Planning for Retirement Beyond the Money: Time, Identity, Company
- In the UK the average age of leaving the labour market in 2025 was 65.8 for men and 64.7 for women, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
- Only half of UK adults who planned to retire within five years were looking forward to it, the Centre for Ageing Better reported, and 24% worried about losing their sense of purpose.
- In a study of 3,433 British civil servants, verbal memory declined 38% faster after retirement than before it, while three other thinking skills showed no change in pace.
- Roughly one in five Americans aged 65 and older was employed in 2023, nearly double the share of 35 years earlier, according to Pew Research Center.
- The UK has no default retirement age, and employees in Great Britain can ask to reduce their hours through a flexible working request from their first day in a job.
Most retirement planning is a spreadsheet. That part matters, and it is a job for a regulated adviser or a free guidance service, not for this article. What the spreadsheet leaves out is the 42 hours a week that full-time work and a commute currently fill, and the question of what goes there instead.
This guide covers that side only: time, identity, company, health and the option of leaving in stages. It applies equally to a full stop at 66 and to dropping to three days a week at 57.
What changes when you stop work, apart from the money?
A job hands you several things you never had to arrange. It tells you when to get up. It gives you a short answer to "what do you do?", and it puts you in a room, or a group chat, with other adults. It makes you think, and in many roles it makes you walk.
The arithmetic is worth doing once. UK full-time workers average about 37 hours a week, and a 30-minute commute each way adds five. That is 42 hours a week, or roughly 2,000 hours a year across 47 working weeks, arriving all at once on a Monday morning.
| What work supplied | What tends to happen without it | A replacement to arrange in advance |
|---|---|---|
| A timetable | Days blur, mornings drift later, small jobs expand to fill the week | Two or three fixed commitments a week with a start time and other people expecting you |
| A role | An awkward pause when someone asks what you do | One activity where you are useful to someone: a trustee post, a school reading scheme, a repair café |
| Daily company | Contact shrinks to a partner, if there is one, and the supermarket | A standing weekly arrangement with friends, plus one group you join before you leave work |
| Mental effort | Fewer problems to solve and names to remember | Something with a learning curve: a language, an instrument, a course, a committee's accounts |
| Incidental movement | The walk to the station and the stairs at the office disappear | Walking or exercise booked into the week like a meeting |
Not everyone will miss all five. Someone leaving a lonely or physically punishing job may gain on several rows straight away. The point of the table is to check each row before the leaving date instead of six months after it.
Is retirement good or bad for your wellbeing?
It depends heavily on how it happens. A Dutch study in The Gerontologist followed 1,388 older workers over six years, during which 54% retired. People who retired by choice reported higher life satisfaction than those still working. Those pushed out by ill health or by their employer reported the lowest scores of all.
Expectations are mixed too. When the Centre for Ageing Better reviewed the UK evidence in 2018, only half of people planning to retire within five years were looking forward to it. A third feared boredom, 32% worried about missing colleagues and 24% about losing their sense of purpose.
The review also found that people with more control over timing fared better, and that women and people on lower incomes did the least planning.
US research using the long-running Health and Retirement Study points both ways. A Population Reference Bureau summary reports better memory scores in countries where more older people work, alongside studies in which retirees smoked less and exercised more. The authors add a caution: healthier people stay in work longer, which flatters work.
The reasonable reading is that retirement is neither harmful in itself nor the answer to a bad job. Choice, health and what fills the week afterwards explain more than the leaving date does.
How do you structure a week with no job in it?
With fewer fixed points than a working week, but more than none. The common mistake is to plan the first month (the holiday, the loft, the garden) and nothing after it. By week six the loft is done and Tuesday has no shape.
Set anchors, then leave the rest loose
An anchor is a commitment with a start time and someone expecting you: a volunteering shift, a class, a grandchild's school pick-up, a walking group. Three a week is a workable number. They give the other days something to sit between, and they get you dressed and out by a set time.
Keep a wake-up time
It can be later than before. It should still be roughly the same each day.
The American Time Use Survey found that adults aged 75 and over had 7.4 hours of leisure a day in 2025, more than any other age group, and that television took more leisure time than anything else across all adults. Unplanned hours tend to go to the sofa.
Test the week before you need it
Take a fortnight of annual leave at home, not away, and live the week you have in mind. Note which days dragged and which filled themselves. It is a cheap experiment, and most people adjust their plans after it.
Who are you without the job title?
For people whose work has been a large part of how they introduce themselves, this is the hardest part, and the one least likely to be mentioned at the leaving do. Thirty years as "the head of maths" or "a nurse on Ward 7" does not switch off with the last payslip.
Two things help in practice. The first is a new answer to "what do you do?" that is about the present, such as "I mentor apprentices two mornings a week and I'm learning to sail", not "I used to be".
The second is to carry over the part of the job you valued. Someone who liked teaching can tutor. Someone who liked fixing things has a queue waiting at any repair café.
Couples should talk about this early. Two people at home all day, with different ideas about how the day should run, is a common source of friction that nobody puts in the plan. Agree who has which room, which days are joint, and which are not.
How do you keep enough people in your week?
Workplace friendships run on proximity. Once you stop seeing people daily, those ties tend to fade unless someone makes an arrangement.
The US National Institute on Aging lists retirement among the major life changes that can leave people isolated, and separates two ideas that often get merged. Social isolation is having few people to interact with. Loneliness is the distressing feeling of being alone.
Some perspective is useful here. Older people are not the loneliest group. In the UK government's Community and Engagement Survey for 2025/26, 4% of people aged 65 to 74 in England said they felt lonely often or always, against 9% of those aged 16 to 24. The figure for disabled people was 14%, which suggests health matters more than age.
Volunteering is the usual suggestion, and the evidence for it has a catch. A University of Michigan analysis of the Health and Retirement Study followed 5,000 people aged 60 and over who were not lonely in 2006.
Twelve years on, those volunteering more than 100 hours a year had a lower risk of loneliness than non-volunteers. Below 100 hours there was no difference.
One hundred hours a year is about two hours a week. The study is observational, so sociable people may simply volunteer more. It still suggests that an occasional afternoon at a charity shop is unlikely to do the job, and a regular weekly shift with the same people might.
What happens to your brain and body?
The best-known study is from the Whitehall II cohort, which tested 3,433 British civil servants repeatedly for up to 14 years either side of retirement. Verbal memory declined 38% faster after retirement than before, after allowing for age. Abstract reasoning and two measures of verbal fluency showed no change in pace.
The caveats matter. The participants were office-based civil servants, 72% of them men, so the result may not hold for a roofer or a care worker.
The authors could not fully rule out that early memory changes nudged some people into retiring. It is one finding on one skill, and it shows an association, not proof that stopping work causes decline.
Movement is on firmer ground. The NHS and the CDC give the same targets for adults of 65 and over: at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, strength work on at least two days, and activities that improve balance. The NHS also advises breaking up long spells of sitting, and the CDC adds that some activity is better than none.
A desk job never supplied much of that, but the commute and the building supplied some. Book the replacement into the week as one of your anchors. If you have a long-term condition or have been inactive for years, ask your GP or doctor what is suitable before starting something strenuous.
Do you have to stop all at once?
No. The UK's default retirement age no longer exists, so in most jobs you can work for as long as you want to.
In the US the Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers workers aged 40 and over. Pew Research Center found that 19% of Americans aged 65 and older were employed in 2023, nearly double the share of 35 years earlier.
In the UK, the Department for Work and Pensions puts the average age of leaving the labour market in 2025 at 65.8 for men and 64.7 for women, the highest on record for men. Among 50 to 64-year-olds in work, 27.7% of women and 10.9% of men were part-time.
| Route | What it looks like | Suits | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full stop | A leaving date, then no paid work | People with plans already running, or a job that is harming their health | The empty Tuesday. Arrange anchors before you go |
| Phased exit, same employer | Five days to four, then three, over one to three years | People who like the work and the colleagues but want less of both | Five days of work squeezed into three days of pay. Agree what is dropped |
| Bridge job | A different, lighter role elsewhere, often part-time | People who want structure and company without the old responsibility | A drop in status can sting more than expected |
| Self-directed work | Consulting, tutoring, a craft or trade on your own terms | People with a saleable skill and a tolerance for admin | It can quietly grow back into a full-time job |
Employees in Great Britain can ask for reduced hours through a flexible working request, available from the first day in a job. An employer can refuse on business grounds. The US has no federal equivalent, so phased arrangements depend on the employer.
Any change in hours has knock-on effects for pay, pensions and benefits, which is where this article stops and a guidance service takes over. The mechanics of making a request are covered in our guide to improving work-life balance.
What should you do in the year before?
Start the replacements while you still have the job. It is far easier to join a choir, a committee or a walking group as a busy person with one free evening than as a new retiree with seven.
| When | What to do | Time needed |
|---|---|---|
| 12 months before | Fill in the five rows of the first table for your own job. Mark the two you would miss most | 30 minutes |
| 9 months before | Join one group or start one voluntary role now, on an evening or weekend | 2 hours a week |
| 6 months before | Ask your employer about phasing down. Talk to your partner, if you have one, about how the days will run | Two conversations |
| 3 months before | Take a fortnight off at home and live the planned week. Adjust | 2 weeks of leave |
| Last month | Put three weekly anchors in the diary for the first three months. Swap personal contact details with the colleagues you want to keep | 1 hour |
| 3 months after | Review. Keep what worked, drop what did not, add one thing with a learning curve | 30 minutes |
If the decision has been made for you, through redundancy or ill health, the same steps apply on a shorter clock. The Dutch data above suggests this group has the hardest time, so it is the group with most reason to arrange structure and company early.
Where can you get advice?
Money and health are jobs for other people
This article gives no financial or pensions guidance. In the UK, MoneyHelper's Pension Wise service offers free, impartial, government-backed appointments for people aged 50 and over with a defined contribution pension. In the US, SSA.gov explains Social Security retirement benefits and provides estimates.
Low mood that lasts more than two weeks after stopping work, or worrying changes in memory, deserve a conversation with a GP in the UK or your doctor in the US.
If you feel unable to keep yourself safe, call 999 or 911. Samaritans answer on 116 123 in the UK, and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline takes calls and texts in the US.
Questions readers ask
Is it normal to feel low after retiring?
A dip is common once the first weeks pass, particularly where the exit was not your choice. In UK survey evidence, a quarter of people approaching retirement already expected to miss their sense of purpose. Low mood that lasts more than a fortnight, or stops you doing ordinary things, is a reason to see your GP or doctor.
Does retiring early harm your memory?
Nobody can say that with confidence. One British study found verbal memory declined faster after retirement, while other thinking skills did not. Studies across countries point the same way, but healthier people tend to work for longer, which muddies the comparison. Keeping mentally demanding activity in the week is a sensible response to uncertain evidence.
How many activities should you plan for the first year?
Fewer than you think. Three fixed weekly commitments are enough to give the week a shape, and one of them should involve regular contact with the same people. Leave room to discover what you enjoy. Signing up to six things in the first month usually ends with cancelling four of them by the third.
Can you ask to go part-time before retiring?
In Great Britain, yes. Any employee can make a flexible working request from their first day, and the employer must decide within two months, though it can refuse on business grounds. There is no federal right to ask in the US, so it depends on your employer's policy. Check the effect on pay and pension before agreeing anything.
Sources
- Department for Work and Pensions. Economic labour market status of individuals aged 50 and over, trends over time: September 2025. 30 September 2025.
- Centre for Ageing Better. Employers urged to talk to staff about retirement plans (summary of the rapid evidence review on the transition to retirement). 6 December 2018.
- Hershey DA, Henkens K. Impact of different types of retirement transitions on perceived satisfaction with life. The Gerontologist. 2014;54(2):232.
- Xue B, Cadar D, Fleischmann M, et al. Effect of retirement on cognitive function: the Whitehall II cohort study. European Journal of Epidemiology. 2018;33:989–1001.
- Population Reference Bureau. Is working longer good for older Americans' health? 23 April 2018.
- University of Michigan News. Loneliness in later life lessens when older adults spend many hours volunteering. 13 February 2023. Study by Cho J and Xiang X, Journal of Gerontological Social Work.
- National Institute on Aging. Loneliness and social isolation: tips for staying connected. Reviewed 11 July 2024.
- Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Community and Engagement Survey 2025/26: loneliness report. 14 August 2026.
- Pew Research Center. Older workers are growing in number and earning higher wages. 14 December 2023. US Bureau of Labor Statistics. American Time Use Survey: 2025 results. 25 June 2026.
- NHS. Physical activity guidelines for older adults. Reviewed 15 August 2024. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Older adult activity: an overview.
- GOV.UK. Working after State Pension age; Flexible working. US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Age discrimination. MoneyHelper. Pension Wise. Social Security Administration. Retirement benefits. Accessed September 2026.
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