Older and Bolder by Renata Singer

Author:Renata Singer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522865967
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

Different decades, different needs

Looking at our adult lives from a financial perspective we can see definite stages. In your thirties and forties you are likely to be financially stretched with 30 per cent of your income going to pay tax, another 20 per cent for the mortgage and another 10 per cent in child expenses. This leaves you only 40 per cent of disposable income. In your fifties and sixties the mortgage should be paid off and the kids gone, so you’ll have an extra 40 per cent of your income to play with, and even putting 10 to 20 per cent away for retirement, you should have more to spend.17

Our needs and wants don’t stay the same over the last thirty years of our lives either. By our fifties and sixties we’ve all accumulated far more stuff than we need. Most of us stop or slow down on acquisitions. Our homes and shelves and cupboards are full to overflowing. Everyone is talking about clearing out, giving away, simplifying and downsizing. We eat out and travel, and spend as much as ever on entertainment, food and gifts. Many of my friends are hiking, canoeing and ticking through their bucket list of exotic destinations, feeling the pressure to do all these things while they’re still fit and able. And when we stop work our travel budget will rocket up still further—we’ve got the time and hopefully have saved the money.

One school of retirement planning says that although people spend up big in the early years of retirement, their spending evens itself out in later years. They argue that even if you want to live it up in retirement, you probably only have to budget for about ten years of the high life. One such pundit advises, ‘If you want to live large in retirement, split your savings in two. Think about how much you’ll need for those once-in-a-lifetime things you want to do in your sixties, because once you reach your seventies, you’ll just want to relax.’18

He must be in his thirties or forties to have this stereotypical view of people at seventy, imagining roomfuls of them in recliners in front of the television. But there are far too many once-in-a-lifetime things to fit into your sixties. And what’s with this relaxing? For the people I know it means climbing Mt Kilimanjaro or exploring the Kimberley. And who is filling up those cruises to Alaska, and most of the seats at the theatre? People in their sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. The women I spoke to describe their sixties and seventies as a very active time in their lives, when they were doing as much or more than ever. It is true that by the time they hit the second half of the nineties they are slowing down somewhat.

Apart from Dodo Berk—always the exception to the rule—none of the oldest women travel further than an hour or two from home. The wonderful Dodo still takes her annual cruise with her daughter and spends every winter in Florida.

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