is good. It's amazing. It is stunning and clever. The level of skill of the band and studio techs and producers is mind-blowing. The innovation and creativity is astounding.
If you haven't recently made time to listen to your favourite band or album on some headphones — do it now! You won't regret it. It's like time travel. It took me right back to be being a teenager.
Holidays
While looking for trips and holidays online, I came across:
Grand tour of Scotland - The Guardian Holidays
Looks great. Love Scotland. I lived there for three years and loved it. I have holidayed in the highlands many times, and I never tire of the place.
In the news
OK, some UK news:
Women's state pension: Compensation closer for Waspi campaigners - BBC
Useful links
UK Government Website — How to avoid pension scams
Next week
OK, next week, I will circle back and look at how you can determine your date to retire, as I rushed that critical step in issue -134.
Thanks
Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don't hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.
If you would like to say 'thanks' for the letter and not a subscriber, why not buy me a cup of tea?
Until next time,
Nick
PS, If you have something you would like to contribute to the newsletter — a story, advice, anything — please get in touch.