Not quite retiring - it’s a thing
What are you doing right now that your future self will thank you for?
Before we start - a little ad for our upcoming UK course. It kicks off Thursday!
The countdown is on: The UK Epic Retirement Course begins on Thursday.
If you’re in the UK and you’ve been waiting for a proper retirement course built specifically for the British pension system, this is it. It kicks off on 28th May.
We’ve built a six-week online program to give you the clarity, confidence and practical know-how to plan your retirement properly. Not generic advice. Not Australian super rules with a Union Jack slapped on top. A program built from the ground up for the UK, covering the State Pension, workplace pensions, ISAs and everything in between.
Here’s what’s included:
14 modules and around 100 lessons, all built for the UK system
Exercises and activities throughout so you’re actually doing the work, not just watching videos
A community of people going through it alongside you
Three live Q&As with some of the UK’s leading retirement experts
A conversation starter workbook to help you and your partner actually talk about what you want
A copy of the UK edition of How to Have an Epic Retirement as your companion guide
The course is hosted by me and UK actuary and retirement coach Charlotte Gibson, so you’re getting practical expertise from both sides of the equation.
This isn’t a webinar. It’s a proper six-week program, done together, and pilot pricing means it’s the cheapest it will ever be. Book your place at the link in bio.
Book your spot here before it’s too late - or download the brochure to learn more here. (And if you’re an employer, employee benefits consultancy or belong to a pension fund and would like to send some of your staff - reach out to us at bec@epicretirement.uk)
Not quite retiring - it’s a thing
A friend of mine handed in his notice this week, three months until what he’s calling his “second retirement.” He turns 60 next year, and when he talks about it, he’s genuinely convinced this is it.
So I got him talking. And for the first ten minutes, it was all about time. How he has none of it right now. How he’s craving it in a way that feels almost physical. How he came back to the workforce after retirement number one feeling ready, energised even, and how somewhere in the past year that feeling quietly drained away and left him with a diary full of other people’s priorities and almost none of his own.
But then something shifted. As the conversation went on and I kept asking questions, his tone changed. Because when I asked him what he might actually do next, he didn’t dismiss work entirely. He paused. He knows his knowledge is valuable. He likes being useful, genuinely likes it, and he’s self-aware enough to know that the feeling of usefulness doesn’t automatically follow you into retirement just because you want it to. He’s watched it disappear once before, and he hasn’t forgotten what that felt like.
So what he actually wants isn’t quite retirement. It’s time. Space in his life. Room to think, to breathe, to decide what the next chapter looks like without the current one consuming every available hour. The problem is that in the role he’s in right now, there is no version of that on offer. So the only move he can see is to leave completely and create the vacancy himself.
I thought that was one of the more honest things I’d heard someone say about this stage of life in a while. Because I think a lot of people in their late 50s are carrying exactly that tension, not wanting to stop contributing, but not willing to keep going the way they have been. Wanting the usefulness without the exhaustion. Wanting to feel like their experience still matters, just in a different configuration, on their own terms, with some of their own time back.
It’s harder to navigate than a clean retirement, because there’s no obvious template for it. But if you’re sitting somewhere in that territory, here are the questions worth actually working through.
Is it the work itself, or the terms you’re doing it on?
This one matters more than most people realise, because the answer changes everything. A lot of people who think they want to stop working actually want to stop doing so very much of it, under these conditions, with this much pressure and this little control over their own time. That’s a different problem with different solutions. The question is whether those solutions are available to you where you are right now, or whether, like my friend, the only realistic path to the life you want runs through leaving first.
What would you actually do with the time, specifically?
Most people haven’t thought this through beyond a vague sense of relief, and the first few months of stepping back tend to feel wonderful regardless. After that, a lot of people find the days harder to fill than they expected, particularly if work has been the main source of structure, identity, and connection for the last few decades. It’s worth asking yourself honestly what a genuinely good week looks like when you’re not working full-time, and whether you have enough of the right things already in your life to fill that space well.
What would usefulness look like, redesigned?
This is really the question underneath everything else. If you know, like my friend does, that pure retirement didn’t fully work last time, then the goal isn’t to stop contributing. It’s to find a version of contributing that doesn’t cost you everything else. Consulting, a board position, mentoring, building something smaller on your own terms. These are real options worth thinking through properly, not filing away as vague possibilities to sort out later.
Have you actually modelled what stepping back costs you financially?
Not in the general sense of whether you have enough saved, but properly stress-tested. What does reducing your income cost you per year, and what does that do to your long-term position? A lot of people are more financially ready to make a move than they think, and some are less ready than they assume. Getting proper advice from someone who understands this phase of life is worth doing before anything is decided.
And have you had the real conversation with your partner?
Not just about the money, but about what the day-to-day actually looks like when one or both of you is renegotiating how you spend your time and maybe the other one is already retired. Talk about what you each need from the next chapter, and what it means for how you live together day to day. It’s one of those conversations that’s easy to keep putting off and genuinely important to have before anything is locked in.
My friend might be doing exactly the right thing. Sometimes the only way to get your time back is to clear the diary completely and start again. But the vacancy only works if you go into it with some sense of what you’re hoping will show up.
I’ve been out bushwalking this weekend, enjoying one of few sunny days this week. Your weather is looking considerably better than ours right now. It’s been raining all week in Brisbane, and I keep seeing my British friends popping up on social media in their summer gear, looking tanned and delighted with themselves. I’ll admit I’m a little envious as the winter chill creeps in here.
I’m booking my next trip to the UK for October. I’ll miss the beautiful midyear months, but I’m excited nonetheless, because it’s time to start doing some proper Epic Retirement events over there. If you’d like to help us set something up in your town while I’m visiting, please do reach out. I’d love to meet as many of you in person as possible.
And this week is a big one. We’re kicking off the very first Epic Retirement UK Flagship Course pilot program, and I can’t quite believe we’re finally here. It’s the beginning of something we’ve been building towards for a while, and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with our UK community and readers. It’s a six week course - and it’s become really popular in Australia. This is just the beginning in the UK, and I’m thrilled to see a good crew have signed up and are eager to begin.
More on that at the top of the email. You can download a copy of the brochure to learn more. And be sure to get your booking in ASAP if you want to be on board for it. The course drops into our learning portal on Thursday!
Now get out there and make your Sunday epic.
Bec Xx
P.S. To celebrate the launch of the UK Course, we’re also giving away 5 free seats in the program. To go into the draw, simply give our Epic Retirement UK Facebook page a like and comment and follow along in the newsletter to see if you win.
Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker
Why do I write a separate newsletter for the UK?
I write a separate newsletter specifically for the UK, because the financial system here is completely different to Australia, where I’m based. Your retirement is shaped by the State Pension, workplace pensions, ISAs and HMRC rules. Not superannuation or the Australian Age Pension.
If I just sent you the Australian version with a few words swapped out, it wouldn’t actually be useful to you. And useful is the whole point.
The big conversations, about when to step back from work, what you want the next chapter to look like, how to make your money last, those are universal. But the practical detail needs to reflect the system you’re actually living in. So that’s what we’ve built here. Tell your friends - we want to help you make your retirement epic - the UK way.
Welcome to the UK edition.
I am the retirement columnist for The Times, UK. You can read my most recent column here. And there’s a new column about to drop any day - keep your eye out.