Lockdown has been good practice for retirement unless you're spending eight hours a day on Zoom or trying to home school some kids, so you may by now have a clearer idea where you want to take it. But if you're getting stuck, here are a few stereotypes to test your expectations against. Is one of them you?
The couch potato: After a lifetime of toil, you’ll hunker down in front of the TV – sport, cookery, quiz and reality shows according to taste – potter around the house and complain that today’s young people don’t know how well off they are. If you’re married, this will drive your other half nuts and/or out of the house. Conventional wisdom says it’s the way to an early grave.
The intellectual: You’ve always been too busy earning for learning, but now’s your chance. You’ll become ferociously interested in Greek philosophy, the funding of the First World War or molecular biology. You’ll join the Open University or do a PhD and wonder why it took you so long. You’ll be first in the queue for cheap theatre tickets when you can go out again and take in each new art show. You’ll develop strongly held views on postmodernist architecture (having worked out what it is).
The workaholic: Not being paid will be no excuse for being inactive. You’ll get up at 6.00, walk to the newsagent and read your paper over a healthy breakfast before engaging in a full programme of activities (you’ll fill in the details later).
The hobbyist is a variant on this… working full time on model building, gardening or music.
The traveller: If Covid has taught you anything, it's that you want to visit everywhere. You’ll have every vaccine going and celebrate newfound freedom by going camping in Nepal, trekking in Chile and cross country skiing in Norway. You’ll cross the Sahara by bus and the Channel by sailing dinghy. Can you afford it? What if you get ill? Who will you go with (if anyone)? What are the pay-offs between blowing your pension on travel and being poorer later on?
The fitness freak: You probably gave up smoking years ago but the Peleton bike in your living room (check it out here) has been a lifesaver and now you plan to give up almost everything else and run, swim or to go to the gym five times a week. You’ve always had half a hankering to run a marathon, so that’s what you’ll work up to… it’s a good way to earn money for charity, too, and if your knees don’t give way you’ll live forever.
The expat: You’ve fancied moving to the sun ever since you read A Year in Provence, and the past year has turned that idea into an obsession… you’ll sell your house, work your way through Spanish, Portuguese or Swahili classes on Rosetta Stone and go to live somewhere warm. You’ll watch the sunset from your veranda with a glass in hand and be happy…
The refusenik: You're never going to retire! You've worked through lockdown, you don’t see the point in sitting around doing nothing, and you can’t think of anything else you’d rather do. This is far easier if you’re self-employed or run your own business, where the working hours are under your own control. But remember that old saw: “Nobody on their deathbed has ever said ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office!’”
The carer: Parents, grandchildren, neighbours… they all need you and soon you'll be able to see them again. You’re already volunteering at a vaccination centre, which has plugged you back into the world after months of isolation, and it's given you a taste for it. You'll volunteer as a hospital visitor, as a helper in a hospice or running a soup kitchen for the homeless. And with a bit of luck, someone like you will be there when you get toward the end of the road.
The mystic: Having served Mammon for the last 40 years, you’ll try to get closer to God. Whatever your religion, it is often hard in a busy secular society to listen to your inner voice. Whether it’s by study, by worship or by good works, you’ll focus on the spiritual side of life and hope to find peace.
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