A Retirement Blog by Caree Risover

Last week’s holiday was a time to talk about what we both might want to actually spend our days in retirement doing. Now I have all kinds of aspirations involving horticulture and interior design as well as researching the family tree and taking up again various abandoned arts and crafts. For a long time however I have known that Mister E has harboured ambitions to cross large oceans in rather small sailing vessels. It was inevitable, therefore, that we spent some of our time on Gran Canaria peering at the boats in various marinas. I was relieved when Mister E confessed that he probably now has a greater sense of fear than in his younger days and perhaps the appeal of a transatlantic crossing is dimming. But Mister E is a dreamer and after a lingering visit to Puerto Mogan, he proceeded to tell me how comfortable the voyage would be with the Trade Winds with us (I loved the inclusivity of his description). Call me a coward, but I had to say that, as someone with “Day Sa...

Mister E and I survived our first full-length holiday alone together since our eldest was born more than 22 years ago. We stayed in Meloneras on Gran Canaria. We did, of course, miss the children and realised just how reliant on them we can be; when lettering is small or speech is very quiet we have clearly got into the habit of asking them to decipher for us. Fun times when we were both struggling to read the air conditioning settings in our hotel room and we both put reading glasses on especially! We didn’t feel unduly old; most of our fellow holidaymakers seemed to pass their day perambulating on the promenade, taking in the sea air and then sipping iced coffee whilst watching others stroll. On our part, we were quite proud of our ability to throw off the crowds on parade as we walked that extra mile or two. Mister E insisted on setting his alarm clock for fear of missing breakfast which finished at 11am, meaning that on two occasions we were even first ...

Well the meeting with the adviser went well yesterday in so far as he didn't decry us for our stupidity or impossible dreams. Instead we've just been given piles of homework and options: groan...groan!   Never mind, and whilst we didn't actually consult the Doctor, we are now off on a practice run. A week in the sun together; no children, just Mister E, me and a pile of books. I would say no worries, but we are leaving our home in the care of the next generation and just keeping our fingers crossed. A good practice for them too.

According to the magazine that arrived in the post for me today (Money Matters by Armstrong Watson accountants) your 40's is the golden decade for retirement planning. That's when you should be putting as much as possible into your pensions to give them a chance to grow before you retire. Well it didn't work for me. In the first half of that decade I got caught by the collapse of Equitable Life. Then I got very disillusioned with the returns on the fund transferred and invested in other schemes and probably didn't contribute as much as was prudent. Finally, right at the end of that ten year period, recession struck and decreased again the value of my pension fund. I'm afraid it was at that point that I began to look at the mattress on my bed and appreciate why in days gone by people would hoard their funds under one! Fortunately Mister E is one of the dwindling number of people with access to a final salary pension scheme (albeit deferred man...

That meeting with the IFA is coming up and I've been preparing spread-sheets: income sources against expenditure and a list of assets and pension funds.   I've been told when you retire your expenditure on some things should decrease. However, I am struggling to identify anything apart from clothing and petrol at the moment. What's more I suspect any savings there, may be offset by increased heating bills and travel costs. Also there's the youngest to help until she finishes her education.   Help - if the figures don't balance, do I worry about living in penury when I'm 70, 80 or 90? Maybe I should visit a fortune teller rather than an IFA.

Thumbing through Mister E's monthly  magazine from his engineering institute, I noticed an article reporting the outcome of research at the Universities of South Carolina and Queensland in relation to the consumption of coffee. Apparently it's none too good for you if you're under 55 and drink more than 28 cups a week.   It seems, however, that once you are 55 there's no longer a significant increase in mortality rates, regardless of how much coffee you drink.   So now I know why the numerous coffee shops in the high street of our local town are frequented by retirees and clearly I'm going to be able to join them with impunity.    

Well we inched closer to retirement this weekend by arranging a date for that meeting with the financial adviser and also had our broadband updated. Rural broadband is notoriously slow and recently we've been lucky to manage to receive download speeds of 10mb per second. Fibre optic cabling has, however, finally arrived in the village and we subscribed for an upgrade last week. We were connected on Saturday and are now hitting the dizzy heights of a connection speed of 75mb instead. As Mister E said, "At least we'll be able to use our computers in retirement."