Retirement planning isn’t just about money. It’s about who you become next.
Last year I was on a panel with Aware Super talking about the nuances of retirement planning at the Ensombl: All Licensee PD Day.
But retirement planning is never just retirement planning.
It’s layered. It’s complex. It’s emotional. And sometimes it’s confronting in ways people don’t expect.
Because it’s not just about the money.
And it’s not just about the timing.
Money itself is already complicated. It’s emotionally loaded. Triggering, even. Everyone carries their own money story — their beliefs, their baggage, their perception of what money is supposed to do for them. Security. Freedom. Status. Safety. Love. Control.
Then we arrive at retirement.
And all of that gets magnified.
You’ve worked your entire life. You’ve saved. You’ve built. You’ve sacrificed. You’ve been responsible.
And then one day, you’re meant to start spending it.
That sounds simple. It isn’t.
There’s often fear — what if I run out?
There’s excitement — I can finally do what I want.
And there’s guilt. So much guilt.
Guilt about spending money after decades of saving it.
Guilt about prioritising yourself after years of raising children — or guilt because you didn’t have children and you’re questioning what your legacy looks like.
Guilt about leaving elderly parents behind while you travel.
Guilt about feeling restless in a life that looks, on paper, like it should be enough.
And then there’s the strange, quiet guilt of freedom.
You’ve worked all your life. Now you don’t have to. And you wake up thinking… what do I actually want?
Sometimes that question is the most terrifying of all.
Retirement is often framed as the end of a working lifetime.
I see it differently.
It’s a beginning.
But beginnings are rarely neat.
You might keep working part-time. Join boards. Mentor. Consult. Take long, slow holidays instead of two-week bursts. Move away from the city and learn how to garden properly. Take up pottery. Pick up a musical instrument. Finally learn a language.
Or you might have a “delicious midlife crisis” — the kind where you get on a plane at 60, learn to ski, and discover a part of yourself you didn’t know existed.
I had a ski instructor in Whistler named George. He was 92.
Ninety-two.
He’s part of the Whistler Ski School, and he once featured in a documentary with two other instructors in their 80s about living young in retirement. That documentary is now over a decade old, which tells you something.
George wasn’t winding down. He was alive. Engaged. Energised.
Retirement didn’t shrink his world. It expanded it.
But life also throws curveballs.
Retirement can arrive because a parent needs you and you become the support person — the parent to your parent.
It can shift because your adult child is going through a divorce and suddenly, you’re providing emotional and financial scaffolding again.
It can be reshaped by a sudden death that wakes you up and makes you question everything.
It can be altered by a grey divorce — a relationship that was once beautiful, or perhaps simply long-standing, reaching a point where one or both of you quietly ask, is this still what I want?
Not every ending is dramatic. Some are just honest.
And financially, those moments matter.
They are the what ifs.
They are the unexpected.
They are why retirement planning can’t be rigid.
We can say we’ll retire at 65. Or 59. Or 75. But life doesn’t always respect our timelines.
The real planning is preparing the ground so that when life shifts — whether through heartbreak, awakening, responsibility or joy — you’re not forced into decisions out of fear.
For women, there is often another layer that sits quietly beneath the surface: perimenopause and menopause.
For some, that season can stretch close to a decade. It can bring upheaval. Clarity. Anger. Courage. Exhaustion.
Women wake up and think, I’m tired of keeping it together for everyone. It’s my turn.
That internal shift can ripple into career decisions, relationship changes, spending patterns, risk tolerance, even identity.
Retirement planning needs to hold space for that too.
Because this stage of life isn’t just financial. It’s existential.
It’s one minute laughing, the next minute crying.
It’s freedom and fear in the same breath.
It’s standing at the edge of a life you’ve built and asking — now what?
This is why I believe good financial advice isn’t just technical.
Yes, financial advisers need the technical mastery. Investment markets. Tax structures. Superannuation. Income streams. Estate planning. Modern family dynamics. Blended families. Legacy intentions. Tax burdens that might sit with the next generation.
We need to understand how to build a tax-effective income stream and how to ensure there’s enough in the kitty so that whatever comes — a grandchild, a diagnosis, a divorce, a ski trip, a move to the coast — there is capacity.
But we also need emotional intelligence.
We need lived experience.
We need to be comfortable sitting in the uncertainty before rushing to implement strategy.
Sometimes retirement planning starts with a strategy.
Sometimes it starts with a conversation.
A space to unpack the money stories. The guilt. The excitement. The fear. The long-held assumptions about what retirement “should” look like.
Then, together, we build a guidebook.
Not a rigid blueprint. A guidebook.
One that allows you to turn the pages as life unfolds.
Adjusting. Adapting. Reimagining.
Because retirement isn’t the end of a working lifetime.
It’s a stage where you get to design your life — and actually live it.
And that, if we’re honest, is both the most liberating and the most terrifying opportunity of all.