If you’re a fan of the long-running property TV series “Homes Under The Hammer” (HUTH), you’ll know the two golden rules for those renovating a property that “needs work”.
- It will always take longer than you planned
- It will always cost more than you budgeted for
And, as the equally long-running TV show “Grand Designs” inevitably shows, the more ambitious the plans, the longer the timescales and more money you need.
There’s a very good reason for that.
Life.
Life gets in the way by throwing you curveballs left, right and centre, from terrible weather to lack of skilled tradesmen, supplies stuck in foreign lands, and the demands of living and working in what feels like a building site.
Renovating our home
Last year, Hazel and I moved to a new home that needed major updating and expanding. We thought it would be fairly straightforward and all done by mid autumn.
Fat chance.
We had all the above issues and more, including unexpected flooding under the floor, a family bereavement, and the joys of sourcing reliable contractors .
After months of delays, I finally moved into my new garden office a few weeks ago. I was ready to receive the first visit from the social media team when – the roofers turned up to fix a minor leak. Not a biggie in itself, but indicative of how the best laid plans can go sideways!
Planning for life
I suspect that’s why many people don’t plan for life, let alone retirement. They have personally experienced how unforeseen events have laid waste to projects in the past. Therefore they do not consider it worthwhile making long-term plans after that. However, they usually have something ‘solid’ and constant in their lives, be it work, kids, partner, friends, social life, etc. These constants support them through the highs and lows and give a structure that can (usually) be relied on.
The end of work
Retirement marks the end of one of the major supports – work. Work is more a mesh than a single support for life. It includes financial stability, a regular routine, a built-in social life – and a sense of purpose. When that work support is removed, unless new support networks are put in place, the whole world of retirement seems wobbly and uncertain.
Retirement planning helps you work out how you are going to support your retirement, and its primary focus is not financial. In my experience, most people do plan financially for their retirement to some extent, including taking out a pension, putting some savings away, and perhaps making long-term investments. They might also have some spending plans for travel and taking up a hobby.
What they don’t tend to do is plan for the rest of it all – and certainly not with an eye to what makes their retirement purposeful.
It’s like renovating a property. For many of those on “HUTH”, the aim is to sell on the property or rent it out. It’s not to actually live in it. The goal is clear-cut and financial.
For us, it’s the opposite. We’ve renovated so we can enjoy living in the house for years to come. But what does ‘living’ actually look and feel like?
That’s retirement planning in a nutshell. In order to get that retirement feeling right, we need to plan and put in place the structures that will support it. And that’s where many of us struggle.
Whether you are stuck at the first midlife planning hurdle, or feel your recent retirement is going nowhere fast, contact me. As a retirement planner I can guide you to get your retirement plans on track, and help you achieve all your retirement goals.
We’ll have an initial, no-obligation chat through your circumstances, and then work out the best way forward for you. This might be an in-depth one-off review, to planning your retirement over a few sessions so you can put things into place with my help and guidance.
Simply call me to discuss your plans, and we can take it from there.
