Don’t retire, pretire

Back in the day everyone was clear about where they stood.  You left school, got a job and when you were old enough for a bus pass you retired and spent your time either cruising or pottering in your allotment depending upon a) your financial position and b) your interests.  If you were lucky you had a good few years of leisure time away from work before you got your call.  If you were really lucky you retired ahead of the game and were still young enough to enjoy the free time that you now had.

But not now!  Who knows when you are going to get the chance to retire and how much money you will have to live on?  Life expectancy is going up and the value of pensions is going down and the prospect of retirement has turned into a lengthy period of ill health and penury.    It is certainly something to look forward to.

Don’t worry though.  You should get on board the latest trend and have your retirement before you start work.  You should pretire.   After all you’re state pension is only going to be enough to keep you in Spam and dry bread buns and any private pension that you have will go straight to Helen McArdle so you’re not going to have any money but you will have your health and you will have the energy to enjoy it.  By pretiring you can bum around with your mates in a student flat, go large on the town until all hours of the night without fear of having to get up in the morning, go around the world on a gap year and live off your parents’ money.  If things get desperate you can always get a zero hour, minimum wage McJob to keep you in alcohol and takeaways.

Work can come later, you can think about your career when you’re well into your thirties and you will still have time to get at least forty years under your belt before you can officially start to wind down.  In this way you can work when you’re best years are already behind you.  You will have had your fun, sown your wild oats and be more minded to fall into a more steady and repetitive routine.  And you’ll have the added incentive in knowing that you’ll have a mountain of debt to pay off from your pretirement days.  Instead of building up a retirement fund you will be filling up a pretirement black hole.

Why not give it a go, live a little.  It’s never too early to pretire.