If you choose to live life this way, life can be a straight line.

We learn, we work and then we retire and that’s the way it is.

But here’s the thing. The way it is doesn’t work for many of us.

In fact, the “educate, work and retire” worked not for the individuals living those lives, but for the industrial era employers who used to rely on our labour.

So, in this blog, I want to talk about the 5 reasons why I believe the conventional model of retirement is broken and the 5 things we need to do to break away from the conventional perception of retirement and define our own version of success in this chapter of our lives…

Let me tell you about my uncle, Jimmy.

I’m lucky enough in my profession to see plenty of people with successful later lives, some of the stories I’m going to share in this book.

Jimmy , like many men of this generation, went to work at a large East London based industrial sugar manufacturer in an era where a lot of people had one employer throughout their career.

Jimmy started working for his employer early and after a few decades, and with the benefit of a really decent final salary pension and armed with the fact that he’d stoppped enjoying the work he was doing many years before, decided to ‘retire’ early.

Initially, Jimmy loved retirement. No early starts. Complete freedom of time. Less stress. Then boredom set in. Jimmy needed a daily routine, something to replace the routine of work. For Jimmy, this new daily routine often involved a visit to the pub.

I haven’t got a vendetta against Pubs, by the way, I’m known to frequent them every now and again. However, I’m not convinced that a daily visit to the pub when retired is a plan towards a healthier happier retirement.

Jimmy died in his late 60s, and I’ve got to be careful here. Correlation isn’t causation and situations are always more complex and nuanced than a simple short story.

However, the loss of purpose, identity, community and all of the things which work potentially provided play a part in a life which could have been both longer and happier.

Whilst Jimmy was unique, his story certainly isn’t but it’s also a potential warning that the conventional model of school / work / retire isn’t a particularly human friendly concept… and many of us have similar stories. In fact, I’m often told in the comments to my videos and blogs, as well as in person, of the people who struggle with concept of retirement.

The dad and grandad who since retiring has become more withdrawn and depressed. The mum and nan who fill their time by constantly visiting the same 3 supermarkets in her town everyday. I don’t know about you but that sounds like a version of Groundhog Day I’m not planning to watch in a hurry.

You see I’d suggest that the model of Get Educated, Get Working and Get Retired worked for the past couple of years since the start of the industrial revolution.

Living standards went up, there were more financial security, and the factories got the workers they need with a system providing new workers pretty consistently (state education) whilst older workers went off into the sunset (through the concept of retirement).

However we don’t live in the industrial revolution anymore. So, here’s the 7 reasons why the model of conventional retirement simply isn’t fit for purpose for most of us.

Starting with…

Most of us living longer, healthier lives.

By 2054 there’s research to say that the number of individuals who are going to live until 100 will quadruple in the next 30 years.

Life expectancy has gone from the early 70’s in western countries (America and the UK) to the early to mid 80’s in the past thirty years.

If many of us are living for another 10-15 years after our conventional retirement age and a decent chunck more living for another 25-30 years, it’s easy to see why we need to think differently about the chapter of our lives we conventionally called ‘retirement’ as the likelihood it could be about twice, three, four or more times as long as we expect.

So, does the fact that retirement might be a lot longer than we want change how we view it? I’d suggest to…

Not only has the money got to last a lot longer, we also need to think about maintaining our other areas of wellbeing for a longer period of time too.

Which moves me onto my 2nd point…

A lot of people who are off ‘traditional’ retirement age are continuing to work. Not for the money but for the mental stimulation, social connection and sense of contribution… all things work can provide to us beyond the paycheck.

A lot of clients I work with have decided that work provides non-financial benefits to their lives which means them choose to continue… and they’re probably right to do so. Cognitive Decline and Social Isolation have negative factors on our lives and sometimes these ‘holes’ are satisfied through work.

So, you may have reached an age where people conventionally retire but you want all of the other benefits work provides including a feeling where you’re continuing to contribute to the world and using your brain.

We talk abit on What happens Next about holistic wellbeing and continued work might help you continue to improve a bunch of areas of your wellbeing.

The good news is that you can get a bit of an understanding, for free, on the aspects of wellbeing you might want to consider working on. On the What Happens Next website, we’ve got a brilliant quiz which allows you to do this and you can find this here .

So, moving onto my 3rd point…

One size fit cookie cutter ‘retirement’ all simply doesn’t work for most of us anymore.

We live in a completely different world than a few decades ago. Most of us don’t have jobs for life, guaranteed final salary pensions or even a desire to simply stop at a particular point in time.

I’ve talked about this before but the cookie cutter ‘retirement’ model wasn’t designed for working people, it was designed to support the needs of the growth of the industrial revolution.

If we look at it as bluntly as possible ‘retirement’ was designed to help older people move out of the workforce with a degree of dignity and get younger, and often more physically able, individuals into a fairly physical jobs.

We now live in a completely different economic and cultural environment from when a conventional ‘retirement’ was invented with technology being a huge driver for this change.

For me, this means that if we’re in a different economic and cultural environment in the majority of the Western world we need to rethink the nature of a conventional retirement.

The 4th point worth making is the fact that if it works for you, society will probably benefit from your wisdom, input and knowledge and if you retire the potential contribution you could make to society might be lost.

We benefit from learning so much over our decades on earth. Lessons we can share with the next generation. Skills and knowledge, we could transfer to the younger generation.

Many of my clients after officially ‘retiring’ have gone back to consult, doing jobs training younger people. Alternatively consulting, working as a NED or as a charity trustee are all routes you might want to take in your next chapter.

I think if you’re thinking about the next chapter of your life, one question I’d consider asking yourself is…

What can you contribute to the next generation? Or the generation before that?

For many of my clients thinking about the knowledge, skills and experience they can impart on the upcoming generations was enough to keep them from a conventional retirement but continue to contribute on their terms.

My 5th and final reason that a conventional retirement is a bit broken is that the pace of change is faster now than it’s ever been and it’s making us rethink a lot in our lives.

The interesting thing about technological change, AI and everything else that’s changed in the past few years is it has made many of us questioned the assumptions we use, including whether a conventional retirement still works for us.

We’ve known for thousands of years that, as philosopher Heraclitus talked about “The only constant is change”. The reality however is the pace of change has never been swifter which means the way we look at so much in our lives is changing too.

The good news though is that we’ve got the oppportunity to look at the conventional 3 stages of life (where we first learn, then earn, the rest) into a more flexible way of both living and working where more focus on a broader wellbeing is more important.

This means that we’ve got more choice in our lives than ever before, but this is often a bit of paradox because of the choice and the change in our lives can be overwhelming. That’s why in this video we talk about the paradox of choice in the next chapter of our lives and what you can do about it.

Also, whilst continuous work might be part of your what happens next plan, there’s nothing wrong with including a bit more travel in your ‘what happens next’ mix – So here’s the 12 (and a half) destinations you should add onto your retirement travel list today.