Transitioning to Retirement – something completely different
Life’s about transitions….and retirement has got to be one of the biggest transitions of them all.
It’s so different from working life, such an opportunity to do what you’ve dreamed about, albeit with some significant challenges to face about how to make it work financially.
The advisers at Retirement Essentials work with our members to help them make the financial transition. Our approach of offering advice on key issues in retirement, and help with the Age Pension when it comes time to apply, really resonates with these members. What we offer is affordable, meaningful and helpful. You can find out more about our services, free of charge and with no obligation, by taking up one of our no obligation 10 minute consultations.
But for some retirees, the more difficult transition is the life transition and with that we’d love to offer you the occasional inspiration. I thought my sister, Jane, captured the upside of change beautifully in the poem below. She’s new to retirement herself after a long career in social work and teaching. She’s now started writing poetry as a new activity in retirement. And she does it as part of a group, to keep up her social connections.
This was the first poem she sent me. It reminded me of all our members going through their own life transitions. I hope it resonates with you as much as it did with me.
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Hydrangea
It’s so green here, so beautiful
Everything else is growing
But, stuck in hard hydrophobic soil,
The hydrangea strains to stretch her roots
Her leaves droop and branches harden
The gardener notices and speaks kindly to her
“I’ll have to move you”
And gently he digs around her base
Struggling not to damage her
Then
Lifted high and shaken to clear the blockages
She feels the sun’s warmth
And
Lowered into new potting mix
Surrounded by softness
Newly damp
She relaxes.
Away from the familiarity of the old microbes and other connections, she takes time to settle
But with a sense of renewal
She calls out
In her own way
I can grow
I can flower
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Retirement feels a bit like being repotted, don’t you think? What you’re looking for is a different balance in life, maybe something new. But you also want the warmth of the sun or a familiar sense of happiness and security.
And often you need some help to get comfortable and know you’re in the right place. That’s where we believe that our advisers can help you. While you work out the ‘life’ part of it, we can help you think through your financial issues in retirement. That can give you the peace of mind that it’s all going to be okay – you’ll have enough if you spend appropriately. Time and again we hear from our members about the confidence that they have gained after an advice consultation.We’d love to help you too.
Did Jane’s poem strike a chord with you as well?
Does it reflect your own journey as you left full-time work?
Or did you have a different experience?
Ways Retirement Essentials can help with your transition
Retirement Essentials offers many different tailored consultations for those seeking bite-sized advice to manage their retirement income and entitlements. Here are some that may suit you if you would like to undertake a guided review of your retirement income possibilities.
- Retirement Forecasting (Develop a safe spending plan and how your assets and income could look in the future under a couple of different scenarios
- Understanding more about super (Assess the options to make your super work better for you).
- Maximising your entitlements (See if you can make any changes to maximise your Centrelink entitlements)
- Your home and your mortgage look at the benefits of repaying or maintaining your mortgage in retirement.
