Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more  Hey! I’m Bec Wilson, author of How to Have an Epic Retirement (Australia’s #1 bestseller, now also available in the UK) and Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife. I also host the Prime Time podcast and run The Epic Retirement Club.This is my UK Epic Retirement Newsletter—a fortnightly guide tailored for UK readers. We talk about pensions and drawdown, tax and housing, health and lifestyle, and the big decisions that shape how you’ll live well in the years ahead. It’s about making retirement less about fear and more about freedom.If this was forwarded to you and you’d like your own copy direct to your inbox, you can sign up here:  SubscribedAre you ready to retire? Depends which kind of ready you meanAnd, in The Times: ‘Your pension is primed to let you down at the worst possible time’ Jun 14     READ IN APP In this week’s edition: Feature story: New data out: What does a comfortable retirement cost now? The Times: ‘We had to sell our home’ — the reality of retirement without savingsFrom Bec’s Desk: A digital detox and course at Week 3 Are you ready to retire? Depends which kind of ready you meanType “am I ready to retire” into Google and you’ll get calculators, checklists, and articles telling you to aim for 70% of your pre-retirement income. All these tools are useful. All are focused on your money.But that’s not really what you’re asking at 11pm on a Tuesday when you type those words, is it? What you actually want to know is: will I be okay? And that’s an entirely different question.I’ve spoken with hundreds of people who had their finances completely sorted and still hit retirement like a concrete wall. It wasn’t the money that caught them off guard. It was the regularity of Monday morning. The empty diary and no plans, and no rhythm or social framework to slot into. That plus the odd feeling of invisibility. There’s often a realisation that most of their social life had been running through their work or at the very least, through their work networks, without them ever noticing it.The first few weeks of retirement can feel like a holiday. Then something shifts, and suddenly “what am I actually doing today?” starts to feel like a question that needs a more valuable answer than just “whatever I want”. You’ve got skills, you’ve got a brain, you’ve got time. But you haven’t worked out how to use them differently, for the social benefits, the lifestyle moments and the pure joy of it.This is something we call the adjustment phase. Be alert to it, even prepared for it. It’s completely normal. But most people have never heard of it and don’t talk about the tough bits, so most aren’t ready for it.So how do you really actually know if you’re ready?It’s not about whether you feel excited for or nervous about retirement. Most people feel both. It’s about whether you’ve thought through the things that work has been taking care of for you – the social networks, the adrenalin rushes of achievement and the feeling of having purpose.Sit with these before you hand in your notice and think about them:Where does your sense of self come from right now? If the honest answer is mostly your job title, worth knowing that before you walk out the door.Who will you actually spend time with in retirement? And I don’t mean on holidays. I mean on an ordinary Wednesday. Work friends are great until they’re not your colleagues anymore. And people you do deals with might not need to take you to lunch when there’s no deals to be done.What’s going to get you out of bed? I don’t mean a vague plan to read more or potter in the garden. Think up something specific, with enough pull to give your week some shape.Then contemplate – if you are you running toward something, or away from something? Retiring to escape a bad job or a shitty boss is very different from retiring toward a life you’ve designed, thought through and have a vision of. The people who land well usually have the second picture sorted.And have you actually tested any of this? Take a longer break. Spend a week without work structure. Take your long service leave – if you dare. See how it feels in real life, not just in your head.And then remember, you don’t need to have it all figured out. Nobody does. Retirement isn’t a moment you either nail or don’t. It’s a transition, and transitions take time to find their shape. But going in knowing that the emotional side is just as real as the financial side puts you in a much stronger position than most people who only run the numbers to check if they are ready.So yes, check your pensions, do the sums, make sure the money works. Then ask yourself the harder questions too. Because those are the ones that will really tell you whether you’re ready. This week we held our first Live Q&A for the Epic Retirement UK Flagship Course. Neil Jones, Wealth Manager and Tax Specialist from Standard Life joined me online to answer the questions of everyone doing the course. It was a lively and very fulfilling online event – and a really helpful format. And boy oh boy did our class keep him busy. Our UK course is going great guns. The feedback at the beginning of Week 3 is really positive. People are feeling like it’s teaching them what they need to know – the stuff that no-one really tells them about the choices they have and the opportunities that are in front of them. It’s a six week program. So there’s still a way to go. If you’d like to join the course a little late, there’s still two live events during the program as well as six weeks of lessons to work through, that drop for watching in your own time, organised into six weeks of content. Just book your place and jump straight in. You haven’t missed anything you can’t catch up on with around 3 hours of on-demand online course-watching, and last week’s live event was recorded for replay. Here’s the brochure if you want to learn more about it. And book your place and get started here. Learn more: Download the brochureThis week, hot on the heels of the new Pensions UK benchmarks being released, I did a column for The Times about how people who can’t afford a comfortable retirement make ends meet. I asked our Epic Retirement Club for their inputs and tell the real stories in this one – some will break your heart. Thanks to everyone who was brave enough to talk about what they do when money doesn’t go as far as the retirement dream. It’s been a busy week, so this weekend I’m taking a digital detox. Unusual for me. You’ll see everything is scheduled to happen just like it should – the reels, the podcasts, the newsletters and the newspapers. I will just be letting life happen, with a cup of tea, a good book and some board games in the weirdly and unseasonably rainy Queensland weather. I hope you find time out occasionally too. Bec Xx Author, podcast host, columnist, retirement educator, and guest speaker I am the retirement columnist for The Times, UK. You can read my most recent column here or look through all my columns here. ‘We had to sell our home’ – the reality of retirement without savingsWith an estimated 15 million undersaving for later life, many will find they have to make compromises to avoid hardship Vivian divorced in 1990 and raised her three children with no financial support from their father. She couldn’t afford a private pension, and had almost nothing in workplace savings, despite decades of work, sometimes three jobs at a time just to make ends meet.She should have retired last year but is working full time on minimum wage to cover her rent and keep her lights on. For her, a comfortable or even modest retirement is a long way from reality. The state pension will be her main source of income.She is one of the members of my Facebook group, Epic Retirement Club, who shared their experiences this week. In a group full of proactive planners working hard to get ahead and use the systems of retirement to ensure that they will be comfortable, not many were willing to come forward in public and talk about what it feels like to not be on target. But plenty sent in private messages about their plight. It’s tough out there. And many of those who have retired, or who should have retired, are just scraping by.The conversation came after the latest Retirement Living Standards from the industry body Pensions UK, which set out the estimated incomes needed for comfortable, moderate and minimum lifestyles in retirement – numbers that lay out what it really costs. Last month the government’s Pensions Commission reported that 15 million people in the UK were undersaving for retirement.The article was published in The Times, on Thursday June 11 and is available for reading here. Got your copy of How to Have an Epic Retirement – the UK edition yet? Order it now on Amazon here.  Thanks for reading Epic Retirement UK! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.SubscribedWhy do I write a separate newsletter for the UK? I write a separate newsletter specifically for the UK, because the financial system here is completely different to Australia, where I’m based. Your retirement is shaped by the State Pension, workplace pensions, ISAs and HMRC rules. Not superannuation or the Australian Age Pension. If I just sent you the Australian version with a few words swapped out, it wouldn’t actually be useful to you. And useful is the whole point.The big conversations, about when to step back from work, what you want the next chapter to look like, how to make your money last, those are universal. But the practical detail needs to reflect the system you’re actually living in. So that’s what we’ve built here. Tell your friends – we want to help you make your retirement epic – the UK way. Welcome to the UK edition.Thanks for reading Epic Retirement UK! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.If you enjoyed this newsletter, please send it to a friend and suggest they sign up!Share Epic Retirement InternationalRetirement looks different around the world, but it’s a stage of life that’s changing everywhere.This is my UK Epic Retirement Newsletter. I also write an Australian edition every week and a North American edition semi-regularly.Catch up & tune in You can browse all the UK newsletter archives at uk.epicretirement.net. And if you’d like more, check out my Aussie podcast Prime Time at primetimers.net.Join the Epic Retirement Community Come be part of the conversation. Join the Epic Retirement Facebook Group, follow me on Instagram @epicretirement, or on Facebook @becwilsonepic. Or—just hit reply to this email to get in touch.Want to know more? Looking for resources, interested in advertising, or keen to book me for a corporate or consumer event? You can find out more about Epic Retirement and why we’re different at epicretirement.net Like Comment Restack © 2026 Epically Pty Ltd trading at Epic RetirementPO Box 3310, Norman Park QLD 4152 Unsubscribe   |
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