In 2014, now more than ever more and more middle aged people are becoming disillusioned with their work, and are simply waiting for their retirement. With the recent rise in the age of retirement in the UK, people are now expected to work for longer than they ever have done. So if you’re in your 50’s, should you really be thinking about your pension and retirement? Are there other options to get you out of your lull? Here, we consider just three of a wide range of life-changing ideas.
Go Back to Education
Whether you left school with no qualifications or you stayed on and graduated from university with a degree, you’re never too old or too learned to go back to school. In 2008, Gordon Saunders, a 78 year old from South Wales, went back and sat for a GCSE in maths, which he passed with a D – a remarkable achievement. As this shows, you don’t have to be young to get back into education. If you have significant savings, you could go back to university to do a degree or even a PhD if you really want to dedicate time and energy to a given topic.
Traveling Isn’t Just for the Young
Recently, Pensions Minister Steve Webb has suggested that older people should not give up on the idea of taking time out and going on “gap years” to gain worldly experience, and this is certainly a reasonable point. People no longer stay attached to the same job for their whole lives, so why shouldn’t you use your career break as an opportunity to travel abroad and see more of the world? When you get back, you might have fresh ideas about what you want to do for the next stage of your life.
Take Direct Control of Your Pension Savings
To do all of these things, you’ll need a relatively large sum of money, and that’s okay if you have savings. However, if all of your money is tied up in your pension, you won’t be able to access it. To circumnavigate this obstacle, you might have to consider alternative options, such as a Self-Invested Personal Pension (SIPP), a scheme that has been recently been legitimized by the UK government, that allows you to make your own investment decisions. For all the ins and outs of this sort of particular scheme, you should speak to an expert like James Hay, which can provide you with specific details.
So there you have it: some specific ways to stop yourself from thinking about retiring when you’re going through a mid-life lull in your career.
