Feature: Your workplace pension was designed to get you started. It was never designed to be enough

From Bec’s Desk: A new financial year

Read my articles in The Times: A few to choose from

Your workplace pension was designed to get you started. It was never designed to be enough

Most people who’ve been in employment for the past decade or so have a workplace pension. Thanks to auto-enrolment, contributions have been going in automatically – yours, your employer’s, and a top-up from the government via tax relief. For millions of people, it’s been running in the background without them having to think about it much.

That’s the good news.

The less comfortable truth is that auto-enrolment was always designed as a floor, not a finish line. The minimum total contribution – currently 8% of qualifying earnings – was set at a level that would get people saving, not necessarily get them all the way to the epic retirement they’re dreaming of.

Most independent experts agree it’s not enough for most people. The government knows it too, which is why a formal review of pension adequacy is currently underway.

But that review will take years, and whatever changes come out of it will almost certainly apply going forward – not retrospectively. If you’re in your 50s or early 60s, you can’t afford to wait for the system to sort itself out.

The good news is you don’t need to. Here’s what to actually do if you’re sitting there wondering.

Step 1: Find out what you’ve got

If you’ve worked for multiple employers over the years, you likely have several pension pots in different places, some active, some frozen, some you’ve probably forgotten about entirely. Tracking them all down is the unglamorous and rather tedious first step, but it matters.

Check your current workplace pension, dig out old statements from previous employers, and think about whether you have any older personal pensions sitting dormant. The government’s pension tracing service can help if you’ve lost track.

Step 2: Check your State Pension forecast

The State Pension – now worth £241.30 a week, or just over £12,500 a year – is the foundation most people build from. But the amount you actually receive depends on your National Insurance record, and gaps are more common than people realise – from time out of work, caring responsibilities, self-employment, or years spent abroad.

You can check your forecast and fill gaps at gov.uk/check-state-pension. For many people, paying voluntary NI contributions to plug those gaps is one of the best-value financial moves available. Don’t skip this step.

Step 3: Work out what retirement will actually cost you

Most people focus on what they have without ever defining what they need it for. Before you can know whether you’re on track, you need a number to aim at.

Start with your current spending and adjust for retirement life. Some costs will fall , like commuting, work clothes, maybe a mortgage. Others will rise like travel, leisure, health, time with family. The Pensions UK Retirement Living Standards give you a useful benchmark: a comfortable retirement for a single person currently costs around £43,900 a year; for a couple, around £60,600. But treat those as a starting point, not a prescription. Your life has its own costs.

Step 4: Compare the two

Once you have a rough picture of what you’ll have coming in – State Pension, workplace pensions, any other savings or income – and what you’ll need, you can do the maths. Many people who’ve been anxious about this find the gap is smaller than they feared. Some find there isn’t one at all.

If there is a meaningful gap, you have more options than you might think: contributing more now, using carry-forward allowances from previous tax years to make a larger lump-sum contribution, adjusting your retirement timing by a year or two, or simply restructuring what you already have more efficiently.

A gap identified at 55 is very manageable. The same gap discovered at 64 is a much harder problem.

The bottom line

Auto-enrolment did something important – it got millions of people into the habit of saving. But a habit isn’t a plan to have enough and use it well. Knowing you have a pension isn’t the same as knowing it’s enough to rely on.

That information is available to you. It just requires a few hours of honest number-crunching and the willingness to look.

How to Have an Epic Retirement walks you through exactly this process – from tracking down your pensions to building a clear picture of what you’ll have and what you’ll need.

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Easter is behind us - and you know what that means? We’re on the run in new financial year, the new state pension rates are in place and so are the new benchmarks from Pensions UK for how much you need for a comfortable (or a moderate or modest) retirement.

I’m on the home stretch of the production the UK edition of the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course. The course is completely rebuilt for the UK system and has UK experts coming along for our Live Q&As too.

You can register your interest here (no obligation), and we’ll be launching at pilot pricing (very low for this first run so we can gather feedback and refine it with you). It won’t be long now…. We anticipate our UK Pilot course will start in late May and go for 6 weeks finishing right as Summer holidays hit. So if you’re curious - sign up to learn more.

And if you haven’t caught my recent reels on social media, I’ve been doing a few short micro-lessons breaking down how to navigate retirement step by step. Worth a follow if you’re not already across them — link below.

• Facebook.com/epicretirementuk

• Instagram.com/epicretirementuk

Have a great Sunday! And until next week — make it epic.

Cheers,
Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Get your copy of the UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

I am the retirement columnist for The Times. I write fortnightly. Here’s a few of my recent columns:

The real risk from AI isn’t losing your job — it’s wrecking your retirement
A drop in income at 30 is inconvenient but at 50 it can be a disaster. We all need to wake up to the risks
Read more here

What I’ve heard should alarm every politician in the country
In an open letter to the government, Times Money’s retirement columnist sets out why people aren’t saving like they should
Read more here

The six biggest retirement fears — and how to solve them
Prepare for all the things that feel scary about giving up work, from running out of money to finding a way to fill up your time
Read more here

Feature: Scientists have proven that ageing doesn’t have to mean decline

From Bec’s Desk: A quiet week

Read my article in The Times: The Iran war shines a spotlight on Britain’s pensions divide

Scientists have proven that ageing doesn’t have to mean decline

I’m going to ask you to set aside everything you think you know about getting older for a minute. Because a study has just been published in the the journal Geriatrics, from Yale, one of the world’s most respected research institutions, that has basically torn up the standard story about ageing. And I think it deserves way more attention than it’s getting.

Here’s the headline finding: nearly half of the older adults in the study actually improved in brain function, physical capacity, or both, over a period of up to 12 years.

Not “saw their health decline more slowly” and not “held steady as they got older!” They IMPROVED!

Just soak in that for a second!

The stories of getting old we tell ourselves become our reality

We have been marinated, from childhood, from every insurance ad, from every well-meaning doctor’s appointment, in a single story about ageing. That it goes one way - downhill, in a gradual and inevitable way, universally.

And, that story has been shaping your biology all throughout your life. But now, you could choose a different story to shape yourself around. One that has scientific backing!

The Yale researchers, led by Dr Becca Levy, followed more than 11,000 people aged 65 and over for up to 12 years. When they averaged everyone’s results together, which is how most ageing studies work, they saw what you’d expect – Decline. Cognitive scores dropped and walking speed slowed.

But then they did something different. They looked at individual trajectories instead of group averages. And that’s where things got interesting.

Nearly 45% showed improvement in cognitive function, physical function, or both. Around 32% actually improved their brain scores. Around 28% were walking faster at the end of the study than they were at the start.

So what made the difference?

Here’s the part that will either make you nod and smile or make you a little uncomfortable.

The researchers tested whether what people believed about ageing – the assumptions they brought into the study – predicted what actually happened to their health over the following decade.

And it did! Significantly.

People who held more positive beliefs about ageing were measurably more likely to show improvements in both brain function and walking speed, even after you account for age, sex, education, chronic disease and depression.

Your beliefs about ageing appear to be a biological input into how your body responds. Not just a mood or attitude. Something that’s actually shaping what happens inside your body over time.

Dr Levy has a name for this: ‘stereotype embodiment theory’. The idea is that from a young age, we absorb messages about what ageing looks like from ads, media, culture, the casual way people talk about getting old. Eventually those messages stop being abstract and become deeply personal. They shift from describing other people to describing you. And at that point, they start showing up in the body.

Her earlier research linked negative age beliefs to poorer memory, slower walking speed, higher cardiovascular risk, and brain markers associated with Alzheimer’s disease. This new study adds the other side of that coin: positive age beliefs predict improvement.

I find this extraordinarily exciting.

Something important to think about

I want to flag something specific in this research that I think it’s the most important part. The researchers didn’t just look at people who were struggling and got better. They did a separate analysis on people who had normal cognitive and physical function at the start – people who were already doing fine.

Among that group? Around 28% still improved their brain function over time. Around 23% improved their walking speed.

This wasn’t recovery from illness. This was people who were already healthy getting better as they got older

The researchers call it “reserve capacity.” The idea that later life holds more potential for growth than our culture has been giving it credit for. I’ve been saying this for years, and honestly it’s kind of wonderful to see Yale prove it.

So, what do you actually believe about getting older?

I ask this genuinely because I want you to stop and think about it.

If you’ve absorbed the standard cultural story (decline is inevitable, the body just fades, the brain slips, the best years of your life are behind you), that story may be doing you real harm. Not just to your mood or your motivation. Potentially to your actual health trajectory.

The good news and I want to be clear this is genuinely good news is that the researchers say age-related beliefs are modifiable. You can change them. And because you can change them, there’s real scope for doing something about it.

That might look like this:

• Noticing the internal voice that says well, at my age... and asking whether it’s actually true

• Deliberately seeking out people who are thriving – not just surviving – in their 60s, 70s, 80s

• Pushing back when the cultural narrative around you defaults to telling you about your imminent decline

And let me be clear. None of this is about toxic positivity or pretending the challenges that come with getting older don’t exist. They do – ageing is real. But the research is telling us that the trajectory into later life is far less fixed than we’ve been led to believe – and that what we expect from life has a measurable effect on what we experience.

Maybe, if you already believe you’ll have an epic retirement, then you’re on the right path.

So here’s my challenge for you this week: Think about one story you’re telling yourself about ageing that might not actually be serving you? It might be time to rewrite it.

Source: Levy, B.R. & Slade, M.D. (2026). “Aging Redefined: Cognitive and Physical Improvement with Positive Age Beliefs.” Geriatrics, 11(2), 28.

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I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (An Australian/New Zealand edition is also available)

I realise every day, whether I’m walking downstairs to my little home office or driving to the airport for a speaking gig, that I’m a very lucky person to love what I do so much.

This week was a full week at the desk. Articles, podcasts, newsletters, courses. No events, no travel, no distractions. I got a lot done towards our UK Course, which is coming together beautifully. Next week makes up for it though: Adelaide and Tassie, here I come.

And if you haven’t caught my recent reels on social media, I’ve been doing a few short micro-lessons breaking down how to navigate retirement step by step. Worth a follow if you’re not already across them — link below.

• Facebook.com/epicretirementuk

• Instagram.com/epicretirementuk

We are indeed putting the finishing touches on the UK course (How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course). It’s quite a big effort to product a course of this scale - one that runs for 6 weeks, with 14 modules (85+ videos) of lessons and a whole lot of integrated activities.

The course will be similar to the program we run in Australia that is becoming quite popular indeed. We’ve booked in our live Q+A guests. We’re just making sure all the tech is on track before we launch it for you to book your places. Not long now.

You can register your interest here (no obligation), and we’ll be launching at pilot pricing (very low for this first run so we can gather feedback and refine it with you). It won’t be long now…. We anticipate our UK Pilot course will start in late May and go for 6 weeks finishing right as Summer holidays hit. So if you’re curious - sign up to learn more.

Now get out there and love your Sunday.

And until next week — make it epic.

Cheers,
Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

The Iran war shines a spotlight on Britain’s pensions divide

Amid volatile markets many savers are having to rethink their retirement plans — but some are sitting pretty

A month into the war in Iran and retired people are feeling the pressure, which is coming from many directions. I put the question out to my Epic Retirement Club on Facebook: how are you faring?

The responses came flooding in and they told a story of pragmatism tinged with genuine concern for what’s going on and how the war might develop from here.

The big pain points for those who are already in or on the brink of retirement are different from those affecting the rest of the population. That’s particularly the case for those who had a big date in mind: the sequencing risk problem is real but is not really appreciated by those for whom a specific retirement day isn’t looming.

If you’re still accumulating, a market downturn is painful but there is time to recover. If, however, you’ve stopped working and are drawing down to fund your living expenses, selling assets while prices are depressed damages your pot in a way that is not easy to undo.

Your income doesn’t rise with inflation if you do that and, without reversing your retirement decision, you cannot work extra hours to compensate for the money lost. If you had a retirement date circled on the calendar, the maths of whether you can actually afford to stop just got considerably more complicated.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Wednesday 1 April 2026. I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop soon!

Feature: The UK State Pension goes up this week

From Bec’s Desk: Happy Easter!

Read my article in The Times: The Iran war shines a spotlight on Britain’s pensions divide

The UK State Pension goes up this week

Here’s what changes, who gets it, and what to check if you’re not there yet

The UK State Pension goes up again this week, and if you’re building your retirement plan around UK rules, it’s one of those numbers worth keeping an eye on.

From 6th April 2026, the full new State Pension increases from £230.25 a week to £241.30 a week. That’s an extra £11.05 a week, or about £574.60 a year.

For those on the older system, the full basic State Pension goes from £176.45 a week to £184.90 a week, an increase of £8.45 a week, or around £439.40 a year.

These new rates apply for the 2026/27 financial year and reflect the annual increase under the UK’s uprating rules.

That is all good news. But as always with the State Pension, the headline number is only part of the story.

Not everyone gets the full amount. Your State Pension depends on your National Insurance record. Under the current rules, people whose National Insurance record started after April 2016 generally need 35 qualifying years to receive the full new State Pension. If your record started before April 2016, it can be more complicated, especially if you were contracted out, and you may need more than 35 qualifying years to get the full amount.

So if you are already at State Pension age, the main thing to know is that the payment has gone up. If you are not there yet, the more important question is not really “what is the full rate?” It is “what am I personally on track to get?”

That is the bit a lot of people skip.

The earliest point you can receive State Pension is your State Pension age. For many people that is currently 66, but it is not the same for everyone. Under current legislation, State Pension age is rising from 66 to 67 between 2026 and 2028. If you were born between 6 April 1960 and 5 March 1961, your State Pension age will be 66 plus a number of months depending on your exact date of birth. If you were born from 6 March 1961 to 5 April 1977, your State Pension age is 67 under current law.

That means this is a very practical moment to check three things.

First, check when you will actually become eligible. The official GOV.UK State Pension age tool will tell you the age you can claim under current law.

Second, check how much you are on track to receive. The official State Pension forecast service shows how much you could get, when you can get it, and whether you can increase it.

Third, check whether you have any gaps in your National Insurance record. The forecast service also points out whether you may be able to improve your entitlement, including by paying to fill gaps in some cases.

This really matters because the State Pension is a foundation, but for most people it is not the whole retirement plan. Even with the increase, the full new State Pension works out to a bit over £12,500 a year at the new rate. Helpful, yes. Enough on its own for the kind of retirement many people want, not usually. That is why it makes sense to treat it as one layer of retirement income rather than the answer to everything. The useful work happens before you get there: checking your age, checking your forecast, checking for gaps, and then working out how it fits with your workplace pensions, personal pensions, savings and timing.

If you want a simple takeaway, it is this: the State Pension has gone up, which is good news, but if you are still a few years off, the real job this week is to make sure you know your own number, your own date, and whether there is anything you can still do to improve it.

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I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (An Australian/New Zealand edition is also available)

Hard to believe it’s April, isn’t it? And we’re bracing for what’s shaping up to be the most expensive fuel at Easter in history. Gulp.

I almost don’t want to admit I’m a Tesla owner at times like this. My car, a bottom-of-the-range Model 3, is no ego-wagon. It’s seven years old, white, and has cost me a grand total of $400 in servicing over its lifetime, and one set of tyres. So it’s quietly holding up its end of the bargain. How’s yours going?

Anyway, onto more serious things. This week was deliciously short. I keynoted two Adviser events in Australia. It also marked week 6, the final week of our Aussie Autumn How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course.

I genuinely love running these courses and being part of the live sessions and I’m very excited to be launching the UK program in just weeks! I mean - check out this new feedback from the latest courses:

“I would consider this an essential course for everyone. I would recommend reading Prime Time and Epic Retirement, and unlike me at 62 years old and retired to do so earlier in life to be ready. Great coverage of lots of topics relevant to all of us. Thank you for the books and the course.”

“Feeling in a better place to handle everything now. Thank you”

“Terrific program. We loved the content and Bec’s delivery style is just so engaging. Highly recommend the course, and likewise Bec’s wonderful books “How to have and Epic Retirement” and “Prime Time”, and her podcast “Prime Time”.”

“This course has been very helpful. It has put the planning for retirement in to a structure I can follow and given me hope for an Epic Retirement. I was very anxious about my low super balance and nil savings, being divorced and having to do it all on my own. But now it feels doable. I can still do some of the travel overseas I have always dreamed of. Thanks for this opportunity to participate in this great course. Highly recommended to everyone over 50 years old.”

100% of people who’d finished this week said they’d recommend the course to their friends too!

I’m blushing. But honestly, what a buzz.

As I said, we’re putting the finishing touches on the workbook and course edits for the How to Have an Epic Retirement UK Course. We’re in the editing stage now, with all the filming done. It’s quite a big effort to product a course of this scale - one that runs for 6 weeks, with 14 modules (85+ videos) of lessons. And there’s a 130+ page workbook too!

As I mentioned last week, the course will take a very similar shape to the one we run in Australia, as it’s become quite popular here. We’ve locked down our live Q&A guests so we’re full steam towards releasing the course for sale in the next few weeks.

You can register your interest here (no obligation), and we’ll be launching at pilot pricing (very low for this first run so we can gather feedback and refine it with you). It won’t be long now…. We anticipate our UK Pilot course will start in May and go for 6 weeks finishing right as Summer holidays hit. So if you’re curious - sign up to learn more.

Now, that’s enough of the heavy stuff - it’s time for some chocolate.

Hope you’re having a lovely, family-or-friend-filled Easter. And there’s plenty of chocolate around you today.

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers,
Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

The Iran war shines a spotlight on Britain’s pensions divide

Amid volatile markets many savers are having to rethink their retirement plans — but some are sitting pretty

A month into the war in Iran and retired people are feeling the pressure, which is coming from many directions. I put the question out to my Epic Retirement Club on Facebook: how are you faring?

The responses came flooding in and they told a story of pragmatism tinged with genuine concern for what’s going on and how the war might develop from here.

The big pain points for those who are already in or on the brink of retirement are different from those affecting the rest of the population. That’s particularly the case for those who had a big date in mind: the sequencing risk problem is real but is not really appreciated by those for whom a specific retirement day isn’t looming.

If you’re still accumulating, a market downturn is painful but there is time to recover. If, however, you’ve stopped working and are drawing down to fund your living expenses, selling assets while prices are depressed damages your pot in a way that is not easy to undo.

Your income doesn’t rise with inflation if you do that and, without reversing your retirement decision, you cannot work extra hours to compensate for the money lost. If you had a retirement date circled on the calendar, the maths of whether you can actually afford to stop just got considerably more complicated.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Wednesday 1 April 2026. I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop soon!

Feature: Your first year of retirement: the biggest challenge might not be your money

From Bec’s Desk: Preparing the Epic Retirement UK Course - it’s almost ready

Read my article in The Times: The real risk from AI isn’t losing your job — it’s wrecking your retirement

Your first year of retirement: the biggest challenge might not be your money

Most people spend more time planning their retirement finances than they spend thinking about who they’ll actually be when they get there. That’s a problem, and it tends to show up about six months in.

Here’s the question I want you to sit with this week: if someone asked you to describe yourself at a dinner party the week after you retire, what would you say? For most of us, the answer has been the same for twenty or thirty years. You lead with what you do. Your job title, your industry, your company. It’s shorthand for competence, status and purpose all at once. And then one day, it’s just gone.

This isn’t a small thing. Research on retirement consistently shows that identity loss, not financial stress, is the most common cause of what people describe as a difficult first year. The people who struggle most aren’t usually the ones who ran out of money. They’re the ones who ran out of answer to the question: what do I do with myself now?

The good news is that this is entirely workable, but only if you start thinking about it before you get there, not after.

So here are three questions worth sitting with this week:

What do you do that has nothing to do with work? Not what you’d like to do in retirement, but what you actually do now, outside of your job. If the honest answer is not much, that’s important information. Retirement doesn’t conjure purpose out of thin air. It just removes the structure that was filling the space.

Who are you to the people who matter most to you? Your partner, your kids, your close friends. How do they describe you? What role do you play that has nothing to do with your career? That version of you is the foundation you’re building on.

What would you do on a Tuesday at 11am if you had no obligations and no agenda? Not a holiday Tuesday. A regular one. If you can’t answer that with something specific and genuine, it’s worth spending more time on that question than on your superannuation projections this week.

Retirement is long. For most people reading this, it’s twenty to thirty years. The financial plan gets you there. The identity work is what makes it worth arriving.

Start that work now. It’s more important than you think.

Bec Xx

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I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (An Australian/New Zealand edition is also available)

The weather is starting to turn on both sides of the world. Down under where I am the heat is starting to dissipate. I’m hoping you’re starting to feel things warm up on the other side of the world.

I’ve been traveling across Australia and will be for the next five weeks, as a keynote speaker on an Adviser Roadshow. I love getting out there. My topic is “The future of Retirement” and what it will look like over the years ahead. This week I saw the inside of Canberra, next week I’ll be in the beautiful Gold Coast.

And, while I’m on the road, I’m putting the finishing touches on the workbook for the How to Have an Epic Retirement UK Course. We’re in the editing stage now, with all the filming done. It’s quite a big effort to product a course of this scale - one that runs for 6 weeks, with 14 modules (85+ videos) of lessons. And there’s a 130+ page workbook too!

As I mentioned last week, the course will take a very similar shape to the one we run in Australia, as it’s become quite popular here. We’ve locked down our live Q&A guests so we’re full steam towards releasing the course for sale in the next two weeks.

You can register your interest here (no obligation), and we’ll be launching at pilot pricing (very low for this first run so we can gather feedback and refine it with you). The course will start in May and go for 6 weeks finishing right as Summer holidays hit.

And, if you’re a Facebook or Instagram user I’ve kicked off new, UK-specific accounts too, so if you want to see them, please pop both a follow at Facebook.com/epicretirementuk and Instagram.com/epicretirementuk

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers,
Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

How to Have an Epic Retirement: The Book

Get your copy.

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Currently #5 on the Amazon UK Bestseller List for Retirement Planning and #1 on the Amazon Australia Bestseller List for Retirement Planning 😉

The real risk from AI isn’t losing your job - it’s wrecking your retirement

A few short weeks ago, before war broke out in Iran, everyone was worried about how AI was going to affect companies, jobs and the stock market. I also heard a lot about how it may affect our children’s future careers.

The one thing I didn’t hear a lot of talk about was how it could affect our personal finances, and what we should do to prepare for the risk that AI may take parts of our jobs, alter our industries for ever and render the skills we’ve spent years building much less valuable. And most people aren’t remotely prepared for that.

We tend to think about work in fixed terms. You build a career, your income grows, you move up the hierarchy and then at some point you retire. For decades that model has underpinned how we save, invest and plan.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Friday 20th March (and in Print on Saturday 21st March 2026). I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

Feature: What I’d actually do this weekend if I was 55 or 65 and the world felt a bit wobbly

From Bec’s Desk: The UK Epic Retirement course is about to launch

Read my article in The Times: The real risk from AI isn’t losing your job — it’s wrecking your retirement

What I’d actually do this weekend if I was 55 or 65 and the world felt a bit wobbly

What a week! Oil hit $113 a barrel yesterday and it could go higher before this newsletter even reaches you. Petrol is sitting at around 145p a litre right now, up nearly 10p in just three weeks. Diesel is worse! The war in the Gulf is now in its fourth week with no sign of letting up, and the Bank of England, which had been expected to cut rates this week, held at 3.75% and quietly warned that hikes might be back on the table if things drag on.

Energy bills were already 14% higher in real terms than before Ukraine. Mortgage rates on fixed deals have been creeping back above 5%. And if you’re already feeling the squeeze at the supermarket and the petrol station, none of this will feel surprising.

So if you’re in your 50s or 60s and that familiar knot of worry has crept back in this week, I want to talk to you like we’re friends. Because there are a few things worth doing this weekend. None of them are particularly hard or scary, but they matter.

First, step away from the noise for a bit

Turn off the finance news for the weekend. Not because what’s happening doesn’t matter – it clearly does – but because none of the decisions you need to make right now will be improved by watching oil tickers and hearing market updates scroll past all Saturday.

The Gulf disruption, the inflation creep, the Ofgem uncertainty – these are real. But they’re largely outside your control. What you can control is whether you respond thoughtfully or react out of fear. And that always starts with slowing down and really thinking things through.

Remind yourself what your actual timeline is

Here’s the question I’d ask you to sit with: “when do you actually need to draw on your investments or pension for income?”

Not when you want to stop working. When you’ll genuinely need the money to live on.

For a lot of people between 55 and 65, the honest answer is still five, eight, even ten or more years away. Markets have come back from oil shocks before, in 1973, 1990, 2008. They’ve recovered from worse than this. The FTSE has fallen about 10% from its highs right now already, with all of this. Time is what gives your investments room to breathe.

If you’re already drawing from your pension or ISA, the question shifts a little, but the heart of it is the same: “do you have enough in stable, lower-risk assets to avoid being forced to sell the good growth stuff while it’s down?”

Check whether you have a buffer and be honest about it

This is the one I keep coming back to with people in this season of life.

Do you have two or three years of living expenses sitting in something stable like a cash ISA, easy-access savings, a fixed-rate bond? Not in the volatility of the stock market. Somewhere it just sits, ideally keeping pace with inflation, but ready when you need it.

Because if you do, you can ride this out. You’re not forced to sell when markets are wobbling. You have choices. That buffer isn’t dead money, it’s the thing that lets you stay calm while everyone else is anxious.

IF YOU DON’T HAVE A BUFFER RIGHT NOW

I want to be straight with you here, because glossing over this doesn’t help anyone. If you don’t have much set aside outside of your pension or investments, this week probably felt harder than it needed to. And that’s worth acknowledging — not as a reason to panic, but as useful information.

The question to sit with this weekend isn’t “how do I fix everything at once.” It’s simpler: what’s one thing I could do in the next 90 days to start building a bit more breathing room?

Maybe it’s redirecting £200 a month into a cash ISA you don’t touch. Maybe it’s looking honestly at where money is quietly leaking out. Maybe it’s a call to your pension provider’a guidance team or an independent financial adviser – not to overhaul everything, just to understand where you actually stand. (Worth knowing: when markets are turbulent, advisers get very busy. Don’t leave that call too long and expect to wait for an appointment.)

You can’t build a buffer overnight. But you can decide to start this weekend. That decision, made quietly over a cup of tea on a Saturday morning, matters more than people realise.

Have an honest look at your spending right now

With petrol up, the weekly shop creeping higher and energy costs rising again, your day-to-day spending has probably gone up without you even noticing. This isn’t about cutting back dramatically, it’s about knowing where you stand.

Grab a cup of tea and spend half an hour with your last few months of bank statements. Just three questions:

• What am I actually spending each month right now?

• Has that crept up in the last three months?

• Is there anywhere I can claw back a bit of breathing room?

You’re not looking for the perfect spending process. You’re just looking for a clearer picture of your spending than you had on Friday and where you could make sensible trims.

Finally, think about what this stage of life is really asking of you

There’s a shift that happens for a lot of people in their 50s. It stops being just about building wealth and starts being also about protecting what you’ve built, so you can actually enjoy it. Making the choices you want to make. Feeling secure enough to sleep at night.

In that context, another week of volatile markets and geopolitical noise shouldn’t be a melodramatic concern. It should be a prompt or a reminder to check whether your setup actually gives you flexibility and the ability to make good decisions rather than being forced into bad ones.

That’s what this weekend is for. Calmly taking stock of where you are, and taking a little more control of where you want to be.

I’ll leave you with this.

The war in the Gulf is looking pretty serious. The oil price is genuinely high. The cost of living pressure is real – and if you’re already stretched, none of this feels easy. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

But the people who come through these periods best aren’t the ones who predicted it or moved everything to cash in February (because they never know when to get back in). They’re the ones who had a plan they trusted, a buffer they could lean on, and the discipline not to let the noise make their decisions for them.

If you’ve got the buffer – great. Sit tight and trust the plan.

If you don’t – this is your weekend to decide to start building one. That decision, made over a cup of tea on a Sunday morning, is worth more than you might think right now.

You’ve got this. And I’ll be here with you through it.

Bec x

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I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (An Australian/New Zealand edition is also available)

This week I’m packing my bags for a mum’s weekend away… my last one ever through the school structure and it feels like the end of something.

My youngest is in their final year of school, and it’s just hit me that all those built-in structures, the school rhythms, the WhatsApp groups, the sideline chats, the annual mums’ weekends… they’re starting to fall away.

This one feels like a bit of a milestone. A little emotional, if I’m honest.

I’d love to say I’m breezing into this next phase, but there’s a small part of me wondering… what replaces it? If you’re a few steps ahead of me and have navigated this shift, I’d genuinely love to hear how it unfolded for you.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, something exciting is taking shape.

We’ve just finished recording the UK version of the How to Have an Epic Retirement course. It’s been such an interesting process adapting everything to fit the UK system, from pensions and drawdown to how people actually think about retirement here.

We’ve also locked down our live Q&A guests, and it’s all coming together beautifully.

We’ll be running the UK and Australian courses side by side, just in different time zones, each with fully localised programs. It still feels slightly surreal to say that. Two sides of the world.

You can register your interest here (no obligation), and we’ll be launching at pilot pricing (very low for this first run so we can gather feedback and refine it with you) in the next 7–10 days, once the final details, guest speakers and workbooks are all ready. The course will start in May and go for 6 weeks finishing right as Summer holidays hit.

If you’re a Facebook or Instagram user I’ve kicked off new, UK-specific accounts too, so if you want to see them, please pop both a follow at Facebook.com/epicretirementuk and Instagram.com/epicretirementuk

It really does feel like a season of endings… and openings. I can’t wait to launch.

Until next week — make it epic.

Cheers,
Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Back at the top of the bestseller list

Look at that will you! Our little UK edition is back at the top of two of Amazon’s big bestseller lists this week. If you haven’t got yourself a copy, you’re missing out.

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

The real risk from AI isn’t losing your job - it’s wrecking your retirement

A few short weeks ago, before war broke out in Iran, everyone was worried about how AI was going to affect companies, jobs and the stock market. I also heard a lot about how it may affect our children’s future careers.

The one thing I didn’t hear a lot of talk about was how it could affect our personal finances, and what we should do to prepare for the risk that AI may take parts of our jobs, alter our industries for ever and render the skills we’ve spent years building much less valuable. And most people aren’t remotely prepared for that.

We tend to think about work in fixed terms. You build a career, your income grows, you move up the hierarchy and then at some point you retire. For decades that model has underpinned how we save, invest and plan.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Tuesday 3rd March (and in Print on Saturday 21st March 2026). I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

How to Have an Epic Retirement is the Kindle Daily Deal in the UK today. Just 99p. It won’t be tomorrow. And I’d feel a bit guilty not mentioning it to you while you can get that incredible deal. So here I am.

👉 Order it on Amazon Kindle now

I wrote it for everyday people who are starting to think about retirement — who want to understand their choices, their opportunities, and the traps people commonly fall into. The ones who are doing fine, mostly, but know there's a gap between where they are and where they want to be.

It’s a very practical book. It covers money and pensions, yes but also time and longevity, health, purpose and happiness, and what you actually want your days to look like when work stops being the thing that shapes them.

If you’ve been meaning to read it, today’s a good day. It’s an international bestseller, it’s been properly written for people in the UK, and today it’s 99p.

That’s a pretty easy yes.

👉 Order it on Amazon Kindle now

And if you do pick it up, I’d genuinely love to hear what you think. Leave me a review - on Amazon!

Cheers
Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

PS: Know someone in that almost-there phase? Send it on. It’s the kind of book that is helpful if it lands at exactly the right moment.

From Bec’s Desk: Our new UK-specific social accounts are live - pop me a follow

Feature: Are you planning to support your children through the AI disruptions?

Read my article in The Times: What I’ve heard should alarm every politician in the country - Please stop fiddling with our pensions

Today we’re doing something a little different.

In this week’s feature article I want to introduce you to Charlotte Gibson, the UK Lead of The Epic Retirement Institute. Charlotte has written a thoughtful piece about a question many parents of grown kids are asking themselves but not always saying out loud.

Should we be planning our retirement a little differently in case our children face a tougher job market as AI reshapes work and careers?

It’s an uncomfortable topic, but probably an important one to start thinking about openly.

Many of us will help our kids at different points in their lives. That’s normal. But if you assume you may need to provide some support, you can build a bit of flexibility into your plans. If you don’t think about it at all and it happens anyway, it can put real pressure on both generations.

Charlotte explores this question beautifully in today’s article (read it below).

Meanwhile… markets have been bouncing around again this week, which inevitably makes people approaching retirement a little twitchy when they look at their pension balances.

When volatility hits, the temptation is to panic. I prefer to use moments like this as a teaching opportunity. Rather than fueling fear, I’ve been explaining what’s actually going on and how to think about sequencing risk and bucket strategies in a series of short lessons on Facebook.

If you’re a Facebook or Instagram user and want to see the content I create specifically for the UK, I’ve just set up both a dedicated Facebook Page and Instagram Wall for the UK so I can share UK-specific content and lessons here. Please pop both a follow at Facebook.com/epicretirementuk and Instagram.com/epicretirementuk

See you in there.

Until next week - make it epic!

Cheers
Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Are you planning to help and support your children through the AI disruptions?

by Charlotte Gibson

A new question is shaping how parents think about retirement. I am hearing this more and more from parents of teenagers who are looking to the future and asking:

Should I change my future life plans to make sure I can support my children financially if AI makes it much harder for them to get a job?

We already know that it is difficult for young people to find work. The Times reported recently that parents are now an “invisible welfare state” for young adults who cannot find jobs. In the three months from October to December 2025, the number of 16 to 24 year olds not in education or work was 957,000, or around 12.8% of that age group.

We can guess, but we have very little idea how things will develop with AI and what impact it will have on the job market.

But as parents of bright young people working hard at school and beyond, there is a nagging thought that the life waiting for them after education could look very different from ours. It feels uncertain. And when things feel uncertain, our brains look for something we can control.

The reactions I hear tend to fall into a few different camps.

1. Some say they imagined themselves slowing down in their late 50s but now want to keep working or at least keep their options open.

2. Others talk about spending less on themselves or saving more, just in case.

3. And some admit they have no idea what they could actually do about it, but that does not stop the worry sitting in the background.

One thing that has helped in these conversations is to step back and widen the frame slightly. Every generation of parents has worried that the world their children enter will be harder than the one they knew. Sometimes those worries are justified. The financial crisis, housing affordability, climate change and now AI have all made people question whether the old path of education to career stability still holds.

The uncomfortable truth is that we cannot plan our children’s careers any more than our parents could plan ours.

When I sit with this question myself, I notice that there are really two different instincts competing.

The first is protective. If the world becomes harder for our children then perhaps we should build a bigger safety net. Work longer. Save more. Keep our own plans flexible so we can step in if needed.

The second instinct is trust. Trust that our children will find their way in a world that will inevitably be different from the one we entered.

So what is the right balance for us as parents? It probably sits somewhere in the middle.

One practical way some parents think about this is keeping flexibility in their own financial plans. Instead of locking in a rigid retirement date, they are aiming for having the choice but maybe not committing yet. That might mean maintaining part-time work skills, building a slightly larger financial buffer, or simply recognising that the transition into retirement may happen in stages.

Keeping some flexibility in our plans is sensible. Many of us already know that life rarely unfolds exactly as we expected in our twenties. Leaving a little room for change in our fifties is not necessarily a bad idea.

But reshaping our entire lives around a future that none of us can predict may not be helpful either. There is a difference between prudent planning and living in permanent anticipation of a problem that may never arrive.

Perhaps the more useful question in supporting our children is how we raise them to handle an uncertain world.

And if we are honest, the answer to that question has probably not changed very much: give them the foundations that help people navigate uncertainty - confidence, curiosity and the ability to keep learning. Nurture emotional resilience when things do not go to plan. And perhaps most importantly, the knowledge that they have people who believe in them.

And perhaps there is also a question for us:

How can we live more comfortably with uncertainty while our children find their own path?

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What I’ve heard should alarm every politician in the country

In an open letter to the government, Times Money’s retirement columnist sets out why people aren’t saving like they should

I spend a lot of time listening to people who are approaching retirement. And I don’t mean through polished focus group responses. I read the unfiltered commentary in places such as the Times comments section on Money articles and my Epic Retirement Club group on Facebook. Both are where financially savvy and less-savvy pre-retirees are discussing everything they’ve read about what’s coming for their money and their life ahead of them.

What I’m hearing should alarm every politician and regulator in this country. And it’s time we talked about it.

The more savvy people are not confused. Most understand tax relief, compounding and why keeping money inside a pension wrapper should be one of the smartest long-term moves they can make. And yet, they’re convinced it’s important to take their money out at 55 anyway. And it’s not because they need it. It’s because they don’t trust the government to deliver long-term, secure outcomes for their savings.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Tuesday 3rd March (and in Print on Saturday 7th March 2026). I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: The five financial decisions that matter most in the last 10 years before retirement

From Bec’s Desk: New UK Facebook Channel to join

Read my article in The Times: What I’ve heard should alarm every politician in the country - Please stop fiddling with our pensions

The five financial decisions that matter most in the last 10 years before retirement

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that retirement planning doesn’t happen evenly across your life.

For most people, the decisions that really shape retirement happen in the final decade before you stop working.

Your mid-50s to mid-60s are a powerful financial window. Earnings are often at their peak, mortgages are shrinking, children may have left home, and for the first time many people have real capacity to focus on their own future.

It’s also the point where retirement stops being an abstract idea and starts becoming real. And when that happens, a handful of financial decisions suddenly matter a lot more than the rest.

Here are five that I see make the biggest difference.

1. What to do about the mortgage

Many people arrive in their 50s still carrying some housing debt. That’s become increasingly common in the UK. The key question is not whether that’s “good” or “bad”, but how you plan to deal with it before retirement.

Some people focus on clearing the mortgage completely before they stop working. Others plan to downsize later and release equity that way. Either approach can work. What matters is that the decision is deliberate, not accidental

Housing costs are one of the biggest factors in retirement spending.

2. How much to boost your pension contributions

The final decade before retirement is often the most powerful time to increase pension savings.

In the UK, workplace pensions and personal pensions benefit from tax relief, which means every extra pound you contribute can be boosted by the government. Many people underestimate how much difference even a few years of increased contributions can make. If earnings are strong in your 50s and early 60s, this period can significantly lift your eventual retirement income.

3. How much investment risk to take

As retirement gets closer, many people instinctively move their pensions into lower-risk investments. That can make sense in some situations, particularly if money will be needed soon.

But retirement today can easily last 25 or 30 years, and your pension may still need to grow for decades. The challenge is finding the balance between protecting what you’ve built and maintaining enough growth to support a long retirement.

4. Whether to gradually reduce work

One of the biggest changes in retirement over the past decade is that more people are easing out of full-time work rather than stopping suddenly. Part-time work, consulting, seasonal work or a small business can make a big difference.

Financially it reduces the pressure on savings. Psychologically it also makes the transition easier. Retirement is increasingly becoming a phased process rather than a single date.

5. How your retirement income will actually work

This is where many people have their biggest “light-bulb moment”.

Retirement income rarely comes from just one place. For many UK retirees it becomes a combination of State Pension, workplace or personal pensions, savings or ISAs, and sometimes part-time work.

But there’s another layer to this that people often overlook.

Not all pensions are created equal.

Over the past decade millions of people have been automatically enrolled into workplace pensions, which is a very good thing. But the quality of those schemes can vary enormously. Some have excellent low-cost investment options and well-designed default funds. Others are expensive, limited, or poorly invested.

In the final years before retirement it’s worth taking a proper look at the pension schemes you actually have, what they’re invested in, how those returns are really tracking, and what the fees and benefits look like. Sometimes consolidating old pensions or reviewing the default investment option can make a meaningful difference over time.

But it’s important not to rush this. Make sure you properly understand each scheme and the terms you’re offered before moving anything, particularly if there are guarantees or defined benefit elements involved.

Once people start mapping out where their income will come from and how those pieces fit together, retirement often feels much less uncertain.

And that’s really the goal.

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I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (An Australian/New Zealand edition is also available)

This week I’m going to be short and sweet. I’ve been based in Australia but doing meetings with the UK almost every night!

The UK course is coming along brilliantly. It will be available for pilot very soon - so if you’re curious register your interest and we’ll let you know first.

We’re also gearing up to launch a UK podcast. Shhh. don’t tell anyone. But watch this space.

And finally, my column in The Times (below) this week was in direct response to the feedback I keep getting about planning for retirement in the UK. It’s often less about planning long term moves and more about taking caution against changes which I think is a challenge that needs a voice.

Lastly, I’ve been playing around with one of the new features on Facebook. If you’re over there, you might have noticed I’ve launched two new Channels.

These are a bit like a behind-the-scenes feed where I can share quick ideas, short insights and the occasional thought that doesn’t quite warrant a full article or podcast.

One is focused on Australian epic retirement stuff that come up during the week. The other is for UK epic retirement stuff, as that audience has been growing quickly with the UK edition of the book and course.

The nice thing about these Channels is that they’re a direct way for me to share snippets, short videos and posts with geographically specific audiences, without relying on the Facebook algorithm to decide who sees them.

They’re informal, quick to read, and a way for me to share things in real time rather than waiting for the next newsletter. I’ll be sharing all my educational reels there too.

If you’d like to follow along, you can join them here:
Australian Channel: click here
UK Channel: click here

See you in there.

Until next week - make it epic!

Cheers
Bec xx

.

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

What I’ve heard should alarm every politician in the country

In an open letter to the government, Times Money’s retirement columnist sets out why people aren’t saving like they should

I spend a lot of time listening to people who are approaching retirement. And I don’t mean through polished focus group responses. I read the unfiltered commentary in places such as the Times comments section on Money articles and my Epic Retirement Club group on Facebook. Both are where financially savvy and less-savvy pre-retirees are discussing everything they’ve read about what’s coming for their money and their life ahead of them.

What I’m hearing should alarm every politician and regulator in this country. And it’s time we talked about it.

The more savvy people are not confused. Most understand tax relief, compounding and why keeping money inside a pension wrapper should be one of the smartest long-term moves they can make. And yet, they’re convinced it’s important to take their money out at 55 anyway. And it’s not because they need it. It’s because they don’t trust the government to deliver long-term, secure outcomes for their savings.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Tuesday 3rd March (and in Print on Saturday 7th March 2026). I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: When one of you is older than the other

From Bec’s Desk: Trying pickleball and checking out a cruise ship in port

Read my article in The Times: The six biggest retirement fears - and how to solve them

When one of you is older than the other

I got a letter this week that’s more common than you’d think.

“I’m 66 and ready to slow down. My partner is 58 and still working. How do we plan this properly?”

If there’s an age gap between you, you are not running one retirement timeline. You’re running two. And in the UK, that plays out across three things that matter enormously: pension access age, State Pension age, and tax sequencing.

Let’s start with access.

You can usually access defined contribution pensions from age 55, rising to 57 from 2028. That means one partner may be able to start drawdown while the other is still in full earning mode. Used well, this can be powerful. The older partner might reduce hours and draw a modest pension income while the younger partner keeps earning and contributing. But access alone isn’t the strategy. Tax has to be part of the thinking too.

If one partner is still earning £40-60,000 and the other starts drawing heavily from their pension, you can push your household tax bill unnecessarily high. Often the smarter move is for the older partner to draw modestly, use their personal allowance efficiently, and keep withdrawals tax-efficient while the other continues contributing and benefiting from tax relief. Sequencing matters more than most people realise.

Then there’s the State Pension clock.

State Pension age is currently 66 and rising. When one partner reaches it and the other is still years away, you suddenly have uneven guaranteed income. One of you has a secure, inflation-linked income for life. The other doesn’t yet. That asymmetry can actually shape your investment decisions. It might allow the older partner to take slightly more risk with their drawdown pot, knowing the State Pension provides a floor. Or it might encourage you both to protect capital until the second State Pension is in place.

Either way, it’s a factor worth mapping deliberately rather than discovering by accident.

Now for the part no spreadsheet captures.

When one partner retires and the other keeps working, you’re living in different life stages under the same roof. One has freedom. One has Monday morning meetings. One wants midweek lunches with their mates; the other has deliverables due and limited annual leave. I’ve seen couples navigate this beautifully. I’ve also seen them assume travel and lifestyle begin the moment the first person finishes work, only to find the other isn’t ready, isn’t available, or simply doesn’t want to stop yet.

You are not one age. You are two. Which means your retirement plan rarely fits a single date circled on a calendar. It usually needs to be phased.

Phase one: the older partner reduces or stops work.

Phase two: the younger partner transitions.

Phase three: you arrive at a shared lifestyle. That’s the shape of it financially. But getting there requires honest conversation well before you reach any of those phases.

And then there’s longevity.

If there’s a significant age gap, one partner may statistically need care earlier. And/or the other partner might become the carer. That shapes housing decisions, drawdown rates, and whether you preserve certain assets for later-life flexibility. You’re effectively managing five clocks simultaneously: pension access age, State Pension age, earnings and tax bands, the end of work identity, and your health trajectories. That can be a lot!

Mapped consciously, an age gap can create real flexibility. Ignored, it creates stress and missed opportunity.

The question isn’t just when do we retire?

It’s what does each stage look like for each of us, and how do we keep both people’s goals in the picture?

That’s where the real planning starts.

Relate to this? Tell me what you’ve learned.

Leave a comment

I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (and Australian/New Zealand)

I’ve been home in Brisbane this week, and it’s been a good one.

Alongside the podcasts, courses and keeping up my gym habit, I managed to squeeze in two things I hadn’t expected: a tour of a Viking Ocean cruise ship that came into port, and my very first pickleball lesson.

The cruise ship visit coincided with a podcast I released with the wonderful Kathy Lette. Yes, the Kathy Lette — author of Puberty Blues and her latest bestseller The Sisterhood Rules. As a travel writer for The Times she’s taken many Viking cruises, so she came in to share what the experience is really like, and the real differences between river and ocean cruising. It was a great conversation.

Between the show and the ship tour, I picked up a few things that regular cruisers probably already know, but most of us don’t until we’ve actually done one:

Every ocean cabin has a balcony. All food and non-alcoholic drinks are included, so no nasty surprise bills at the end. Wine, beer and cocktails are available through a very reasonable drinks package, and it’s not bottom-shelf. You can also bring your own wine onboard with no corkage, which sounds particularly wonderful on a river cruise through a French wine region. Free internet across the fleet. A Nordic spa open to all guests, with sauna, hot pool, snow room and proper loungers. A big, modern gym. Ocean ships carry 998 passengers compared to around 190 on a river cruise, so it feels genuinely spacious. Room service is included. And with 110 ships, Viking is now the largest river cruise operator in the world.

There are more highlights over on my Facebook post if you want a closer look.

Then came pickleball. I did my introductory lesson on Saturday and I completely understand the fuss now. It’s easy to pick up, the courts are half the size of tennis, and once you’ve done your intro session you can find a game near you through an app for just a few pounds. It’s apparently wildly addictive, and I can already see why. It’s taken off in Australia and the US, and I know it’s growing fast in the UK too. If you haven’t tried it, it might be worth a look, especially if you’re after something social, active and genuinely fun.

And if you’re in the UK, don’t forget to pick up a copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement. It’s currently available in hardcover, and you can get a copy here.

Until next week — make it Epic.

Cheers,
Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

The six biggest retirement fears - and how to solve them

What are you most afraid of as you approach retirement?,” I asked my Facebook community, The Epic Retirement Club, a group of people who are mainly in their fifties and sixties.

The answers poured in. What stood out was how similar the worries were, regardless of background or income.

Running out of money, working for too long and never enjoying life, not knowing how to stop saving and start spending, losing your sense of purpose and identity and the government unfairly changing the rules on pensions and savings: all these things are big worries for anyone thinking about retiring soon. Then there’s one we don’t talk about — ending up alone, lonely and isolated socially.

So today I want to look more deeply at six of the biggest fears, and understand how they can be managed.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Monday 16th February 2026. I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: ‘Get some financial advice’ - it’s just not that simple anymore

From Bec’s Desk: Making the course

Read my article in The Times: The six biggest retirement fears - and how to solve them

‘Get some financial advice’ - it’s just not that simple anymore

“Get some financial advice” is probably the most common line in UK retirement commentary. Whenever markets wobble, pension freedoms are debated, tax allowances shift, someone asks how they are meant to move from full-time work into retirement, or someone talks about inheritance tax, the default response is the same: go and get regulated financial advice.

I have said it myself.

It isn’t wrong. But I am beginning to think it is incomplete.

A more responsible version might be this: learn how the system works first, and then seek out the type of advice that fits your situation and your goals.

That nuance matters.

In the UK, “financial advice” is not a single, uniform service. Some advisers are independent and can recommend from across the market. Some are restricted to certain providers or investment solutions. Others sit within large firms that combine advice and investment management under one structure. In many cases, the service is built around managing assets for an ongoing percentage fee, which can compound significantly over a long retirement.

For some households, that structure is entirely appropriate. If you have significant assets, complex tax considerations, business interests or intergenerational planning needs, comprehensive ongoing advice can be valuable.

But many people approaching retirement are trying to answer very specific questions.

Can I afford to stop working?
Which workplace pension should I consolidate to and how do I analyse their benefits?
Should I take tax-free cash now or later?
Drawdown or annuity?
How does this interact with the State Pension?
What happens if markets fall in the first five years?
How long does this money realistically need to last?

Those are retirement design questions.

They are not automatically investment management questions.

A significant number of people already sit in solid workplace pension schemes or SIPPs with diversified, low-cost funds. The investment wrapper itself is not always the core problem. The challenge is understanding sequencing risk, tax planning, income sustainability and how all the pieces fit together.

Yet the most common commercial advice model in the UK remains ongoing portfolio management for a percentage fee. That does not make advisers conflicted or unethical. It simply means the service is built around managing assets over time.

If you do not understand how advice is delivered and paid for, it is very difficult to assess whether what is being offered genuinely matches what you need.

We have created a culture where “get advice” is the responsible answer to every retirement question. But advice is expensive, adviser numbers have fallen sharply over the past decade, and access is uneven. For many households, it is neither simple nor cheap.

If people are going to be encouraged to seek advice, they deserve a clearer map of what is actually on offer and how each type is paid for, so they can judge whether it suits them. Firms, in turn, benefit from being explicit about the structure of their service and the circumstances it is designed for.

Without that understanding, it becomes difficult to tell whether the recommendation is solving your problem — or simply the way that firm structures its advice.

Advice matters. But it should be chosen deliberately, with a clear understanding of what problem you are trying to solve.

And that begins with education.

So let’s learn the big types:

There is guidance — such as Pension Wise or provider helplines — which explains your options but does not recommend a specific course of action. Then there is regulated financial advice, where an adviser makes a personal recommendation based on your circumstances.

The UK is also trying to create a middle ground between guidance and full advice called targeted support. It’s expected to arrive in late 2026 or 2027. Whether it becomes a genuine bridge for middle-income households, or simply a structured sales funnel, will depend on how it is implemented.

Among regulated advisers, some are independent and can consider the whole market. Others are restricted to certain providers or operate within vertically integrated firms that combine advice and investment management. That structure often involves moving assets into centrally managed portfolios and charging an ongoing percentage fee.

Those ongoing charges typically sit somewhere between 0.5% and 1% per year for advice, sometimes layered on top of platform and fund costs which can creep towards 2% in total. Over a 20–30 year retirement, that compounds into a very significant sum. When you consider that a workplace pension might be costing you 0.25% that’s a big difference.

For some households, the service justifies the cost. For others, particularly those with straightforward arrangements, it may be more than they need.

The important point is not that one model is good and another bad. It is that they are different, and consumers deserve to understand what they are paying for, how it is calculated, and whether that structure suits their circumstances.

This is my view of the world? You might agree or disagree… share your thoughts.

Leave a comment

I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (and Australian/New Zealand)

Another week closer to the end of the UK financial year, which means it’s time to start thinking about tax planning if you haven’t already.

This week I had a piece published in The Times — a fun one — and I hope you managed to catch it (see it below).

I’ve also spent the week in sunny Melbourne, keynoting a number of events and dialing in to meetings in the UK in my evenings. What I’m noticing now is that my work is starting to split quite neatly across the UK and Australia. The systems are similar in intent but very different in execution, and each country has its own quirks and pressure points.

As we develop the UK edition of the How to Have an Epic Retirement course, I’m getting increasingly excited about what we can offer. We’re deep in scripting, filming and editing, with a 9 May release in sight. It feels good to be building something that genuinely reflects the UK system rather than retrofitting an Australian model.

Australia continues to wrestle with superannuation complexity, pension settings and the tension between advice and investment management models. The UK has its own advice gap, the long tail of pension freedoms, and tax allowances that seem to shift just as people get comfortable with them. Different language, same underlying challenge: helping people make confident decisions in the second half of life.

I love working across both. It keeps me sharp.

And if you’re in the UK, don’t forget to pick up a copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement. It’s currently available in hardcover, and you can get a copy here.

Until next week — make it Epic.

Cheers,
Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

The six biggest retirement fears - and how to solve them

What are you most afraid of as you approach retirement?,” I asked my Facebook community, The Epic Retirement Club, a group of people who are mainly in their fifties and sixties.

The answers poured in. What stood out was how similar the worries were, regardless of background or income.

Running out of money, working for too long and never enjoying life, not knowing how to stop saving and start spending, losing your sense of purpose and identity and the government unfairly changing the rules on pensions and savings: all these things are big worries for anyone thinking about retiring soon. Then there’s one we don’t talk about — ending up alone, lonely and isolated socially.

So today I want to look more deeply at six of the biggest fears, and understand how they can be managed.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Monday 16th February 2026. I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: Don’t wait to be pushed

From Bec’s Desk: Trying new (hard) things

Read my article in The Times: Why you shouldn’t touch your tax-free pension in your fifties

Don’t wait to be pushed

You’ve worked for 30 or 40 years. You’ve built your skills, your reputation, your income, your super and hopefully your investment returns. You’ve paid the mortgage, raised the kids, carried teams, carried families and carried the mental load required to make everything function. And you’ve familiarised yourself with retirement enough to know that you have ‘enough’.

And then when it’s finally time to step into your Prime Time (the phase before full retirement) on your own terms, when you begin the conversation about reducing your days, reshaping your role or stepping out of the front line, something rather odd happens.

You hedge it and you downplay it. You call it temporary and you reassure everyone you’re not disappearing.

Why do you do that?

For many, it’s because you’re not only adjusting your hours – you’re adjusting your identity.

For decades work has been the spine most people’s adult life. It structured your weeks, shaped your conversations and anchored your sense of competence. When someone asked what you did, you had a clear answer. And that identity located you in the world. So even moving from five days to three, from executive to adviser, from operator to mentor or manager to casual worker, can feel like stepping away from something much bigger than a pay cheque. And if you haven’t built an identity outside work in the run up, that shift can feel destabilising.

But here’s the part we need to stop and think through.

If you don’t choose your glide path, sometimes the market or your health chooses your cliff.

Layoffs in your late 50s or early 60s are not just financial events. They are psychological events. Research suggests it can take up to two years to fully recover from involuntary job loss at that stage of life. That’s two years of rebuilding your confidence. Two years of identity repair and healing. Two years of trying to re-enter a market that may quietly prefer someone younger, someone hungry to learn new technologies, or someone who isn’t going to tell the middle manager how we did it in the year 2000. Or two years of accepting retirement happened to you and healing.

That is a very different experience from choosing your timing.

In your Prime Time, I don’t recommend a cliff edge exit from your workplace unless you need one. I recommend taking a glide path. A slower shift out of full-time work is a smart strategy. It allows your pensions to keep compounding at the highest balances you’ve ever seen. It protects you from sequencing risk if markets wobble. It keeps cash flow steady while you test the shape of your next chapter. And it gives your identity time to evolve instead of having to crash and rebuild.

Culturally, we celebrate grinding on and we celebrate big, dramatic retirement style endings.

We don’t celebrate deliberate transitions enough. So when you decline the next promotion, reduce your days or decide you no longer want the intensity, you can feel the need to justify it or apologise for it.

But, you don’t need to.

You are not stepping back because you are less capable. You are stepping differently because you have built yourself the powerful ability to choose.

For most of us, our pensions didn’t accumulate by accident. Our investments didn’t magically appear in our accounts. They are the result of decades of work. Of showing up, contributing and making contributions to your workplace pension and deliberate decisions to add to it (hopefully), year after year. The same is true of your career. Your credibility didn’t just land there either. All of that effort, over time, creates flexibility. And flexibility is not something you hoard. It is something you use.

Used well, it gives you the option of a glide path.

In my view, it is far better to step sideways on your own terms and reshape your sense of self at a time of your choosing than to be pushed out unexpectedly and left questioning your value.

I cover a lot more on this in How to Have an Epic Retirement, my UK Bestseller (and Australian/New Zealand)

I’m writing this on a wet Saturday morning, having done my first ‘parkrun’ ever today. I might be late to the party but I’m here, looking after my health, trying new things and getting out there. My run time was far from epic, and I earned a wicked blister, but I did it. #1 is done and that, to me is important. Because starting things that are just outside your comfort zone can be something we put off, but not me, not this year! Now, #2 and #3 will feel easier I’m sure.

This week just gone was one of those chatty weeks that somehow disappears in conversations and tasks. The highlights? Nina and I packing a record number of Welcome Packs for the upcoming Aussie How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course. And seeing some of our UK filmed footage, and finalising the rest of the draft scripts for the UK program we’re filming soon and will be launching in May 2026. (You can register your interest, obligation free, here).

And my parkrun of course.

There’s a couple of interesting projects moving and shaping in the UK to help people have more epic retirements, I can’t wait to be able to tell you more - so watch this space. My goal is to bring you a podcast, the epic retirement tick, and the course this year… and maybe more. But every step takes time and hard work, so stick with me here, and I’ll tell you all about them as they evolve.

And don’t forget to pick up a copy of my UK book - How to Have an Epic Retirement. it’s only available in hardcover - and you can get a copy here.

So, until next week - Make it Epic!

Cheers
Bec xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Why you shouldn’t touch your tax-free pension in your fifties

Just because you can access your pot from 55 doesn’t mean that you should

In the UK, something rather odd happens in your mid-fifties. Nothing dramatic changes about your health, your energy, or your usefulness to the world. But suddenly the system taps you on the shoulder and says: you may now start spending your pension.

For many people, that permission quickly snowballs into a big and often poorly examined question. If I can make withdrawals from my pension, should I take as much of it as I can? And once that thought takes hold, retirement can start to feel like the logical next step, even if nothing else in life is actually pointing that way.

Someone called Sam wrote to me last week grappling with exactly this issue. He is 54, tired, financially organised and approaching pension-access age.

“I don’t need the money yet,” he said. “But it feels like this is the point where I should take the 25 per cent tax-free. The system lets me do it for a reason, doesn’t it? Or maybe I should think about retiring.”

That feeling is a real problem.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Monday 2nd February 2026. I write fortnightly for The Times - keep an eye out as my next article will drop any day!

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: Should you stay in growth with your pension at 59, or is it time to get defensive?

From Bec’s Desk: Preparing well for my 80s in my 50s

Read my article in The Times: Why you shouldn’t touch your tax-free pension in your fifties

“Should I stay in growth with my pension at 59, or is it time to get defensive?”

Markets have bounced around pretty hard in the last week. Crypto’s been smashed, volatility is back and the headlines on the economy continue to be grim. And whenever this happens, the same question lands in my inbox.

This time it came from Robert, first thing Friday morning. And lately, it’s coming up a lot more often.

Markets feel jumpy right now. The UK news cycle in 2026 is relentlessly messy. There’s ongoing anxiety about stubborn inflation, interest rates that stayed higher for longer than anyone expected, and the cost of living still biting even as wages try to catch up. Government finances are under pressure, taxes feel permanently “up for review”, and confidence is fragile after years of economic whiplash.

Layer on top of that fears about AI reshaping jobs, property prices wobbling, and bond markets behaving in ways that shocked people who thought they were the safe part of the portfolio, and it’s no wonder nerves are frayed.

So let’s tackle the big question head on:

If you’re 59, should you still be in growth with your pension, or is it time to get defensive?

First, pause for a moment. None of this is new.

If I walked you back over the last 30 or 40 years, you’d see the same pattern again and again. The dot-com boom and bust, the GFC, September 11, wars and oil shocks. There’s also been several banking crises, Brexit, COVID shutting the world overnight, sudden rate rises, property markets freezing, borders closing, jobs disappearing, bond markets falling when they were meant to protect you. Think about it… panic, relief, repeat.

Every single generation thinks this moment is uniquely dangerous. It never has been yet!

What does change is how it feels when you’re in your late 50s.

Suddenly, you’re not just watching markets wobble from a distance. You’re close enough to retirement to feel it in your gut. It can feel like you’re standing right at the edge, thinking,
“I really can’t afford to get this wrong now.”

So let’s slow this down and put it into plain English.

This decision is not really about your age.
It’s about when and how you’ll actually use your pension and your ISAs.

If you’re 59 or 60 but you’re not planning to draw heavily on your pension and ISAs for another 5, 10, or even 15 years, then your time horizon is still long. And long time horizons are exactly what growth assets are designed for. They are bumpy in the short term, yes, but historically they’ve done a much better job of growing money faster than inflation over time.

This is the part people often fail to understand. You don’t spend all your money in the first few years of retirement. And modern retirement is not a short phase anymore. Many people will spend 25 or 30 years drawing income. That means a large chunk of your money still needs to keep working for a very long time.

In the UK, there’s another important layer to this conversation.

Most people aren’t actively choosing “growth” or “defensive” at all. They’re in lifestyle or target-date funds by default. These funds automatically reduce risk as you approach a nominated retirement age, steadily shifting you out of equities and into bonds and cash, often without any check on whether that timing actually matches your plans.

For some people, that glide path is helpful.
For others, it quietly pushes them into a far more defensive position than they realise, far earlier than they need.

And this matters, because we also need to say something else out loud.

More people in the UK (than in Australia) are genuinely terrified of growth assets.

Not just cautious, properly afraid.

For many, “growth” feels like gambling. It’s associated with crashes, pension scandals, broken promises, and the fear of losing everything just as retirement comes into view. That fear has been learned over decades, and it’s understandable.

But avoiding growth altogether isn’t a risk-free choice. It’s just as risky in my opinion.

Inflation doesn’t arrive with dramatic headlines in the news. Instead, it quietly erodes your spending power year after year. And over a long retirement, money that never grows is money that steadily shrinks in real terms.

Which brings us to the real issue. The biggest risk for most people isn’t growth versus balanced investments. It’s their behaviour.

If market falls make you anxious, or if you know you’re the type who might switch out after a big drop just to stop the discomfort, that’s the danger zone to be aware of and catch yourself. Not because growth is “bad”, but because panic-selling is how real, permanent damage gets done to retirement plans.

In that case, holding a slightly more balanced mix isn’t about maximising returns. It’s about helping you stay invested when things wobble, instead of jumping out at exactly the wrong time.

Another important question is whether you’ll need a lump of money soon.

If you’re planning to use part of your pension in the next couple of years, perhaps to clear a mortgage, support family, or fund a big life change, that portion probably shouldn’t be riding market ups and downs. One of the most overlooked ideas in retirement planning is that you don’t have to treat your entire pension the same way.

Some money can be invested for long-term growth. While other money can be kept more stable for near-term needs.

What worries me most is when people freeze.

They move everything to cash “until things settle down”. Or they let their lifestyle fund quietly slide them into ultra-defensive settings because the economic mood feels unbearable. Then they sit there for years, missing recoveries, while inflation quietly eats away at their future income. Ironically, fear-driven decisions often create more risk, not less.

A more sensible approach assumes the world will always be messy. Because it is. And it always has been. So if you’re in your late 50s and feeling nervous right now, the question isn’t really “growth or defensive?”

It’s this:

How do you stay invested in growth without blowing yourself up when markets wobble?

Two ideas help here: buckets and guardrails.

Buckets are about matching money to when you’ll need it. You can think about your pension and other investments in three broad buckets.

The first bucket holds money you expect to use in the next few years. This is your sleep-at-night money. It’s there to fund early retirement spending and cover surprises. This bucket is usually more defensive.

The second bucket is for the middle years. Money you won’t touch for a while, but not decades away. This is often where balanced strategies sit.

The third bucket is long-term money. Funds that may not be touched for 10, 15, or even 20 years. This is where growth assets belong. This bucket helps protect you against inflation and the risk of living longer than expected.

Guardrails are what stop you making emotional decisions at the worst possible time.

Instead of reacting to headlines, you set simple rules in advance. For example, if markets fall sharply, you don’t sell growth assets. You draw spending from your defensive bucket instead. You only rebalance back into growth when things stabilise, not when fear is running the show.

Guardrails don’t eliminate risk, nothing does. Their job is just to help you contain it. That’s very different from gambling on the market, or pretending volatility won’t happen. Because it will, always. The goal should just be to build a plan you can live with, stick to, and sleep well with. Then, make it epic!

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I’ve just turned 50. And I’m taking this decade very seriously. I want my 80 year old self to be pleased with how I looked after my 50 year old body and mind. So I’m putting a big focus on changing my exercise program to include a lot more heavy weights, regular walking and other cardio too. I’m also re-shaping my diet to have a lot more protein and wholesome eating in it.

I’m not pretending to be an expert in the space. I’m fortunate to have interviewed some of the best in the world in 50+ physiology in my Aussie podcast over the last year - and I’m reading a lot of books too. Health needs to be a priority in midlife - whether you like it or not. And I’m determined this year is the year that I don’t stop the focus part-way-through. How are you going with your health?

The UK voice of How to Have an Epic Retirement is going to be one of my other focuses on my Facebook and Instagram page this month, teaching some of the lessons in short clips. If you don’t follow me, be sure to come along. I’ll #UK at the beginning of posts so you can see which ones are for you… I also make quite a bit of Aussie education which you can roll past.

Facebook: facebook.com/becwilsonepic

Instagram: instagram.com/epicretirement

The book is going super-well, so my focus is now to grow this newsletter which is already read by more than 90,000 people in the UK. If you know someone approaching retirement, send it to them and suggest they subscribe for free. Hopefully you’ll make two people very happy (me and them). I’m trying to bring it out weekly, with useful titbits each week. If you have ideas or things you need help with, message me - simply reply to the email.

Now, have a great Sunday… Make it epic.

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Why you shouldn’t touch your tax-free pension in your fifties

Just because you can access your pot from 55 doesn’t mean that you should

In the UK, something rather odd happens in your mid-fifties. Nothing dramatic changes about your health, your energy, or your usefulness to the world. But suddenly the system taps you on the shoulder and says: you may now start spending your pension.

For many people, that permission quickly snowballs into a big and often poorly examined question. If I can make withdrawals from my pension, should I take as much of it as I can? And once that thought takes hold, retirement can start to feel like the logical next step, even if nothing else in life is actually pointing that way.

Someone called Sam wrote to me last week grappling with exactly this issue. He is 54, tired, financially organised and approaching pension-access age.

“I don’t need the money yet,” he said. “But it feels like this is the point where I should take the 25 per cent tax-free. The system lets me do it for a reason, doesn’t it? Or maybe I should think about retiring.”

That feeling is a real problem.

Read the rest of this article here in The Times. It was published on Monday 2nd February 2026

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: The two big money questions everyone asks by the end of January

From Bec’s Desk: Should I start a podcast in the UK?

Read my article in The Times: Five simple things most savers don’t know about their pensions

The two big money questions everyone asks in January

There’s a moment that seems to happen to most of us, at the beginning of every year. And once you’re in your 50s and 60s you really do start to feel it.

The holidays end. The kids go back to school if they’re still with you. The diary refills with things you ‘have’ to do. Work cranks back up to full pace. And somewhere between ironing work clothes, sorting lunches, fighting the commute and clearing the holiday backlog in your inbox, two or three weeks into the year, a quiet but persistent thought starts tapping you on the shoulder:

How long do I really have to keep doing this? When can I retire?

For some people, the next step is to get proactive and start running the numbers. How much do I have in my pensions? What am I likely to get from the State Pension? How far away can retirement really be?

For others, there’s no numbers moment at all. They resign themselves to the belief that it’s simply too many years to bother counting, and do nothing.

Whichever type of person you are, if this question is even crossing your mind, it’s worth paying attention.

Because no matter how much you have, or don’t have, or how hard you work, almost everyone can take early steps to get better control over their ability to choose how and when they step back from work, rather than simply waiting for a distant age or magic number to arrive.

And a break from the usual pace of work has a way of sharpening perspective and giving you a good motivation to put the work in. Time away with family or friends, or simply time with fewer demands, reminds us what life feels like when it isn’t tightly packed. When work routines snap back into place, it’s natural to wonder how long life is meant to feel like this.

For many people, that question isn’t really about retiring tomorrow. It’s about gaining more control, and having more say over how work fits into their life, rather than the other way around.

The problem is that “When can I retire?” is a blunt question. It treats retirement as a single finish line, rather than a series of gradual decisions made incrementally, ideally with financial confidence over time. It frames the goal as stopping, rather than adjusting, reshaping or transitioning into a new phase of life.

What many people should really be asking is something more useful: how to decide what is enough, and how to build a life that allows for real choices well before paid work dries up.

That’s where practical steps matter, taking small, deliberate actions that build flexibility over time.

The first step is simply understanding what you already have, and what that actually gets you.

For most people in the UK, that starts with getting a clearer picture of their pensions. That might include a current workplace pension, one or more older schemes from previous jobs, and possibly a personal pension or SIPP, alongside an understanding of what the State Pension is likely to contribute. Rather than treating pensions as abstract balances to worry about later, it’s worth seeing them as a system that will shape the choices available to you over time.

Most pension providers now offer online tools that make this easier than it once was. With a bit of time and a login, you can see your current balances, explore what level of income they might translate into later on, and test how small changes now, such as increasing contributions, could affect the outcome over time.

The second step is to think about how you want life to look over the years ahead.

Once you have a clearer sense of what you have and how it might support you, the task isn’t to squeeze more out of every pound in your budget or rush towards an exit in burnout. It’s to start thinking about the shape of the life you want over the years and decades ahead, and how work, money and time might fit together.

This is a type of consideration that only people with some financial stability can afford to have. That, in itself, is a reminder that doing the work to understand your position is worthwhile.

For many people, that doesn’t mean stopping work early or making dramatic changes. It means asking more practical questions about how work might evolve over time. What would life look like with fewer days, or more flexibility in when and how you work? If your current role is wearing you down, are there different types of work you might prefer later on, and is it worth thinking about that sooner rather than later?

This kind of thinking isn’t short-term or exhausting. It’s not about maximising or hacking your way out of work. It’s about using the information you have to gradually and deliberately widen the range of options available to you.

The third step is not leaving everything until the last minute. Making small adjustments earlier in life can allow for far more choice later on.

That often starts with the unglamorous basics. Taking a clear look at your spending to make sure you’re living within your means and building some savings, even if they’re modest. Reducing or clearing debt where possible. Thinking ahead about housing decisions, including whether a future move could reduce costs or free up capital. None of these decisions need to be rushed, and they won’t suit everyone. But made earlier rather than later, they can materially change how much flexibility you have over work, income and lifestyle in the years ahead.

So as January ends, this is a good moment to use these nagging questions constructively. Not to chase a retirement date, but to spend some time understanding your numbers and what they actually allow for.

Done well, that means next January doesn’t arrive with the same sense of uncertainty. Instead of asking “When can I retire?”, you have a clearer sense of your options. When part-time work might be possible. How flexible you can afford to be. And, eventually, when stopping altogether could become a choice rather than a leap into the unknown.

It’s been a week since I left the chilly weather of the UK behind and landed back in Australia for a very warm start of the year. It’s going to be a busy one.

I have lots of travel ahead, to deliver retirement education, and our biggest focus for Q1 is completing our How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course for the UK. This will launch in May we’ve decided. You can register your interest here. The first program is always run as a discounted pilot - a great way to get an awesome deal. It’s a well-loved program in Australia and we’re rebuilding it completely for the the UK.

And, the book is selling like hot cakes. Thousands of books have sold in less than two months! Thank you to everyone who has bought one. I really am thrilled you’re enjoying it, and sharing the stories and lessons with your friends and community. You can get your copy on Amazon here. And after you’ve read it - please leave me a review. It really helps!

I’m toying with launching a podcast in the UK, specifically for the UK community. What do you think? Want to learn more about retirement and the years before it - and how to make it epic?

And, if there’s ideas you have for what you need help with - hit reply and send me an email. I’d love to get your input and insight into topics you want covered while we’re doing out 2026 planning. Now, have a lovely Sunday!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Five simple things most savers don’t know about their pensions

If you feel lost when it comes to retirement planning, you are not alone. Bec Wilson explains the basics

I know this is The Times, and most readers here are smart, savvy and financially literate in their professional lives. But one thing I’ve learnt, after years of talking to people on the street and in boardrooms, is that pensions are still a mystery to far more people than you might expect.

In fact some of the most impressive, high-achieving people I know have quietly sidled up to me at parties to ask questions about their pension that surprise me in their simplicity. Not because they’re foolish but because no one ever really taught them the basics. And because pensions are one of those topics people feel they should already understand, many are reluctant to ask for fear of looking ignorant.

I’m here to say this plainly. Starting with the basics matters, even if you’re successful, good at your job and earning well. In fact, most especially then.

I’m a big believer in practical foundations and helping people learn without embarrassment. So today I want to walk you through five simple things you can do with your pension that many people don’t realise but absolutely should.

I’m the Retirement Columnist for The Times. This is an excerpt. Read this article in The Times.

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: The retirement question most people ask backwards

From Bec’s Desk: En route back to Australia but never far away

Read my article in The Times: Five simple things most savers don’t know about their pensions

The retirement question most people ask backwards

Here’s one question I hear all the time, all over the world, and it makes me slightly shudder. Because when people ask it, they’re usually looking for the wrong kind of answer.

“How much is enough to retire?”

Most people don’t realise that the answer they’re hoping for isn’t actually very helpful.

If I tell you a number — whether it’s an average pension pot size people are chasing, or a headline figure for a ‘comfortable’ retirement – you still haven’t got much to work with. That’s because those numbers don’t tell you how your life will actually be funded, year by year.

The number you really need to work your way towards isn’t a big fat pension pot total at all.

It’s this: what does your retirement income look like in layers, and how much of that income do you need to fund from your own savings versus how much will come from other sources each year? And - for how many years might I live?

Once you look at it this way, retirement planning becomes far more practical.

You stop asking, “How big does my pension pot need to be?”
And instead you ask: “How much income do I need each year, and where is it going to come from?”

Most people in the UK will have a mix of income sources in retirement. The mistake is to look at each one in isolation (or fear), rather than seeing how they stack together.

For almost everyone, the first layer comes from the State Pension. The full new State Pension is currently worth around £230.25 per week or about £11,973 a year (in 2025/26 and going up soon) if you’ve got a full National Insurance record. That’s income you won’t need to generate from your savings — and it forms a base layer of your retirement income.

But the State Pension alone usually isn’t enough for many people’s lifestyle goals. UK pensioners’ total incomes after housing costs still average around £407 per week or more according to official UK pensioner income statistics. That’s because most retirees also draw on other sources.

For many people, part of that next layer comes from workplace pensions, whether occupational schemes from employers or private personal pensions built up across a working life. These may be defined benefit (less common now) or defined contribution pots that you draw income from in a flexible way (often called drawdown).

Some people will also have income or assets outside their pension pots – investments, savings, rental income or other returns – that can top up what they receive each year.

And for a lot of people, especially in early retirement, there’s still some work income in the mix – not full-time or forever, but work on your terms that contributes to your total income and eases the draw on your savings.

Only after you’ve accounted for all of those income layers do you get to the final piece of the puzzle:

“How much income still needs to come from your pension savings?”

That’s the number that actually matters.

A pension pot isn’t there to fund your entire retirement income on its own. It’s there to fill the gap between what you want to spend each year and what’s coming in from other sources.

When you understand this, a lot of the anxiety falls away.

You’re no longer trying to hit a single “magic” savings figure.
You’re building an income picture, layer by layer and that should be a picture you can actually use.

That’s why the question “How much is enough to retire?” is the wrong place to start.

The better place to start is much simpler:

What total income do I want each year to cover my living costs and lifestyle goals?
What income will I get from each source each year?
And what does my pension savings need to cover?

Get that right, and retirement planning becomes a lot more grounded in reality and a lot less about hope.

I cover a lot more on this in my UK Edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement. If you want to learn about retirement - in easy-to-read, easy-to-act-on steps, that’s what it’s for. It’s not a heavy finance book, it’s a book about all the choices you have to make your retirement epic - and how you can make them in YOUR favour.

Get yourself a copy via Amazon here.

En route back to Australia

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be on my way back to Australia after two very full weeks in London. It’s been one of those trips where you come home with your head buzzing. Meetings with pension providers, long conversations with people working in policy, systems, innovation and advice, and plenty of time spent talking through what retirement actually looks like on the ground for people in the UK.

In some ways, the UK is ahead of Australia. There’s a much stronger push to turn pension savings into income, and a clear expectation that providers should actively guide people once they reach retirement. There’s structure, direction, and increasingly, automation.

At the same time, what really struck me is how often that guidance still leaves people feeling unsure. There are lots of rules, lots of products, and not always enough plain-English explanation about how all the moving parts fit together in real life. Choice exists, but it can feel constrained or confusing.

That tension – between guidance and genuine understanding – is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.

It’s also why I was pleased to see basic retirement literacy as a priority. I had an article published in The Times while I was here, looking at what people know about their pensions and what they should and could know - if they wanted to learn the basics. It’s fun to talk to people in an easy, no expectations kind of manner, and make retirement a more relaxed and less scary conversation.

I’ll be fortnightly in The Times from now on…. keep an eye out.

For me, the focus remains the same but spans Australia and the UK with more for New Zealand now too. Not pushing people into a particular product or outcome, but helping them understand how retiring, goal setting for retirement, and then, retirement income actually works — how the State Pension, workplace and personal pensions, savings, investments, and even work income can layer together over time. Once that clicks, the decisions become far less intimidating.

Now it’s back to Australia, and full steam ahead on the next phase of work. I’ll be sharing more UK-specific thinking and practical content here as it develops. In fact, we’ve launched our Epic Retirement Institute in the UK while I’ve been there, and we’re building our first 6-week UK-specific course, which you can register your interest for here.

As always, if there’s a question you keep circling back to, or a topic you’d like me to cover, just hit reply. I read every email.

More soon.

Bec

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Five simple things most savers don’t know about their pensions

If you feel lost when it comes to retirement planning, you are not alone. Bec Wilson explains the basics

I know this is The Times, and most readers here are smart, savvy and financially literate in their professional lives. But one thing I’ve learnt, after years of talking to people on the street and in boardrooms, is that pensions are still a mystery to far more people than you might expect.

In fact some of the most impressive, high-achieving people I know have quietly sidled up to me at parties to ask questions about their pension that surprise me in their simplicity. Not because they’re foolish but because no one ever really taught them the basics. And because pensions are one of those topics people feel they should already understand, many are reluctant to ask for fear of looking ignorant.

This article was published in digital on Monday January 19, in The Times and will be in the print edition this week. You can read it here.

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: Learning to spend after a lifetime of saving

From Bec’s Desk: Hello from London

Learning to spend after a lifetime of saving

For forty years we’re taught to watch our balances rise. Bank accounts, super, pensions - they’re all meant to go up. That’s the scoreboard of doing life well. That’s how you know you’re being sensible, responsible, grown-up. Bigger pension pots of juicy ISAs, compound growth!

Over many years, you learn to feel calmer when the numbers go up. You sleep better. You tell yourself you’re building security, protecting your future, being a good parent, a good partner, and a good adult.

Then you get to retirement.

And even the most capable, well-planned people feel a hefty jolt of discomfort as they have to start drawing down, and they watch the numbers start to go the other way. Some say it feels like a tightening in the chest. Others, a sense that something isn’t right. It feels like you’re doing something you were never meant to do.

You can know, intellectually, that your retirement plan works. You can have spreadsheets, projections, buffers and even a financial adviser telling you it’ll be ok. And still feel a flicker of guilt every time you draw money out. It’s as if you’re being careless. As if you’re letting your younger, harder-working self down by dipping into this pot to do things that go beyond spending on the basic cost of living.

But we have to remember, that’s what it’s been built for.

The guilt and discomfort people feel when spending in retirement is a widespread issue. And if it’s happening to you, you’re normal.

What’s actually going on here isn’t a money problem. It’s a conditioning problem.

For decades, your nervous system has been trained to associate not spending with safety. Saving became a form of control. Restraint was rewarded. Watching balances rise meant you were doing the right thing, protecting the future, being prudent.

So when retirement flips the system from accumulation to drawdown, your brain doesn’t calmly update the rules. It flags ‘danger, danger, danger’. It treats spending as a threat, even when it’s planned and affordable.

That’s why reassuring yourself doesn’t always work. More spreadsheets don’t fix it (but they’re important). Neither does being told, again, that “you’ll be fine”. Your brain isn’t confused about the maths. It’s reacting to a lifetime of habit.

There’s also a second layer to this. For most people, money has always flowed in one direction: work first, enjoyment later. Spending was delayed, justified, or rationed. In retirement, that sequence reverses. You’re being asked to enjoy first, without the psychological permission slip of having “earned it this month”.

That’s a big shift. And it’s why so many people hover in an uncomfortable middle ground. Retired on paper, but still living emotionally like they’re preparing for it.

So what actually helps?

First, you need to change how the money shows up in your life.
It’s not just about how much you have, but how you experience it. People almost always feel better spending “income” that has been designated as an income stream, than dipping into a lump sum. So, acknowledge this and consider setting up a regular transfer into a spending account that allows for both your cost of living and annual discretionary spending. This can be surprisingly powerful. It restores a sense of rhythm and legitimacy to what you can do. You’re not eroding an important savings pot every time you spend. You’re using money that’s been allocated for living life well.

Second, decide your spending rules in advance.
Most guilt doesn’t come from spending. It comes from impulse decision-making in the moment. If every purchase requires a judgement call about whether you’re being sensible, of course it feels uncomfortable to spend on joyous things. So, to get around this you can simply agree on a level of spending ahead of time, ideally when you’re calm and rational. Then let yourself spend within it without renegotiating every coffee, dinner, or plane ticket.

Third, recognise that some spending has a timing window.
Health, energy, mobility and curiosity are not evenly distributed across your retirement years. Some experiences are easier, richer, or only possible earlier on in life. And, if you delay all of your discretionary spending in the name of safety, you may end up protecting money you can’t fully use in the way you once imagined. Heck - you or your partner might even die, or lose mobility before you get to enjoy it if you’re not careful.

None of this is about being reckless. It’s about aligning your spending with the reality of this phase of life. Learning to spend after forty years of saving is not a moral failure or something to feel guilty about. It’s simply another transition. One most people were never prepared for.

But, if you can notice the feelings, understand your capacity to spend, and get ahead of the guilt, you can adapt.

This week’s challenge isn’t to spend more. It’s to stop reflexively telling yourself you can’t, and work out what you actually can afford.

And, if you need a little help, get yourself a copy of my book, How to Have an Epic Retirement. It’s an Amazon bestseller in the UK.

I’m writing this from London, where I’ve been based for the past week, moving between meetings with UK pension funds and recording the very first UK edition of the Epic Retirement Flagship Course.

It’s been a great week and there’s another one ahead. Insightful, energising, and if I’m honest, just about long enough to remind me that living out of a suitcase and a small hotel, bustling through The Tube in the bitter wet cold by day is tough stuff (and kudos to you all for doing it!). I head back to Australia and the hot weather in a few days, but before I do, I wanted to share one important piece of news.

This week, we officially welcomed Charlotte Gibson as the UK Lead of the Epic Retirement Institute. So that means - we’re doing it. The Epic Retirement Courses, education and support is fully rolling out, and getting more and more tailored for the UK.

Working across Australia and the UK in retirement education was always going to be complex, particularly with me based on the other side of the world. The systems are different (though often surprisingly similar). The emotional relationship people have with money and ageing isn’t quite the same. And practically speaking, it’s a long way to travel for a meeting to be on the same timezone.

So finding the right person to help lead this work in the UK really mattered. I still plan to be here very regularly - but Charlotte is here all the time!

Charlotte is a rare combination. She’s both a pensions actuary and a retirement coach, which means she understands the technical detail of the system deeply, but also understands the very human experience of approaching and living through retirement. She brings rigour without dryness, and warmth without fluff. I’m genuinely delighted to be working with her as we build the UK side of this work properly and thoughtfully.

This year already feels like an important one for retirement.

Possibly the biggest year of retirements we’ve ever seen.

And the book is out there to help people in the UK navigate it now. I’ve seen it on the shelves this week and visited with my publisher in London too. If you haven’t got a copy yet - now’s a great time. You can order it in any Waterstones (or any other bookstore), or easily get a copy on Amazon, delivered quickly. Order here.

It’s the ultimate guidebook for retirement. Enormously comprehensive. So comprehensive in fact that it goes far beyond the financial lessons, and more deeply addresses:

• time and longevity (or how long you might live and how to use that to plan),

• how you build your financial confidence for retirement ( the actual money and pension info you need and the important lessons on spending, drawdown and building your retirement paycheck too)

• your health and how to age better

• your happiness and sense of purpose in retirement

• travel - and how to get amazing deals and enormous fulfilment in retirement

• And finally, your home as you age - and preparing to be prepared for how that works

I’m not a boring financial writer (or I very much try not to be). I focus on all the facets of retirement - financial and non-financial. I’m on your team, trying to help you weed out what’s important and get that done, and not get tricked down any rabbit holes! Again - you can order it on Amazon here.

The book is the textbook for our new How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course for the UK too, which we will launch in April/May in the UK. We’ll be running the first 6-week program as a pilot at a special discount price. You can register your interest (no obligation) to find out more here. Charlotte and I will be your educators.

One final UK-specific note. I’m now writing a regular retirement column for The Times. The next one should be out this weekend - or within days - so keep an eye out here.

As always, thank you for being here and for your continued support.

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: Are you ready to step off the ladder?

From Bec’s Desk: Happy New Year and all the good things that lie ahead

Read my article in The Times: We means-test the state pension in Australia — the UK should too

A community member’s reflection: “Am I ready to step off the ladder?”

One of the things I love most about the Epic Retirement community is how honest people are willing to be about the real stuff. Not just the numbers or the strategies, but the feelings that sit underneath their decsion to retire.

This week, a community member shared something that stopped and made me want to share it. They’re approaching 58 and trying to make sense of what retirement actually means - not just financially, but emotionally. Today I want to share part of their reflection, because I suspect it will resonate with many of you.

They wrote:

From the moment we are born, life is about moving forward. Every day is about the next step. School years, exams, further study - there’s always something ahead, something to work towards.

That feeling only grows stronger once you start working and building a career. You give your time, your energy, often yourself, to climbing the ladder because that’s what you’re conditioned to do. Even when there are setbacks, the goal is still progress. Still forward.

Then one day, something shifts.

You wake up and the engine doesn’t feel the same. It’s not broken - just quieter. Slower. Maybe it’s starting to run out of fuel. And suddenly everything you’ve spent a lifetime working towards feels uncertain, even questioned.

What struck me most was how clearly they captured something I hear again and again: retirement isn’t scary because people haven’t planned for it. It’s scary because it asks you to stop doing the thing you’ve spent decades being rewarded for. And that’s something that becomes almost hard-wired into us.

They went on:

Deciding to retire - choosing to call it a day - is probably the biggest conscious decision a person makes. It’s frightening in ways that are hard to explain.

Can I really afford it?
What will I do with all that time?
And perhaps the hardest question of all, “Am I ready to no longer feel needed, relied upon, or wanted?”

That last question hit me hard. Because money questions are solvable - you can do the sums and negotiate your standard of living using factual information. Identity questions are messier and harder to work through - and they require introspection.

Their reflection ends not with a neat and tidy answer, but with a pause:

I think I’ll probably carry on until 60. Two more years to save, to top up my super, and to prepare myself mentally and emotionally. Two more years to get my head into the right place, so that one day I can walk into work, take a breath, and say, “I’m off,” knowing it’s truly the right time for me.

I wanted to share this because it captures something important about this phase of life. Retirement isn’t a switch you flick or a finish line you run over, and suddenly you’re in paradise.
It’s a phase of transition you arrive at and decide to pursue (or frankly someone else decides it’s time for you if you aren’t proactive). And sometimes the most sensible, self-aware decision isn’t rushing forward into an early retirement or clinging on for a late one at all. It’s simply giving yourself permission to sit with the question for a while and see how they feel - and what decisions feel right for you.

What other people are doing or thinking about for their own retirement can be completely irrelevant. This is your next best phase of life, and I want it to be something you enjoy - so it has to be about what you want.

If this reflection resonated with you, you’re certainly not alone. Many people in their late 50s and early 60s aren’t asking “Can I retire?” — they’re asking “Am I ready to stop climbing the ladder?” and ‘“What else could I do that would be more suited or more enjoyable’“.

And those questions deserve time, honesty, and a bit of self-compassion in my opinion.

If you feel like sharing, I’d love to know:

Our community loves to talk - if you have your own views, leave them in the comments.

Leave a comment

Welcome back, and Happy New Year.

I’m back at work on Monday, but this time working from the UK as we formally launch the Epic Retirement Institute over here too. It’s pretty exciting to see what started as a small idea to help people better understand retirement and make more informed pre-retirement and retirement decisions now rolling out in the UK, where around five times more people retire each year than in Australia and New Zealand. And I plan to make regular visits to the UK and New Zealand in 2026, as we do more and more retirement education to help people.

I’ve just had three really good weeks off, and we closed the Epic Retirement Club for 12 days as well. I’ve loved the digital detox, the content-making detox, and spending a rapturous amount of time with my family.

We’ve been up in the hills of France on a proper adventure. Each year we try to take the family somewhere we haven’t been before, so we’re all discovering it together. It’s especially fun now the kids are almost adults and we’re basically travelling with our favourite drinking and dining buddies. My nearly 80 year old parents came too and we’ve just finished celebrating my fiftieth birthday. I don’t feel old enough to be fifty! 😁

Now, on the UK front, I’m excited to announce that we have appointed the wonderful and well-respected Charlotte Gibson to be the UK Lead of the Epic Retirement Institute. Charlotte has many skills in finance, and in retirement coaching. She has worked right across the pensions sector and has even worked as the Head of Retirement for one of the widely respected pension funds! This week in London we are recording several modules of the How to Have an Epic Retirement six-week Flagship Course for the UK. This is a program that we are planning to launch in Q2 2026. You can register your expression of interest via the link here and we’ll notify you once the course is headed into pilot. Our pilot students get a once-in-a-lifetime discount.

I’ve also opened a healthy can of worms in the week leading up to Christmas in The Times where I am the retirement columnist. You can read it here.

In the week just gone I celebrated turning 50! Yep! That was a great reason for a fancy dinner out with my kids and my nearly 80-year old parents who have made the trek to France to celebrate with me. Three generations travelling together - aren’t I a lucky duck! See my 50th birthday pics on Facebook and Instagram here:

• Facebook: facebook.com/becwilsonepic

• Insta: instagram.com/epicretirement

Plenty more to come, but as I’m still on holidays for a day more as I write this, I’ll keep it tight. Know someone who’s thinking about retiring? Tell them about the book, my column in the Times and the newsletter. Let’s make everyone’s retirement more epic!

And thank you for all your support!

Cheers - Bec Xx

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

We means-test the state pension in Australia — the UK should too

Times Money’s retirement specialist says there’s a reason this unpopular idea refuses to go away, and that’s because it works

Pressure is building on the UK’s state pension, and most people know it. Something has to give. The uncomfortable question is what. There are about 278 pensioners for every 1,000 working-age people in the UK. That’s a ratio of just 3.6: 1. Back in 1948 when the basic state pension was introduced there were about five workers for every pensioner.

In simple terms, there are fewer workers supporting more pensioners, and for much longer. As life expectancies increase, the cost of funding the state pension is only going one way: up.

Retirement is now expected to last close to three decades for many people. It’s no surprise that younger and middle-aged workers worry about whether the system will still work by the time they get there, while older workers wonder whether the rules will change just as they reach the finish line with fear.

This article continues in The Times. Read it here.

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Feature: There’s a better question to ask this year at Christmas than ‘when are you retiring’. Try this …

From Bec’s Desk: This is my last Epic Retirement newsletter for the year.

Read my articles in The Times this week: There’s two - The top six retirement regrets — and how to avoid them and an extract from How to Have an Epic Retirement

There’s a better question to ask this year at Christmas than ‘when are you retiring’. Try this …

Around Christmas tables, that big question comes up sooner or later. ‘When will you retire?’ It’s rarely asked out of pure curiosity and it can carry a bit of judgement, a bit of comparison, and usually some unspoken anxiety about money, age or timing. I’m not a fan really.

A more interesting question is simpler. ‘What are you looking forward to in January of 2026?’

The answers tell you a lot.

Some people answer this question easily. They talk about a trip, a project, a habit they’ve decided to keep going once the year resets. They don’t sound like they’re waiting for something to start - or worse, their working life to finish before they start. Life already has some shape to it and they’re on the move.

Others pause, then talk about their work. Deadlines, meetings, the comfort of routine returning. For many people, work isn’t just income. It’s structure, identity and a ready-made reason to get out of bed. That matters more to retirement decisions than we usually admit.

Then there are people who don’t really have an answer. January is just the resumption of obligations and running on the wheel of life. Or the driving forward of other people’s lives - their kids, their partner’s. You know what it’s like. Nothing bad, nothing good. Just forward motion.

That response is worth paying attention to. Retirement doesn’t create interests, energy or direction - truly. It tends to expose what’s already there. If time feels thin now, more of it later doesn’t automatically fix that.

This is why I think the lead-up to retirement matters more than the date itself. People who manage the shift well usually haven’t waited for a clean break to think about what they want to do. They’ve already built some things they want to keep doing and some fresh ideas for the year ahead. They’re not relying on grand passions or reinventions, just activities and rhythms that aren’t entirely dependent on work.

Christmas is useful in that sense. It disrupts your routine without committing you to anything. A few weeks of different days, different people, and a different pace can be good for you - and can help you see life a little differently. Some enjoy it. Some can’t wait for normal life to resume. Both reactions are information you can use when considering your year ahead and your retirement setup phase.

January doesn’t need to be filled with ambition. It just needs to include something you’ve chosen, rather than something that’s been handed to you or that would have happened anyway.

So if you’re tempted to ask someone when they’ll retire over Christmas, try the January question instead. And if you can’t answer it yourself, that’s a healthy signal that you might want to get curious and start looking for things to inspire you for the year a

head. And don’t worry - you’re not late for the party - yet! So work through how you want to use your time best in 2026, and think about what you’re looking forward to.

Make it epic - and tell me your answers in the comments.

Leave a comment

This is my last Epic Retirement newsletter for the year. And I’m writing one that will go to both our UK and Aussie/Kiwi newsletter readers.

I’m about to head off on a family holiday and trying, with mixed success, to turn the volume down for a proper break. It’s been a big year. I wanted to write something thoughtful, but I’m tired, I haven’t packed, my flight’s in eight hours, and the to-do list is winning. My husband wants me to get off the computer.

So this is the honest version.

A lot of what’s happened this year exists because this community kept nudging, questioning, sharing and saying “go on then”. That, plus some very good people who worked alongside me, has turned into a year I’m proud of.

Working backwards, we launched How to Have an Epic Retirement in the UK this week. It landed at number one on Amazon in Financial Retirement Planning and a few other categories. That matters less for the ranking and more because it shows the ideas about an Epic Retirement travel. The questions people are asking about retirement are remarkably similar, wherever they live. And we’ve got a few good answers.

My UK articles in The Times UK have also kicked off, and I’m now writing a fortnightly retirement column. That’s been a real thrill, and I’m keen for it to be driven by real reader questions. If there’s something you want explored, send it through. I cant be posting it in here as a photo very often

The Australian and New Zealand edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement dropped three weeks ago and went into reprint within two weeks. You bought more copies than my publisher expected, and that’s a very good problem to have.

This year, a lot of people went through the How to Have an Epic Retirement Flagship Course. What’s made that satisfying isn’t the number, but how seriously people engaged with it. You didn’t skim it. You really used it. The feedback blows me away. Thanks for that.

We also launched the HESTA exclusive edition of the course, with the first 1,000 students completing the program. More rounds are coming in February and mid-year 2026, so if you’re with HESTA, keep an eye on your inbox.

The Prime Time podcast finished the year ranked 169 on the Aussie Podcast Ranker. Not bad company when you’re sitting between footy shows, radio giants and comedians.

My columns in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age were read 2.2 million times online this year. That still surprises me, and it reinforces how hungry people are for practical, grown-up conversations about ageing, work and money.

And the Epic Retirement Club Facebook community has grown to 640,000 people. That’s a lot of lived experience in one place.

Finally, the Epic Retirement Tick in Australia has started shifting how some super funds are prioritising retirement. Meaningfully it’s making it easier to see who’s actually lifting their game. Thanks to Chant West for their hard work on this too.

All of that sits on a healthy truth: this work only matters if it helps people make better choices about midlife and retirement related issues and feel more confident about the second half of life.

Thank you for being part of it this year. I’ll be back after the break, hopefully rested, definitely curious, and with plenty more to talk about.

The podcast will continue right through the holidays though - there’s some great episodes in the can - make sure you get the Prime Time Podcast newsletter here.

I’m incredibly grateful for all your time, energy and interest. Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

You can see some fun stuff I’m doing over the holidays with my family and to celebrate my 50th birthday with me on Facebook and Instagram.

• Facebook: facebook.com/becwilsonepic

• Insta: instagram.com/epicretirement

Cheers bigears! I’m off on holidays! Make yours epic and I’ll do my best too!

Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker

Read my articles in The Times this week

You don’t need £1 million to enjoy a rich retirement

Let’s get this out of the way early: you don’t need a million-pound pension to have a good retirement.

Seriously. It’s time to shift the mindset from “How big does my pot need to be?” to something far more useful: “What kind of life do I want, and how much will it cost?”

This is an extract from How to Have an Epic Retirement UK edition published in The Times this week. Read it here

The top six retirement regrets — and how to avoid them

Imagine that you are retired and looking back on the choices you made in your forties, fifties and sixties. What would you wish you had done differently? It is an uncomfortable question, but a useful one. It forces you to look not only at your financial decisions, but at the shape of the life you’re building.

In my retirement education work and online community I hear a lot of stories from people who have already crossed the threshold into retirement. And I’ve been looking more closely at the regrets they carry and what those regrets tell us about what we can do differently. Read it here

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

Before anyone gets carried away thinking retirement planning starts with pensions and spreadsheets and guidance, it’s worth saying plainly that it doesn’t. It starts with conversations. Often about life first, then money. Christmas is one of the few times when couples and families are relaxed enough to lift their heads above the day-to-day and talk honestly about what the future might look like. These early conversations shape everything that follows and help protect you from drifting into decisions that don’t actually fit the life you want.

The most useful way to approach these conversations is to let them unfold naturally, rather than tackling everything at once.

1. Start with yourself. Christmas gives you rare mental space to ask what you actually want from the next decade or two. What do you want more of, and what are you ready to let go of? How do you want your time, health, work and relationships to feel? Without this internal clarity, financial decisions tend to sit on shaky ground.

2. From there, talk with your partner about timing and lifestyle. Do you imagine retiring together or at different stages? What do ordinary weeks look like once work loosens its grip? What does a good Tuesday look like? Being able to picture everyday life matters far more than talking about one-off adventures.

3. Next, widen the lens to your family. Christmas often puts both ageing parents and adult children into sharper focus. You may notice subtle changes in your parents’ confidence or health, while also seeing your children step into independence, housing costs or financial pressure. These shifts don’t need dramatic conversations over the table, but they do influence your own plans more than people expect.

4. Only then does it make sense to talk about work and money. With some distance from your inbox, it’s easier to ask what role work still plays. Do you want to taper, change direction, work part-time or build a more flexible mix of income and interests? Retirement rarely needs to be all-or-nothing.

5. Before diving into pensions, it also helps to talk about home. Does where you live still suit the life you want to lead? Is it the right size, location and level of upkeep for the years ahead? You don’t need answers now, but you do need the conversation.

6. Once life is clearer, the money becomes far easier to deal with. You can look at spending, pensions, investments and timing with a sense of purpose rather than anxiety. Retirement planning doesn’t start with numbers. It ends with them.

7. And finally, ask yourself one powerful question: ‘what would you do with your days if pay wasn’t the main reason to work?’ If the answer isn’t obvious, that’s not a problem. It just becomes your project for the year ahead.

None of these conversations need to be perfect. They just need space to begin. Christmas often gives you that space. Good luck - consider it a grand adventure.

The top six retirement regrets — and how to avoid them

Plenty of people have told me what they should have done differently before giving up work. Here’s what I’ve learnt.

Imagine that you are retired and looking back on the choices you made in your forties, fifties and sixties. What would you wish you had done differently? It is an uncomfortable question, but a useful one. It forces you to look not only at your financial decisions, but at the shape of the life you’re building.

In my retirement education work and online community I hear a lot of stories from people who have already crossed the threshold into retirement. And I’ve been looking more closely at the regrets they carry and what those regrets tell us about what we can do differently.

These are not the predictable lines about “saving a bit earlier”. They point to something bigger. People are trying to build a life that works in a world where retirement is longer, less certain and far more dependent on personal decisions than it was for the generation before.

This article is published in The Times print edition on Saturday; and featured in digital on Tuesday December 9th. You can read it here.

New UK Edition of Epic Retirement is now #1 on the Amazon ‘Financial Retirement Planning’ Bestseller List

Get your copy of the new UK Bestselling pre-retirement guidebook, How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence.

How to Have an Epic Retirement is a practical, straight-talking guide for people in their 50s and 60s who want clarity about what comes next — without jargon, fear-mongering or hard sells.

Written for the UK system, it explains how retirement actually works today, from the State Pension and workplace pensions to drawdown, tax and spending. But it goes further than the numbers. It helps you think clearly about work, purpose, health, relationships and how to shape a life that still feels full once work steps back.

Buy the book

From Bec’s Desk

It’s such a buzz to share the news with you about the UK book. It genuinely feels like a shared win, and I’m so grateful to everyone who preordered or placed an order in week one. Thank you for being part of it.

With the book now launched, I can finally see the end of the runway into Christmas. I hope you’re starting to feel that shift too.

After the holidays, I’ll be joining you in the UK for the first month of 2026. If there are companies or community groups you think I should speak to, events to be part of, or radio spots worth chasing, I’d love to hear from you. My goal in life is to provide retirement education you can trust. You know I’m always happy to talk retirement. Just reply to this newsletter and I’ll get it.

Now go and enjoy your Sunday. No doubt there’s shopping to finish and family preparations underway.

Until next week… make it epic!

It’s true! This beautiful hardcover book reached #1 on the bestseller list for financial retirement planning in the UK on day one yesterday! Pinch me!

A little celebrating is due. How to Have an Epic Retirement: Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence has officially launched in stores and online yesterday across the UK and I’m thrilled to share with you that on day one, it shot to number one on the Amazon Bestseller List for ‘Financial Retirement Planning’ a big and important category. That’s such a thrill.

So now I guess we can call it an international bestseller. 😉

So I really just wanted to write to you, my Epic Retirement Club and Community to share the good news with you and say ‘thank-you!’. Clearly, your interest in the book had plenty to do with it. I wish I could give you all a great big hug!

And if it’s hiding under the Christmas tree, or you’ve treated yourself for some Christmas reading - I hope you thoroughly enjoy it.

If you haven’t yet picked up a copy, there’s still time to get one in time for the Christmas break, or to put under that tree for someone you love.

Here’s a link to Amazon. Make sure you order the Hardcover Edition - that’s the UK edition.

Buy it on Amazon

And thanks! thanks! thanks! I love what I do, helping people grapple with modern retirement. And it’s moments like these that make all the hard work visible.

Warm regards - Bec Xx

What’s the book about?

How to Have an Epic Retirement is the ultimate guidebook for modern retirement. Inside you’ll discover:

• How to master the six pillars of a fulfilling retirement: time, money, health, happiness and fulfilment, travel and your home as you age.

• Practical advice tailored to British systems - from pensions and the NHS to travel tips and property choices. It’s a complete rewrite created especially for the UK.

• Real life stories and answers to the questions most retirees wish they’d asked sooner.

Whether you’re planning your exit from the 9-to-5 or already enjoying freedom, this guide will help you make the most of your epic years - with confidence, clarity and a touch of flair.

The book is now available for pre-order on Amazon and through bookstores, with full release across all UK booksellers on Thursday 11 December. If your local bookshop or Waterstones hasn’t stocked it yet, a quick request will see it arrive within days.

Preorder now on Amazon UK

And if you’re thinking of buying it early, a pre-order genuinely helps get the book noticed – so thank you if you choose to place one today.

I hope you enjoy it and it inspires you to seek out a more epic retirement too!

From the back-cover:

How to have an Epic Retirement - Your ultimate guide to living well, loving life and retiring with financial confidence is the ultimate guidebook for modern retirement. Inside you’ll discover:

• How to master the six pillars of a fulfilling retirement: time, money, health, happiness, travel and home

• Practical advice tailored to British systems - from pensions and the NHS to travel tips and property choices

• Real life stories and answers to the questions most retirees wish they’d asked sooner

Whether you’re planning your exit from the 9-to-5 or already enjoying freedom, this guide will help you make the most of your epic years - with confidence, clarity and a touch of flair.

Part 2 - Money

Get a sense of what people really need to retire comfortably

Now that you’ve seen how the UK retirement system fits together, and how your income might come from a few different places, it’s time to talk about what really matters: How much do you actually need to live well in retirement?

It’s a deeply personal question and everyone will have different answers, but that doesn’t mean we should avoid it. By looking at some useful benchmarks for what comfortable looks like, you can start to picture and shape your own version of retirement with a bit more clarity.

YOU DON’T NEED A MILLION POUNDS TO RETIRE IN COMFORT

Let’s get this out of the way early: you don’t need a million-pound pension to have a good retirement. Seriously. It’s time to shift the mindset from ‘How big does my pot need to be?’ to something far more useful: ‘What kind of life do I want, and how much will it cost?’

We’ve already broken down the UK retirement system and the four main sources of income most people draw from:

1. The State Pension.

2. Workplace and personal pensions.

3. Savings and investments outside pensions.

4. Possibly your home, if you choose to access its value later.

When we look over all these things, we can start thinking practically about what those layers might add up to, and what kind of lifestyle they’ll support.

The first step in working that out is understanding what you’re likely to get from the State Pension, and when. Around 97 per cent of retirees receive it, so it’s the foundation most people build the rest of their retirement income around. Everything else gets layered on top.

It can feel a bit overwhelming when you first start digging into all the moving parts. But don’t panic! If you understand how the State Pension works, you’ve already ticked off one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. That income layer gives you a base you can count on, and you’ll build the rest using your workplace and personal pensions, savings, and other investments to top it up, smooth it out, and bring your lifestyle to life.

So how much more will you need – on top of that base – to live the kind of retirement you really want?

We’ll get to building a proper budget and looking at your real spending habits in the next section. But before we do that, it’s worth getting your head around some public retirement benchmarks – those official numbers used by planners, policymakers and researchers to help people set realistic retirement income goals.

There are two key benchmarks I want you to understand:

1. Target Replacement Rates

2. Pensions UK Retirement Living Standards.

TARGET REPLACEMENT RATES

One of the most useful planning tools in retirement is something called a target replacement rate. It’s a fancy term for a simple idea: calculating the percentage of your working income you’ll need to replace once you stop working.

You might have heard rules like ‘you’ll need 70 per cent of your pre-retirement income in retirement.’ That’s a target replacement rate. But let’s break it down with a UK lens.

Pensions UK has published detailed benchmarks based on lifestyle types, which we’ll go deeper into shortly, covering minimum, moderate and comfortable retirement standards. These don’t use income percentages, but they do give us a clue. A couple aiming for a moderate retirement needs around £43,900 a year in 2025 prices. That’s roughly 60 to 70 per cent of average household earnings.

Meanwhile, the OECD suggests that an average replacement rate for UK retirees sits around 58 per cent, though this varies widely depending on income and pension type. Lower earners might need a higher replacement rate (up to 80–90 per cent) to maintain their standard of living, because they spend most of what they earn. Higher earners often get by with a lower percentage because more of their income went into saving or luxuries.

Why does this matter?

If you earned £50,000 a year, a 70 per cent replacement rate would suggest aiming for an income of £35,000 a year in retirement. This helps you reverse-engineer your savings goal, working out how much you’ll need to generate that level of income across the decades.

But replacement rates aren’t a rulebook – they’re a guide. Your actual number depends on:

• Your mortgage or rent situation.

• How much you want to travel or support family.

• Whether you’ll continue working part-time.

• Your health, location, and lifestyle.

Use it as a starting point, not a finish line.

THE PENSIONS UK RETIREMENT LIVING STANDARDS

Pensions UK has developed some clear, lifestyle-based retirement standards to help you sense-check your plans. They won’t give you a perfect, personalised number, but they’ll give you a ballpark to work with, based on what everyday life costs in retirement.

Use them as a starting point. Verify your reality with your own budgeting. Adjust your numbers for your lifestyle, your goals, and your version of comfort. The standards are a great way to check if you’re headed in the right direction.

And if you’re planning for something a bit more epic, I’ll show you how to build that in too.

In the UK, retirement planning involves balancing the State Pension with personal savings.

• A comfortable retirement typically means maintaining your pre-retirement lifestyle, with room for travel, hobbies, and the occasional luxury.

• A moderate retirement covers all essentials, with some flexibility for small treats or a UK holiday.

• A minimum lifestyle, on the other hand, focuses purely on the basics – like food, housing, and transport – and is largely reliant on the State Pension alone.

The full UK State Pension in 2025/26 provides £11,973 per person annually. Couples relying solely on the State Pension receive around £23,952 (double the State Pension rate for individuals).

However, to enjoy a more comfortable retirement with room for discretionary spending on travel, hobbies, and other lifestyle choices, additional savings are generally needed.

To get a clearer picture of how much you’ll really need to retire, let’s walk through it step by step. First, we’ll look at how much you need to retire at a suitable standard of living for your lifestyle and retirement goals. Then we’ll take into account how much you’ll draw from the State Pension. And finally we’ll look at how much you’ll need in private and workplace pensions and savings to achieve this level of income.

We’ve built the budgets below (in the book) using the Pensions UK Retirement Living Standards. To ensure you can afford to upgrade your car, maintain your home, and enjoy your Epic Retirement, we have included additional savings to support these goals.

CALCULATING A REPLACEMENT RATE FOR THE AVERAGE BRIT

The median UK household disposable income (after tax and benefits) was £36,700 in 2023/24, according to the Office of National Statistics.

If you’re aiming for a 70 per cent replacement rate in retirement, a common benchmark used by planners, you’d be targeting around £25,690 a year in retirement income.

This isn’t a hard rule, but it gives you a realistic baseline. Your actual number might be higher or lower depending on your lifestyle, spending habits, and housing costs in retirement.

Think of this as a way to sanity-check your savings goals. Are you on track to replace the income you’ll actually need?

Order your copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement now. It hits bookstores this week on 11 December, and if you’d like one under your tree, you’ll want to order soon — before the mail services wind down for the break.

Shop now on Amazon UK

(Note - do not order the paperback edition - that links through to the AU/NZ edition as there is no paperback edition of the UK book.)