Hello, I'm Shirley Ballas and welcome to Rewirement, the retirement podcast from Legal &; General. In this six part series, I'll be exploring what it means to retire in today's world. The golden years retirement of old has given way to the new colorful retirement, an opportunity to reset, reinvent and rewire. From how you can make the most of it and have the lifestyle you dream of, adapt to change
on your own or with a partner. Or even how you might continue doing the work you love at a pace that suits, we've got you covered. Thanks to my expert guests, I'll be gathering suggestions to take away the worry and make sure you feel confident, comfortable, and in control of your finances after you've quit the day job.
Across the next few episodes, we'll be shaking off our taboos and getting personal as we meet colorful rewirerees and would be rewirerees to talk about the issues, questions, and concerns that everyone faces.
I would like to retire and do all those things I want to do.
I think it's so important for people to open up and talk about money. As well as getting our young people to take an interest in their pensions, whatever they can set aside, because it comes around in a flash. With a little bit of planning, life after 60 can be the most colorful.
You've just got to grab hold of it with both hands and get on.
If you lend me your ear for a little while, I'll do my very best to help you with planning for your future, so you can look forward to the retirement of your dreams. Before we start talking about the ins and outs of enjoying your retirement, we're going to look at how the way you plan to spend your time is as important as your pension pot and making decisions about when and how you'd like to transition to
retirement. Later on I'll be joined by Chris Knight from Legal &; General, as well as Dr. Allison Smith from the Royal Voluntary Service for their advice and ideas on planning your new beginning. Before we do that, I want to introduce you to some of the stars of our show. I got together with two groups of brilliantly, chatty, talented and very inspiring people to talk about where they're at
in their retirement journey. First up, meet Tracy, Collin and John.
I'm Tracy. I live in Hove, originally from Wales. I've been down in Brighton and Hove for 30 years. I am a teacher, well I was a teacher and I worked for West Sussex County Council in the education department. I have got two children who are 12 and 15, and I live with my partner, Simon.
My name's Collin, I'm from Worthing. I'm a self- employed IT consultant, probably six, seven years away from retiring. I've got two grown up children, both of whom are now independent and in jobs. Well, my daughter was, she just had a grandchild 11 months ago, our first grandchild. I'm a Sussex born and bred, virtually lived in Sussex all my life apart from about two years living in London in my early career.
I'm John, I've been retired about three years. I worked in the Lloyd's Insurance market in London. I am married with two grown up children.
I started by asking my new friends how they felt about approaching retirement. Colin was first to share his thoughts.
I'm not really prepared for it. I'm pretty excited about it if we can live a decent retirement, be healthy, have enough money to do the things we would like to do. It's a new opportunity. I would see that I would do quite a bit of volunteering. We've got a ninth share in what's called a syndicate boat already, and that moves around the country every couple of years.
It moves to a different base, so we get four or five weeks on it a year if we wanted it. The plan ultimately is to sell our shares and money permit in and around about the time of retirement or semi- retirement to maybe buy a boat. Cruise the network during the decent weather for three or four years, do as much of it as we can.
John is already enjoying his retirement. I asked him if the move was what he had expected.
Well, that's a very interesting question Shirley, because I wasn't quite sure how I would react to retirement. Some people I know have found it very difficult, that they felt that they're no longer of use to society because they're not working. I have to admit, I didn't find that at all. I was starting to find as I approached retirement that I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about what I was doing
anymore or I was getting 60 odd. I was very pleased to retire in the end, and I haven't felt worthless at all. I've been very happy.
All right, we asked the same question to Tracy.
Well, I'm looking forward to my retirement, but I've got to tell you Shirley, I'm only turning 50 next year. It's still feeling as though it is quite a long way off, I think it's exciting to be retired. One of the things about my life, I have a lovely life at the moment, but I feel as though I'm
living in time poverty. I haven't got much time to do the things that I want to do, and I feel that I would like to retire and do all those things that I want to do. Things that perhaps don't cost that much money either, but one of the things I am very unsure about is when I can retire because
my background is teaching. I've got a teacher's pension. I ducks out of teaching for a little while and I worked for a different company doing training, so I've got a little pension pot with them. It's all over the place Shirley. I don't know when I'll be able to retire, but I feel like now listening to my colleagues here this evening, I've got a chance to put things
in place and that's what I'll need to do. My ideal would be to retire early 60s and just enjoy my time when I, hopefully I'm very fit, still got my energy to do the things that I want to do. One of the main things that I'd like to do is to travel around the coast of Wales in a camper van.
I love that idea. Our second group featured David and Marcus, who both spend their free time at a London based choir.
I'm David. I am 60 in a few months time. I am already retired and have been for over five years. I have spent quite a lot of time in the past five years trying to get to grips with pension related issues. We don't have any children and we have a couple of cats who as far as I know, are blissfully unaware of pension issues.
My name's Marcus, I just turned 50 last month so I'm still recovering from that shock. I'm still very much in my working career, I think I probably have another 10 to 15 years work left. I'm an Australian as you can probably hear from my voice. Fiddled here about 15 years ago and due course became a dual citizen. My wife is Croatian, she arrived here same time as
I did, 15 years ago. We have three children. I have a stepdaughter who's 28 years old and I have twin boys age 21.
Dave took early retirement after a career in financial services.
Although we have not, since I retired, traveled as much as I had anticipated, that was obviously very much part of the agenda. Just the glory of being able to go and watch a film at lunchtimes on a Monday and things like that. Obviously singing, which is something that both of us do, it's very much enhanced that I joined a second choir. I've been able to do all these things. Life is easily filled I found and I know
everybody says it, but it really is true. How on earth I ever found the time to get into the office for seven and work till six in the evening, I have no idea.
Marcus runs his own business with two other partners. I asked him if retirement was in his sights at 50.
I see retirement as a gradual process, a tapering off rather than an end. I'm fortunate that I'm in the kind of business where my work is project work, basically it's consulting assignments. I think as I approach retirement, I'll
just get increasingly picky about what I take on. It's perfectly possible to slip into a role where you're doing, I don't know, 40 or 50 days of work a year on a project you think you're interested, worthwhile get a little top up income. Keep the gray cells ticking over as it were. I don't see retirement as being any kind of a sudden end, more a gradual progression.
David's retirement wasn't the gentle progression he might've preferred. He told me about his experience and the realities of cutting down on hours.
It wasn't gentle and I mean, I was ill so I was forced to stop work. The only thing that was gentle about it is that, because they hadn't found a replacement, I ended up working an extra month on a half day basis. That was actually quite nice, but no, it was a fairly enormous gap from a full on
very busy job to not working at all. Well, a lot of people and I've spoken to friends who are saying, " I quite like doing my job," and I enjoy doing what I did, so that wasn't an issue. Finding ways of doing it as Marcus has talked about on some more picky basis, but that's simply not practical for most
employment situations. I know of someone who went on to, people who go onto three day a week arrangements quite often end up packing into five days worth of work into a shorter period. Or things that actually are important them not really being involved in when they're out of the office. Therefore, feeling a little bit out of the loop on a lot of issues, so it's tricky to try and achieve
that. In a lot of cases, people end up stopping suddenly. I mean, I might've stopped in another year, but if you're stable in a job and quite enjoying what you're doing, it's quite hard to choose a point and say, " This is the right time to go." Then most people that I know who have recent retired, there's been some specific trigger.
From a busy job to hours of extra time on your hands, David explained how he kept up the pace at the start of his retirement.
I pretty much went into projects straight away. The first of which was to repaint the house from top to bottom. I wrote a book so that took up a fair amount of time. I would say now five years on, that I've reached the end of that, ideas that I had in my head. Actually now considering other new things in particularly getting maybe involved in the mentoring world or something like that, as a chance to give something
back. I've had quite a lot of me- time in the past five years, but I'd like to do something a bit more constructive. I would say the singing aspect, which is what unites us here, was very important because actually that was the one thing that was aside from having language students in our house, it was the one thing
that was a continuity from before to after. That it's Monday nights was rehearsal night, the week before I stopped working and the week after, that was really helpful to have that. For some it can be tricky to find new things to do. I met a friend recently who lives on his own and he's clearly struggled more than I have in terms of finding useful things to do
with his life. It's partly when you've earned reasonably well out of doing things that is not of great value to mankind. There are a lot of things that don't work that well in society and it would be a worthwhile thing to do. I know I'd say more than worthwhile, I think a necessary thing to try and give people some benefit of experience, or to just do something practical that
is of benefit to others. Proof is in actually going out and doing it.
Thanks to our fantastic guests for getting together and sharing their stories and perspectives. We'll be getting to know them a lot better over the next few episodes and meeting a few new friends too. To talk in depth about the questions that came out of our chat, I'm joined now by Chris Knight, the CEO of Legal &; General Retail Retirement and Dr. Allison Smith, the head of research and insight,
Royal Voluntary Service. Thank you both for joining me.
Hello.
Hi Shirley.
Chris, how has retirement changed?
Well, Shirley look, people used to think of their lives in three blocks if you like. First one was, being at school and the second one was working full time, full pelt if you like for part one or two employers. Then there was a moment, a magic moment when you got a carriage clock, you shook hands with your employer and then you were
retired and that was kind of it. You pass at a pension or two pensions, you had the government pension and your employer pension. You perhaps felt quite well looked after. You owned your own home, which was fully paid for. It's kind of the ideal model. It wasn't always actually the reality, but it's a very strong model of it in people's minds. People's lives these days are much, much more complicated
than that. People's ambitions have changed. They want and expect much more fulfilling lives. They've got aspirations and hopes and dreams in retirement, just like they have at any other moment in their lives. It is much more complicated and they have to find their own path.
Wow, that is complicated. That sounds complicated Chris. What are some of the challenges facing today's retirees?
Well Shirley, there's lots of challenges. Some of them are good challenges to have, and some of them are more tough challenges to have. People are living longer so I mean, that's obviously great, but it does mean they have to make their money stretch further, that more complex lives, the more different family situations. We've seen an increase in divorce rates amongst older
people. For some retirees they still have maybe their own children living at home, and they've got the responsibility of looking after their own, even older parents. They feel under pressure from generational pressures, but also from their own health and their own care costs. People might have a whole number of
different pension arrangements from different employers during their careers. They might have more housing wealth than they actually do liquid savings. Some older people are still paying off a mortgage. People have pension freedoms, which sounds great, but obviously with
freedom it brings that responsibility of choice. Some people love that and other people find that a bit daunting, but most people naturally look to a company like L&; G to help them get through this.
What do you mean when you talk about helping people have more colorful retirement?
Well look, the imagery around retirement can be quite bland and colorless sometimes. People talk about Grey pounds or silver surfers, and you often see a retired couple's picture as walking hand in hand towards the setting sun. At Legal &; General, we're much more positive and we want to be positive and ambitious for people, for our customers and for society as a
whole. Though while retirement can be a challenge, there's also huge hopes and dreams for people. They can really make a huge contribution and get a lot of pleasure out of life, so it's not all doom and gloom. We want to put our products in the context of people's real lives. Everyone's unique and everyone has their own unique color scheme in retirement.
Allison, what are the benefits of volunteering in retirement?
Chris has mentioned that the old notion of retirement and that sense you put up your feet is actually not supported by latter generations of people entering retirement. Also, what the research evidence tells us, staying connected and having social connections, whether you do that through volunteering, or you do that through the social groups that you naturally participate in
has a lot of health and wellbeing benefits. There's actually some significant and hard science behind this, and that's why staying connected and volunteering is so important. We know through an extensive body and growing body of research literature that, staying socially connected is actually physically important. We know that
social connections are really important for cognitive stimulation. It's not only important for staying physically active and getting out and about, but also mental stimulation. Also, humans are social beings, so actually exposure to others, it's almost built up in our DNA. We need others to really stay strong both
physically, cognitively, but also for our immune system. Of course, I would speak about the benefits of volunteering, working for the Royal Voluntary Service. It's not only beneficial to yourself as far as health benefits, but also really beneficial to others.
Is keeping fit and healthy important?
I am glad you mentioned that Shirley, because things like physical activity incredibly important through the life course, but particularly important in later life. When you're approaching retirement or you're in retirement, it's important to visualize what you want to do. Maybe you've put off all of those things that you wanted to, but were too busy with family life
and work to pursue. Now you have an opportunity in say the next phase of your life, that could be 20, 30, sometimes 40 years to really explore those activities or those interests that you never had time to explore before.
Have a dance. My wife's a dance teacher and she's got students of all ages that are having a fantastic time keeping fit and keeping healthy. People tend to take a very plan- ful and structured approach to their careers and work lives, and we'd like them to do a bit of the same when they come to approach planning for their retired lives. In particular, first step, really to
take control of your finances. You can do it, people then have the confidence to live life to the full. Keeping close to your social contacts and the networks is really, really important too. That's why we're so keen to support the Royal Voluntary Service and to help people to get out there and volunteer. Everyone has a contribution to make
and we're all in this together. Reaching out to people in organizations you trust for support is really important and you're not alone.
How important is the emotional side do you think?
Oh, it's really important Shirley. Money is important, but most retirees tell us in our research that there are three other things that are equally as important. First one is living in a home that's right for you and where you feel safe. People who are able to stay throughout their retired lives at home are healthier and happier, and feel less of a burden on the NHS and others.
Secondly, as we've talked about, staying healthy and having access to the care you need when you need that care. Thirdly and most importantly maybe, staying connected to friends and family, and feeling that you're making a contribution.
How can people ensure they enjoy themselves as they get a little bit older?
Just to say, I mean, while aging is inevitable, how we age is not. The perception around and the notions around aging is very much around a trajectory of decline. What people don't realize is that we have an incredible amount of control over how we age. Much of what we attribute down to aging, such as disease is actually
preventable through some lifestyle choices. Whether that's being more physically active or enjoying such activities as volunteering or things you're really passionate about that give you a sense of purpose. It's never too late to make improvements that impact on your health and wellbeing. Retirement in later life is very different than previous generations, and there's so much more out there to enjoy and explore.
Chris, both Collin and Tracy talked about plans to use their house to help fund their retirement. How can people do this?
Well Shirley, there are a few ways they can do that. One thing might be to sell the house and move into a rented accommodation. Alternatively, people can downsize to a smaller house or a purpose built accommodation perhaps in their area. Or you could release some of the equity in your house to free up funds. A lifetime mortgage
is a form of equity release. When you can release cash to yourself in like a lump sum or regular payments, you are effectively borrowing money from the future value of your house. In the meantime, you get to live there and enjoy it. You can pay the interest off like you do for a credit card, to keep down
the cost. The important thing is you never own more than the value of your house, so you're never passing down debts to the next generation.
Chris, what are the things you'd recommend that people start thinking about as they approach retirement age?
Look, Shirley I think people should really try and take the time to engage with it. Research that we've done shows that people spend more time, believe it or not, choosing the car they're going to buy when they're retiring than they do actually planning their retirement finances. We say to people, " Do some work to bring all your pension
pots and other things into one place. If not literally then at least into paper and try and figure out and think through what you need to spend in retirement and what you might like to spend money on. Think about how prepared you are if things don't pan out as you hope." You're going to receive, as you get close to retirement, lots of information, things like wake up
packs from your pension providers. Have a look at them, go online, shop around and take up the offers of free advice there are out there. For example, from Pension Wise, which is a government backed organization, which gives everybody coming to retirement a free consultation, either over the phone or locally. Lots of things people can do to prepare.
With your back in your 40s, what should you be thinking about? I think that the planning starts or should start much earlier in your life. In fact, I think it should be taught in schools. How about that?
Yeah. If people start saving early, a little bit but often, that often really helps. When you get into your 40s, then some people do what they call as a midlife MOT and taking stock of where they are. First of all, do you still have debt? It might be the best thing to do is to pay off your debt, especially if it's credit card debt or maybe even student loan debt still these days, so sort your debt
out first. Then yes, you really ought to be thinking about wealth and health and how long you really want to work and what you really want to do in retirement. To have that flexibility, it's better to start earlier than later.
Allison, do you think there's middle ground for people who want to ease back on work without necessarily letting go of the safety net and social experience?
Yeah, certainly. These days employers are much more flexible around their working arrangements, whether it's working part time or working condensed hours. Working from home, we've all experienced that quite significantly and people are diversifying their portfolio in many ways. Doing a range of things, that kind of job for life and one career has changed quite substantially. People might
be doing multiple things, self- employed, consultancy work. There's much more built in flexibility in the labor market than there was in previous generations. To allow people to maybe step away because of care or maybe explore further education.
Thank you Allison. Chris, we are in strange and difficult time now with the Coronavirus. Does this change how we should approach retirement? Or are the rules for retirement exactly the same?
Well look, Shirley, these are difficult times. The first thing we say to people is, " Don't panic. Don't rush. Certainly don't rush to make what could be a really long- term decision, when in the short- term you're feeling kind of stressed or pressured." The fundamental rules are still there. The headlines are scary, but things might not be as
bad as you think. Find out the facts about your situation from your provider and definitely a good time to talk to your financial advisor.
Some great tips there from Chris and Allison, thank you. We've only just started our exploration of how you can live a more colorful retirement. Make sure you listen to our next episode by subscribing on your podcast listening platform.
Next time I'll be meeting more amazing people, who are sharing their hopes, doubts and uncertainties for later life, as we talk more about how you can best make the shift from full time work.
If people can gradually go into retirement, that helps them to have these hobbies building up around them.
We'll hear from the glamorous Tricia Cusden on how she's combined rewirement with her own business, as well as the brilliant Emma Byron from Legal &; General. You can find out more about retirement planning at legalandgeneral. com/ retirement. Thanks to all our brilliant rewirerees for chatting to me. In the meantime, keep it colorful. I'm Shirley Ballas and I'll catch you next time.