Hi Reader

A quick note before we get into this weeks newsletter. I wanted to let you know that this will be the last newsletter for a few weeks, as I'm taking a break over August. I will officially be back in September, but I may have a very exciting announcement before then, so keep those eyes peeled as I hope to tell you all ASAP!

What if their retirement looks rubbish to you?

Had a couple in front of me this week, I’ll call them Mark and Jane. Both still working, both very good at what they do, both silently dreading the exact thing everyone keeps telling them they should want.

Because everyone around them has retired, and that crowd keeps asking the same question on a loop.

"When are you two going to pack it in?"
"You’re mad to still be working?"​
​"What are you waiting for?"

And Mark said something back to me that I reckon loads of people feel and almost nobody says.

He’d looked at these retired friends, really looked at how they spend their days, and thought, that’s not for me.

His words: “I just see people killing time, going back to work or doing charity work, and then getting resentful because they’re working so hard for nothing.”

Jane went further. When charity work came up, the thing you’re apparently meant to graduate to once you’ve grown up a bit, she said it “does not appeal to me in the slightest. Because why would I do that when I could actually earn money?”

And they said all this a little sheepishly, almost like a confession. Like there was something faulty in them for not wanting the 'golf, cruises, and giving-back' package everyone bangs on about.

There isn’t. The package is the problem, not them.

The brochure nobody remembers choosing

There’s a picture of retirement we’ve all been handed, and not one of us can quite recall signing off on it.

You know the one. Stop work completely, as early as you can swing it. Play a mountain of golf. Go on cruises. Potter. And then, to bolt some meaning onto it, give something back, volunteer, do the charity bit, become a wise elder handing out your time for free because you’ve risen above grubby old money.

That’s the brochure. It’s the retirement beaming out of every advert with a silver-haired pair giggling on a beach. For some people it genuinely is the dream, and if that’s you, wonderful, go and live it.

But for a lot of driven, successful, sensible people, and I sit across from them most weeks, that picture doesn’t read as a dream. It reads as a slow puncture. Take someone who’s spent a good few decades being useful and sharp and good at things, turn them out to pasture with a bag of golf clubs and a volunteering rota, and something in them starts to deflate.

And when they admit that, even to themselves, they feel guilty. Everyone’s told them this is what they’re supposed to crave, so they assume the fault is theirs, that they’re broken or greedy or hopeless at switching off. When really they’ve just taken an honest look at the off-the-shelf retirement and gone, no thanks.

That isn’t a character flaw. That’s good taste.

The bit nobody will say about money

Then there’s the money, and Jane put her finger right on it.

We’re all meant to pretend the noble end state is working for nothing. That the enlightened move is to give your time away, and that still wanting to be paid for your effort is a bit grubby, a bit unreconstructed, something you ought to have grown out of.

Rubbish.

Being paid has always been part of the reward of work. That’s not greed, it’s the shape of the deal, and it runs deep. You do something hard and skilled that eats your time and energy, you get rewarded for it, and that reward is a chunk of what makes it feel worth doing. Strip the money out and, for a lot of people, something goes missing.

I watch it happen. People retire into the halo version, all volunteering and good intentions, and a few months in they catch themselves thinking, hang on, I’m grafting away here and getting nothing back for it. The shine wears off far quicker than they expected. Not because they’re selfish. Because the money was never only money. It was the scoreboard. It was proof the effort counted.

Jane already knows this about herself, which puts her ahead of the game, not behind it. She’d sooner earn than volunteer. Rather than feeling bad about that, she should go and build a life around it.

You’re allowed to design your own thing

So here’s what I said to Mark and Jane, and what I’d say to you if you’re sitting there feeling faintly guilty for not fancying the brochure.

You don’t have to want it. Any of it.

You’re allowed to keep working. Allowed to keep earning, to enjoy the earning, and to feel not a flicker of shame that being paid is part of why you love it. Allowed to look at your newly retired mates moaning about their unpaid committee duties and think, I’ll pass.

Because what this stage asks of you isn’t to retire into someone else’s picture. It’s to design your own. And for people like Mark and Jane that rarely looks like a hard stop followed by golf and good deeds. It looks like keeping the parts of work they love, binning the parts they don’t, ring-fencing proper time for the travel they’re mad about, and yes, still getting paid, because the getting paid is part of what makes it tick.

The one thing they genuinely need to crack, and this is the real work, is reaching the point where they know, for certain, that they’re choosing to work rather than needing to. Because the day the money becomes optional, the whole thing shifts. You’re not shackled to it, you’re picking it up because you want to, and you keep everything you love about earning without the old fear that used to ride alongside needing it. That isn’t failing to retire. That’s retirement on your own terms, which is the only sort worth having.

The question

So if everyone keeps badgering you about when you’ll retire, and the idea keeps leaving you cold, here’s a better question to sit with.

What if the retirement they’re all describing simply isn’t a good fit? Not because something’s wrong with you, but because it was never built for someone like you in the first place.

You’re allowed to keep working, keep earning, keep being useful and rewarded for it, and build a second half that looks nothing like the brochure and everything like you.

The goal was never to retire. It was to get to choose. And if what you choose is to carry on, on your own terms, doing what you love and being paid for it, then you haven’t dodged retirement at all.

You’ve just understood it better than the people telling you you’re mad.

P.S. - If you’ve looked at the standard-issue retirement and thought “no thanks,” hit reply and tell me what your version actually looks like. I’ve a hunch a lot of you have quietly designed something better than the brochure, and I’d love to hear it.