Planning and Enjoying Retirement

Welcome to the introduction to Laterlife's Planning and Enjoying Retirement section.

Our aim, as retirement specialists, is to constantly develop Laterlife as the most useful web site for anyone thinking about their retirement, wanting to start planning it, or if you are already retired wanting to make the most of it.

You will find here everything you need to think about as you approach retirement, including a complete guide called 'Why Plan for Retirement?', access to online planning retirement courses and real world planning retirement courses, and information and resources to make the most of your retirement, including examples of what others are doing in retirement to provide ideas and inspiration on how to plan for retirement.

Planning Retirement - an opportunity and a challenge

Retirement Planning is even more important today than it has ever been. As retirees we are much healthier, much more active and can expect to live much longer – a whole new phase of life and opportunity is opening up. Unlike other phases of life, this time there are far fewer constraints! However how you spend 40-50 hours of extra leisure time a week, on top of previous leisure time, and make the most of it, is also a huge challenge as well as a great opportunity.

Sadly many people spend less time planning their retirement than they do planning their annual holiday but the value of doing so can be tremendous. Our training arm Laterlife Learning has carried out both its own retirement survey and also one in combination with the University of Greenwich. The Laterlife survey showed approximately a 30% improvement in the 'level of enjoying retirement' for people who had attended a planning retirement course. The University of Greenwich survey showed a 19% improvement in overall Life Satisfaction if you had attended one.

Here on Laterlife we provide access to information and resources to enable you to improve your enjoyment of retirement too. Start with our guide on 'Why Plan for Retirement?' which covers:  Essentials of Retirement, Initial Planning, To work or not to work, Finance and Fitness, Other aspects of retirement planning. Then take a look at our other guides When to retire, Early Retirement, and What to do in retirement

Enjoying Retirement

Retirement is a time of limitless opportunity! Everything on the laterlife site is aimed at contributing to enjoyment of your later life and achieving a balanced retirement, but here we cover some specific topics from Using your time to taking up new Hobbies and Interests and Extra holidays and breaks. Are you aware of Long Stay holidays for example and how cheap they can be?

Staying fit and healthy in later life both physically and mentally are two of the essentials of retirement. You'll find lots of valuable ideas in our Guide to staying fit and healthy and in our health section which carries new health articles every month.

For many people part of enjoying later life may include some work in laterlife, either paid or Voluntary work.  It may also be the time to start that business that you always wanted to.  There's plenty of help and opportunity around if you know where to look. Take a look at our original work and retirement survey too, to see what others think. (Subsequent repetitions of this survey have shown very similar results).

In later life many of us have elderly parents so you'll also find information and resources to help you look after them. There's our Guide to Caring for Elderly parents plus information on Care Homes and more recently Retirement Villages, which may be worth thinking about for ourselves at some point.

Retirement is a landmark event and once retired there are plenty of reasons to celebrate so don't miss the sections on retirement gifts and guide to organising a party

And much more

Finance, Grandparenting, Relationships, Competitions to enjoy.........

In fact there is information on laterlife.com on just about any topic you care to mention related to retirement, so if you are looking for something specific just use the search facility towards the top right of every page, just below the navigation. 

Keep up to date

We run Laterlife a bit like a monthly magazine so each month there are new articles from our network of writers and the Laterlife Today page provides an overall index to them. It's updated on the first of every month.

Plus there are free email newsletters each month to keep you up to date and tell you about special events and offers. Every page carries a link to sign up for the free newsletters towards the top right of every page, just below the navigation or you can sign up here and now and then carry on browsing. You can select one or all of the newsletters, you can unsubscribe at any time should you want to and we always respect your privacy.

Laterlife has been in operation since 1999 and our training arm Laterlife Learning since 2004. Click to find out more about Laterlife Learning. Laterlife is a registered trademark of laterlife.com Limited.