It seems to me that there are two different ways to retire.


The first is that you reach 65 years old on a Friday, the big boss, Assistant Credit Controller – Major Accounts – Outer Hebrides, who you have met once at a conference on Network Externalities and The Economics of Universal Access: UK Regulatory Issues comes to make a presentation.
You don’t remember him because you travelled down the night before the conference, met lots of colleagues and consumed an extreme amount of free alcohol and are now trying to keep out of his way while talking loudly to the bottom of the toilet. But on retirement day he’s there to present you with a leaving gift bought with the 17.60GBP plus two buttons that have been collected from your entire building. He thanks you for your contribution to the company over the past thirty years and congratulates you specifically for organizing the collection of the staff coffee money each week to say nothing of arranging the annual Welfare BBQ for the past ten years.


The second way is to be a few years younger with a reasonable pension plan and leave with an excellent redundancy package. This seems to happen to fewer retirees but they seem happier than the others. These people still have the presentation but this time it’s the Credit Manager - Corporate Finance – Head Office who comes along to say nice things. He thanks you for being the First Aid representative, Emergency Evacuation Officer and Welfare Committee Chairman for 14 years. He also remembers you made some contribution to Credit Management by retrieving 1200GBP from the 250kGBP owed by the latest company to go out of business.


Timeline - 03 January 2006

Is one of these ways of retirement better than the other?
You bet, with the redundancy package you leave with a nice wedge of dosh. But even this presents a problem: What do you do with it? Do you invest it or do you just give it to the wife and let her go shopping? One day could do it if she’s like mine. Financial advisors need to be seen quickly.


But for both cases that’s it, come the next week, no work, no structure you are an OAP or as we now like to call them Senior Citizens or TOGs, walking to the shops in your slippers to collect your newspaper and queuing at the post office at 8.30am on a Wednesday for your pension while saving for your next years bus trip holiday to Bournemouth with a lot of other OAPs.


Two major issues need addressing Financial Planning and Time Planning.