Many people look forward to retirement, leaving the 9-5 grind behind and having time to do things they’ve always wanted to do.

But for those who have built a meaningful career over decades, retirement can be a huge and challenging transition. Some navigate it well, but many struggle.

A recent study in the Harvard Business Review looked at 106 people – before and after they retired. They also followed several individuals who were making the transition over a longer period. They found some positive stories and some cautionary ones.

For example, when Irene retired at 64 from her job as a technical writer, she moved full-time to her holiday home with her husband, who worked from there remotely. She started taking regular beach walks with her brother, enrolled in art classes, and easily settled into retirement. “I wish I had done it earlier”, she said, “even the simple things can be satisfying”.

In contrast, Lawrence retired at 60 from his senior project manager role at a manufacturing company. He looked forward to spending time with his family. He and his wife moved to be near their son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. But months later, he felt uneasy and lacked activities to fill his time. His casual drinking turned into heavy dependence.

Lawrence’s story highlights the risks of entering retirement without a clear plan for daily life.

Retirement involves several key phases: deciding to stop working, detaching from work, trying new relationships and activities, and establishing a stable life structure. The Harvard study found that satisfied retirees needed to:

• Understand the alignment between, what psychotherapists would call the self and life structure, and have an awareness of how the two interact.
• Be able to make changes to the self and life structure.
• Adapt to uncontrollable events.

Your “self” consists of who you are at any point in your life—your identities, needs, values, preferences, motivations, personality traits, and health. Your “life structure” includes your main activities and relationships, groups you belong to, and places you spend time. It’s important to bring these two into alignment and to do this you need to have a clear view of yourself and your life structure. Honest self-reflection is tough but important, and the research suggests a number of ways of doing this, but they recommend getting support from someone else. They advise that, should there be a misalignment between yourself and your life structure, it’s best to take small steps to improve it to avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Even if you’ve aligned things perfectly, life happens—health crises, family changes, etc—and it’s essential to adapt. The paper suggests some ways to help you to adapt to retirement changes.

The full article, including the suggestions, can be found by following this link. https://hbr.org/2024/11/retire-without-regrets

In summary, it’s essential not to underestimate the challenge of an enormous change like stopping work. Thriving in retirement involves being sufficiently aware of yourself and your life structure, making changes, and staying adaptable to life’s surprises.

Philip Wise | philip@sussexretirement.co.uk

Managing Director and Chartered Financial Planner

This blog is for information purposes and does not constitute financial advice, which should be based on your individual circumstances.