Retire from the job not from being challenged
And in The Times this week: 'Here’s how to work out how much you really need for retirement'
In this week’s edition:
Feature story: Retire from the job not from being challenged
From Bec’s Desk: Course kickoff in the UK
The Times: Here’s how to work out how much you really need for retirement
Know someone who’s starting to think seriously about retirement?
Why not forward them today’s newsletter? It might be the conversation starter they didn’t know they needed.
Retire from the job, not from being challenged
The old retirement dream was freedom from obligation. No alarm clock, no boss, no diary and nobody demanding anything from you anymore. After 40 or more years of work, that sounds absolutely delicious.
But work does much more than pay you every month - truly! It pushes your brain to remember, solve, learn, negotiate, adapt and deal with people you didn’t choose. It throws problems at you and expects you to create answers. It makes you meet deadlines, change direction and turn up when somebody needs you, even on a fairly ordinary day. Work keeps our brains moving and shaking.
Then you retire and much of that stops - the meetings vanish and the problems belong to somebody else. Nobody needs an answer by Friday and, after the first glorious few months of freedom, every day can start to feel a little like Sunday.
That doesn’t mean you should keep working forever. But I want you to recognise what the job has done for your brain all these years. It has stretched it, tested it and kept pulling it into the world. When the job ends, you are going to need to find something else that will do that for you.
I stumbled across a 2025 review that brought together 22 studies on retirement and brain function. Across those studies, retirees generally performed worse on cognitive tests, declined faster and faced a higher risk of dementia.
Now, before you cancel the farewell lunch in fear, the outcome depended heavily on what people retired from - and what they retired to.
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According to the studies, what you retire to really matters
Someone who escapes an exhausting or physically punishing job may sleep better, move more and feel an enormous weight lift from their shoulders. But someone who leaves a job that challenged them, connected them to other people and gave them a reason to get moving every morning can lose a lot more than their salary.
The studies didn’t prove that retirement automatically damages the brain. They showed that the type of work you leave and the life you build afterwards can change the result. When people stopped stretching their brains and stepped away from roles that made them feel useful, their cognitive health could suffer.
That’s the bit I think retirement planning keeps missing.
We ask whether you’ve saved enough, paid off the mortgage and chosen the right investment option. We rarely ask what will make you think hard on a Wednesday morning, who will notice if you don’t turn up or where you’ll find the next problem worth solving.
The science says that “keeping busy” won’t cut it
The stereotypical retirement advice tells you to find your purpose, volunteer, travel, take up golf or just keep busy. But the science shows that you can fill every hour of the day without really asking much of your brain. And “find your purpose” sounds like another impossible job to add to the retirement list.
Some new Australian research gives a much more useful answer. Professor Henry Brodaty AO, the 2026 Senior Australian of the Year, and a large team of researchers ran the Maintain Your Brain trial with 6,104 Australians aged from 55 to 77.
They gave one group information about reducing their dementia risks. They put the other group through a personalised three-year program that tackled physical activity, nutrition, cognitive activity and mental health. After three years, the people who followed the personalised program recorded significantly better cognitive results.
The trial didn’t prove that the program prevented dementia, but it showed that simply knowing what to do isn’t enough - you have to actually do it.
We all know we should exercise, eat well, keep learning and stay connected. The problem isn’t knowledge. The problem is turning a good intention into something that actually happens on Tuesday morning every week - and something that challenges us enough.
A large American trial reached a similar result in 2025. Both groups exercised, improved their diets, challenged their brains and connected with other people. But the group that met regularly, worked harder and answered to other people improved slightly more than the group left to guide itself. That’s the difference between intention and action.
“I’ll exercise more when I retire” is an intention. Agreeing to meet three friends for a walk every Tuesday means people will call when you don’t appear.
“I’ll keep my brain active” is an intention. Enrolling in a course, tackling unfamiliar material and handing in an assignment forces your brain to work.
“I’d like to give something back” is an intention. Mentoring someone, running a community project or helping an organisation solve a real problem makes your contribution matter.
You don’t need to discover one magnificent purpose - really. You need to keep doing things that stretch you, connect you and make somebody else count on you. And from there, the often-recommended ‘purpose’ might just grow.
An exercise to do before you hand in your notice
Before you retire, I want you to write down everything your job gives you besides money.
Who challenges you?
Who needs you?
What forces you to learn?
Where do you solve problems?
How much do you move?
Who notices when you’re not yourself?
Then work out which of those things will disappear with your job and decide how you’ll replace them.
Don’t wait until six months after the farewell party, when the jobs around the house are finished and every day has started blending into the next. Join a group, book a course, take on a transition-worthy project and build the routine while you still have the energy and contacts to make good, challenging and interesting things happen.
Of course, leave plenty of room for holidays, slow mornings and doing absolutely nothing - you’ve earned that. But don’t retire from thinking hard, learning new things, turning up or being needed.
Happy Sunday Epic Retirees and Epic Retiree wannabes! It’s course launch week. We’ve just released the new Epic Retirement UK Flagship Course and it is now available on-demand - with a saucy new live twist.
Anyone who is watching on will know the course is well-loved in Australia, with nearly 10,000 people having done it. And our recent pilot of our UK edition, completely rebuilt for UK pre-retirees and early retirees was very successful. So we’ve put some improvements in place, updated the program for all the new tax year changes, and it’s live and ready for you to register and begin.
Even though it’s now offered on demand, it still drips progressively over six weeks allowing you to consume the lessons in bite-sized pieces. And so you can keep asking questions, we’ll be hosting 4 Live Q&As a year with UK retirement experts - that all our students in the program are invited to attend.
To celebrate the launch, I’ve got a starting offer of 15% off for the first 50 people to register - to give you a jump on it. Just use the coupon code LAUNCH15. 😎
You can register and get started here.
What’s included?
When you enrol, you’ll receive:
A six-week guided course featuring 14 practical modules that walk you through the financial and lifestyle decisions that shape an epic retirement. It will drip into your learning portal progressively each week.
Three pre-recorded Q&A sessions, where you’ll hear the questions other people asked as retirement approached - and the conversations that followed.
PLUS access to Four live online member Q&A events each year, giving you the opportunity to hear from retirement experts, ask your own questions and stay connected with the latest ideas. An exclusive events calendar is provided for members, and updated quarterly.
The Epic Retirement Conversation Starter Workbook, designed to help you have meaningful conversations with your partner, family or friends about the decisions ahead.
Interactive exercises and practical activities that help you turn ideas into action, one step at a time.
A digital copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement – UK Edition, included with your enrolment.
Whether retirement is just around the corner or still a few years away, you’ll leave with a clearer plan, greater confidence and practical strategies you can use to build a retirement that’s every bit as exciting as the years you’ve spent working towards it.
And if you’re wondering what people really thought - here’s a few personal testimonials from our UK pilot
“I really enjoyed taking this course, even though I have read widely on the subject already and have a financial background. For anyone wanting to create some space to think about their current or future retirement, this is a great course to learn or in my case to challenge your own ideas and either reinforce your outlook or improve it.” - Andy
“Any lingering doubts on your readiness for retirement? Then look no further... A well structured, easy-paced course that covers the retirement spectrum - from finances, to health, to travel, to purpose and then to later life - the course ticks every box. The 6 easy to complete weekly modules are supplemented by live Q&A sessions with industry experts to answer any questions you may have. A must do course for those thinking about, approaching retirement or who are already retired!” - Michael
“I have found this really helpful and it has helped inform me the next stage of my retirement journey and think about things that I had not considered. The financial support has given me confidence and I had never thought about how to use and manage the finances in such a way that supports all the Epic Retirement wishes I have. I am very grateful for the course making me sit down and really think about how to manage my future, financially, emotionally and physically - thank you!” - Angela
Now - enjoy your Sunday. Hope to see you on the course. And if not - then in the Epic Retirement Club on Facebook which just keeps getting bigger.
Cheers Bec Xx
Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker
I am the retirement columnist for The Times, UK. You can read my most recent column here or look through all my columns here. My next column comes out this week. Here’s my most recent article:
Here’s how to work out how much you really need for retirement
Avoid having your pension fund run dry — or working for longer than you need to — with these simple calculations
Ask most people approaching retirement whether they have enough to retire and they’ll respond with a shrug, a “maybe” and some silence. It’s one of the biggest gaps in retirement planning, and it’s stopping people from making more confident decisions about living their life well, winding back their workloads or simply knowing when it’s time to stop.
There are two big groups facing this problem: those who have more than enough, but are working long after they need to because they never sat down and did the sums; and those who retire and are too afraid to spend their hard-earned retirement savings, watching their pension pot like a hawk and living a smaller life than they need to.
If they’d just named their number, and become familiar with an annual process of checking their spending, they’d feel in control, even powerful about driving their own future.
There’s a really simple way to work out how much you need for retirement, and yet nobody explains it simply, because their job is to deliver complex advice. Mine isn’t. So let me teach you how I build a back-of-the-envelope retirement number.
Bear in mind, my goal here isn’t to plan your retirement in detail — it’s to give you enough confidence to explore it in more detail yourself. And let’s face it — 30 seconds with a pen and an envelope might just get you closer to thinking about your retirement than one of those boring calculators you’ve been meaning to use for the past ten years but will never do.
The article was published in The Times, on Tuesday 4th August and is available for reading here.
Got a topic you’d like me to cover? Send me a message
Simply hit reply and send me a note. I’m keen to know what’s worrying you, what is driving you and what you want more conversation and education about.
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.