Shane: Hello. My name is Shane Hancock, and I am the Head of Member Products, Guidance and Advice at AustralianSuper. And welcome to our podcast, The moments that count. Before we start, it's important to note that the information discussed in this podcast is general only and doesn't take into account your needs or personal objectives. You should assess your own financial situation and needs.

Today, this podcast is being recorded at our head office on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I and AustralianSuper acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia. We pay our respects to elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Quite often, AustralianSuper members will ask questions of the Fund through various channels. And mostly those questions are relevant for many members, and so we thought it'd be great if we could share some of those questions and answers through this podcast.

To help answer these questions, I'll invite a guest expert to join me on the podcast. When people are thinking about their retirement, money is just one factor to consider. There's a range of things to think about when planning for the next phase of your life to help you achieve the retirement lifestyle that you want.

Now today, we're very fortunate to be joined by Dr. Elizabeth Clancy, a Senior Consultant/Psychologist with Transitioning Well, who has been providing retirement coaching and workshops for several years and has a strong interest in helping individuals to successfully transition into a meaningful retirement.

Transitioning Well is an organisational psychology consultancy which focuses on the messy intersections between work and life. helping individuals, teams and organisations to better negotiate the interfaces. Hi, Elizabeth and welcome.

Elizabeth: Thanks so much Shane, it's a pleasure to be here.

Shane: Before we start, can you tell us a little bit more about Transitioning Well?

Elizabeth: So as you mentioned, Transitioning Well, we're an organisational consultancy firm and we work with a range of organisations and individuals really looking at where life and work intersect.

So, those places in which what we're doing in our personal lives comes into work or equally what we're doing at work comes into our personal lives and how we can get the balance between these different parts of our lives right to get the sort of identity and the sort of life we're all looking for. And whether that's through graduate transition, moving into parenting or up to retirement, right across the lifespan.

Shane: Yeah, I wish I'd have known about you many years ago. More about the transitioning to parenting bit I was referring to. To set the scene, can you give us a bit of a view around the current retirement landscape in Australia?

Elizabeth: Well, as many of your listeners would be aware, I think we know that overall there is an ageing population in Australia. We've got around about 700,000 people who are planning to retire over the next five years. So that's quite a large population boom that we're seeing moving into the retirement kind of lifespan.

And retirement's really changed since what we saw perhaps with our parents. We used to see retirement as being almost sort of a very abrupt change that people would be working full-time till that Friday send-off, they'd get given the watch or whatever else and then come Monday they're fully retired.

But what we're seeing increasingly now is a really broad range of retirement journeys. So, people are looking at whether it's transitions gradually into retirement, reducing their hours, people looking at part-time arrangements, we see people moving into consultancy roles or volunteering.

And we see a really broad range there of career shifts, or even what we call unretirement. So people who move into retirement and they go, "You know what, maybe I wasn't quite ready..." and they step back into work, whether that's in their previous roles. And in fact, we even see around about 10% of people have no explicit plans to ever retire.

They say that one of the most accurate things about the recent Indiana Jones movie was an 80-year-old academic who wasn't planning to retire, and I think that's around about right. So we see these really different journeys, but what we also do see with people approaching retirement is that a lot of them are concerned about, what is this journey going to look like for me?

And that's both in relation to financial security, obviously, that if your income source has been a big part of your life, what's going to replace that? What does that look like? And obviously, that's an area of expertise for you guys. But also, what's life going to look like as we move into this retirement journey?

Shane: Great. You've touched on a couple of the concerns that people have raised with you. What are some other common retirement concerns that people have?

Elizabeth: Well, we see one of the big concerns, obviously, is around finance. And increasingly, with cost of living, we're seeing that coming up a bit more for people at the moment. About 55% of pre-retirees are concerned they're going to run out of money with retirement. And we see some specific gender differences in that. Women typically have lower superannuation balances. Maybe they haven't worked full-time for the length of their career. And those men and women, and those who are gender diverse, who don't have partners are also a bit more concerned about retirement. But some of the other things that they worry about are health and wellbeing, getting a little bit more aware that our bodies aren't quite as young as they used to be once, and what we're going to be doing in terms of our retirement, and social factors. What am I going to be doing with the time that's available to me, not just the money?

Shane: Yeah, we hear that with a lot of the members that we have coming here, a lot of those common themes come true. So, when people are thinking about retirement or in retirement, you've talked about the financial piece and the concerns, but what are some fundamentals for wellbeing in retirement?

Elizabeth: If we think about it, we've got a way that we can think about this, and there's four key areas. And obviously financial aspects of wealth is going to be part of them. And that's where it's really important to get good advice, to understand what's my current situation and what's the sort of lifestyle I want to live in in my retirement.

So, using tools like the income calculators and those sorts of predictors that are going to help you know what situation you've got, what your housing looks like, because often that's one of the biggest aspects of looking at the retirement journey.

And then as people approach retirement, it's also really important to think about not just where we're going to, but what we're leaving from. So we want people to leave work feeling good about that exit process. So, whether that's looking at aspects of things like knowledge transfer. So, many of us have worked in roles for a long period of time, we've developed expertise, we've got a whole lot of knowledge, and some of that may be known, but we often find with individuals there's 80% of your role that everybody knows you do, but there's this kind of weird 20%, it's, I go and talk to Shane about that stuff, and it only comes up occasionally.

And maybe you don't realise you're the expert in that field, that people just come and ask you about something. So, sort of harnessing some of that knowledge, and really being able to give that back means that both organisations do better because they're capturing that knowledge, but also individuals feel valued for the knowledge and the skills that they've been able to acquire.

So, looking at how they can leave well in terms of knowledge transfer, mentoring other people, we get often into this sort of stage of our lives as we move past 50, 60, that we want to mentor people and give back and develop the next generation of our workforce and be able to help them develop their skills.

Shane: Before you move on to the other two, is that a reason you see why people might unretire or delay retirement because the employer is really encouraging to stick around because only that person knows?

Elizabeth: Yeah we certainly see that. I think I've most often seen that particularly around technical roles so where people have particular subject matter expertise it's like the organisation doesn't know how to replace that or they haven't planned around how to replace that particularly where it's quite specialized skills that are going to take time to acquire.

Shane: Excellent thank you, sorry I interrupted your flow of the four things.

Elizabeth: No, I think it's a really important thing to think about though and what this journey can look like for different individuals so that aspect of leaving work well, just to close off there, it's really important to have good conversations with your manager, with your team around what you anticipate and what you want your retirement journey to look like so that you can plan out things like knowledge transfer, talk about what your potential retirement date might be and maybe consider sort of stepping down, using things like long service leave even, to have almost a practice go at retirement.

So, the practice run is useful for the individual themselves to get used to what their retirement lifestyle might look like and also for the organisation to have a go of what's life like when they're not around and how can we solve things on our own. So, looking at that potential retirement role and what skills they can also offer, and organisations can also do a lot of work here around actually recognising somebody who's wanting to move into maybe consulting or volunteering or something else.

So, are there new skills they want to develop as they're moving into this next phase of their lives? And then thinking maybe away from the workplace and the financial aspects, there's two other aspects that are really important to think about. So, when we move into a retirement lifestyle, thinking about what does that look like on a day-to-day basis? There's going to be some essential, fundamental things we need to do the day-to-day, unfortunately, magically, the laundry, the cooking, the shopping. None of that stops. But also what do you want to do with this time? And often for individuals, this is a really great opportunity to tap in and say, "Okay, how do I want to spend this time, what are my values, what's important to me?" And as I said, a lot of people are wanting to give back at this stage of their life.

So, often it can be volunteering, or working with organisations, or mentoring younger people in areas that are important to them. So, we see people moving into situations where they can actually really devote themselves, they've got the energy, they've got the skills, they've got the knowledge, and the time now to pour into things that matter, whether that's environmental concerns or helping out volunteering at Parkrun on a Saturday, or whether it's helping with the local aths club or sports club, there's so many different ways.

We often talk about budgeting in the financial sense, but it's almost like we can budget our time, and suddenly we've got an extra 40 hours in the week that we can budget for if we're fully retired, or maybe we want to spend that in different ways. So, that might be looking at, are there old hobbies that I gave away because I was just too busy with work or kids or other things going on. Life gets pretty busy.

So, are there things I want to pick up? Or maybe there might be new things I want to learn. Languages, sports, new hobbies, things that I want to explore or try out. And it doesn't mean all of them necessarily will be things I want to enjoy, but it's an opportunity to almost have a fresh start.

Shane: Correct, just have a crack.

Elizabeth: Yeah, definitely.

Shane: Different things, yeah.

Elizabeth: And I think that opportunity to kind of almost approach this as, this is a new life stage, I can learn new things, I can travel, I can try out different things that I've just not had the time or the opportunity to do. The fourth fundamental obviously is our health, both our physical and our mental health. As they say, our bodies are fabulous recyclers, use it or lose it, and that applies both physically and mentally.

If we're not using our brains, our synapses don't keep firing in the same way, and physically our bodies are made to move. Health really underpins our wellbeing right through the lifespan and that continues into retirement. So, this might be an opportunity to take yourself to the GP, get yourself put up on the hoist, have a bit of a check-up, see how it's all going.

Maybe there's a bit of a grease and oil change or whatever you want to think about there, but really looking at how you can take ownership of your wellbeing. And again, if that's something that you maybe haven't prioritised in the rest of your life before just due to competing demands and time pressures, this is an opportunity to step back and really look at some of the basics. So, am I staying active? Am I moving most days?

Am I mostly eating well? What's my sleep look like? Have I got social connections and interactions with other people? Because we know that these sorts of fundamentals are really critical for wellbeing, as I said, right through the lifespan.

Shane: Yeah, and we're seeing and we're hearing of people, and you referenced earlier, living longer in retirement and health is obviously the key driver of that. The interesting thing when you're talking then about, particularly the third point about home and lifestyle and people looking to volunteer or do activities that they haven't had the time to do, I was thinking back to all four, wealth, work, home and lifestyle and health are all really important, the ability to do the things you want to do. There is I guess, a bit of a gate opener around having the wealth side taken care of, and so whether that be you've got the wealth that you want, or at least you're understanding where your income is coming from, which frees the mind a little bit about, okay, well, I can do this, but if you haven't really addressed that, that can be difficult to focus on the positives because you're worrying about the wealth. Do you see that come up often?

Elizabeth: Definitely. I think that's a really good point, and it's almost like both the wealth and the health aspect, it's almost like in and of themselves, they don't drive satisfaction or pleasure. But they set us up to be able to do things. If we're generally healthy and if we've got, it's not about being super rich and having the ability to pay for first class flights, but I think those things really set us up.

So, if we can, and this is one of the really important aspects about as we approach this journey, one of the things that we want to do is to plan for this early, to know what our arrangements are, maybe to think about as we start to look towards retirement, do I need to be putting a little bit more away so that I will be able to have the sort of lifestyle I want to have? Is that an opportunity for me?

And I'm not a financial planner, that's not my area of expertise, but certainly we do see clients who, for whatever reason, need to suddenly retire earlier than they'd planned and they're not perhaps set up in the way that they want it to be, and that does restrict their options.

Shane: We talk a lot about how retirement is different for everyone, and we also talk about confidence being a really important factor. So, what are some actions people can take to help them feel more comfortable and confident in retirement?

Elizabeth: I think it's really important to think about planning for this earlier, and we do see people tend to retire perhaps earlier than they thought they were going to. On average, we see people retiring maybe five to ten years earlier than they anticipated.

So, planning early, I mean I don't think there's any life stage in which planning is not a good idea, but certainly in this regard, thinking about planning and really what does that look like across those different domains. So, it's not just the financial planning that's there as a key underpinning, but also those other aspects.

So, health, your lifestyle, your home situation, and how you're leaving work well. So taking control over those decisions and really having them informed by your values, what's important to you, how you're going to use this opportunity. We say that being able to make those decisions as much as possible is associated with more satisfaction, more confidence. Also, really engaging your own decision-making here so that you have control over it.

We say that autonomy, that ability to make the decisions rather than having them made for you by other people, by other organisations, is certainly a positive. And thinking about setting goals for yourself, it's not necessarily about those being I'm going to be the best at something or I'm going to exceed here or create a new world record. But setting simple SMART goals, we've all heard of that phrase, specific things about how we're going to use our time in retirement. So I'm going to try something new every week.

And that can be as simple as I'm going to drive a different way to get to the golf course, I'm going to cook a new recipe, or I'm going to try something I haven't done before. Because often we get stuck in a rut. And again, that's true across the lifespan, but trying different things and exploring those different aspects of wellbeing across those four dimensions.

But I think one of the things that we can get a little bit stuck with here is that we think this is, and I agree it's an entirely personal journey, but it's a journey that has, if you like to use an overworked phrase, stakeholders. And we've got lots of people that we really need to talk to about our plans. That old phrase, "When you assume, you make..." And you can complete the rest of that for yourself. But it's really, really true.

I've worked with one client who, I had a session with them on a Tuesday, they were retiring, the party was all booked at work on a Friday, they still hadn't told their partner.

Shane: Oh wow. Monday morning would have been interesting.

Elizabeth: Monday morning, see you darling. No, I'm not leaving.

Shane: I'm not going anywhere.

Elizabeth: Yeah, so I think really it's important, and obviously that's an extreme example, but talking to other people about what your plans are and how that's going to impact on them. And I often think about my father retired at 65, compulsory retirement back in the day, and he was an engineer, loved tinkering with bits and pieces, and we had a top-loading washing machine. He decided that was the ideal place to do his soldering and tinkering.

Four kids, top-loading washing machine, across the weekend he had it tied up with equipment on it. You can imagine the conversations that happened there. That wasn't necessarily the best idea. So it can be as simple as, how am I using the space?

Shane: So did he use his retirement money to buy a front-loading washing machine or a workbench?

Elizabeth: He actually returned to work nine days later and ended up working another 18 years.

Shane: Wow, there you go.

Elizabeth: But I think thinking about, well, what are my plans and how are they going to impact on the other people around me? And whether that's partners, parents who have assumptions, like if we've got roles caring for older parents or relatives, importantly, talking to kids. So, my kids are teenagers at the moment, 17 and 20, but they recently were discussing all sorts of things, and they said something about, "Oh, well, when we have kids, you'll be looking after them."

Wait a minute. Let's just back up a second here. Maybe we need to have a conversation because I might not be retired. I might not be in the same city that you're in. These things can become assumptions and they can really trip us up if we don't explicitly talk about it.

So, if other people are relying on you or expecting certain things from you, it's important to think about whether you're able to take those on, whether you want to take those on, whether that's going to align with what you're looking for. So, being clear about what your goals and expectations are, finding out what other people want from you and really planning around what your boundaries and non-negotiables are.

So, it's important to have those conversations with other people to avoid maybe any resentment later on. And then the fourth thing, I'd say this is a general thing, often we're not good at seeking support. We're not good at getting help. And this is a tricky transition because there's a lot of stuff involved.

So, whether that support looks like financial advice or going to the GP and getting advice on what you're doing there in your health or talking to your family about what that looks like, there's different people we can involve. But who do you need to get in contact with? Who's got the expertise that's going to help you have the knowledge you need to make those decisions about your own transition? And maybe as simple as starting with, I need to book an appointment with the GP and find out, as I said, get myself up on the hoist and have a look and see what's going on there.

Shane: So, the last two points are really interesting about sharing and seeking. The example you gave was someone hadn't even shared it with their partner and I think people might be reluctant to have those conversations. So firstly, what are the reasons you're seeing people might be reluctant? And also, how might someone go about having those conversations if they're not sure how to do it?

Elizabeth: We do see some people are reluctant to have the conversations. They're a little bit scared, am I going to lock myself into something? Making decisions is hard. I mean, I have friends who can't make decisions about what they're having for breakfast. And this one feels like higher stakes than whether it's scrambled or poached eggs.

So, certainly, the decision-making is hard, and it can feel like a very final step. I think we can have this perception that once I say I'm retiring then, and I'm doing that, I'm locked into this. So, exploring options, as I said earlier, things like take a period of long service leave, if you've got that available to you.

Take a break, see what it feels like, sort of try before you buy almost kind of idea, can be ways that can reduce that anxiety around making these decisions. Just try all the different things, but I think accepting that not every decision you make will be right. Not everything will work out well. And that's okay. I mean, has every decision I've made up to this point in my life been perfect?

Shane: Probably not.

Elizabeth: Unfortunately, I'd like to think so, but other people might have other opinions on that. Really trying to reduce the anxiety, this is not a one time... We know as we go through our lives, there are so many different pathways and different ways you can get into careers and new opportunities. Equally, there are different ways you can leave and move into this next phase of your life. So, I think not feeling like I've got to get this right at the first point is really useful.

But then also, many of us aren't good at asking for help. We've got to this point where I've got it all together, I'm fine, I'm doing okay here. And accepting that I haven't done this particular transition before. I've done lots of changes in my life, but I haven't done this one. So I need to actually get some expertise, talk to some people and think about what I'm feeling here and what feels right for me.

Shane: Yeah, and you referenced earlier about how many people retire earlier than what they'd planned if they've even planned. So, sometimes it comes as a shock. And so that ability then to have a conversation with loved ones or others is actually just another thing to process, I would have thought.

Elizabeth: Exactly. I mean, particularly we see early retirement can happen often from factors outside our control. So, whether that's health and illness, or whether that's redundancies or workplace changes, which can mean that something's suddenly brought forward and perhaps they don't have all of the choices I might have anticipated having.

And so processing that both personally, and then talking to other people can, unfortunately, some people can really struggle with almost a shame aspect in that, like, I wasn't planning for this to happen this way, and I thought I'd have it together. And I think it's interesting to think about how much we value the idea of a corporate role, or we have an answer to the question, what do you do?

It's often what we ask in social situations, so being able to kind of say, I'm moving into retirement, and that planning aspect of thinking about, well, what do I do now? I volunteer here, or I go there, or I look after my kids three days a week. Thinking about, well how am I going to answer some of those questions, helps us be less ambushed by them when they do turn up.

Shane: It's a really good point, something I was going to ask you and you've just alluded to it is we see or hear, but I'm sure you see or hear a lot more than we do, people who have invested so much of themselves in their career and in effect are identified as XYZ professional or otherwise and they've got a lot of personal gratification out of that. Is that another reason why people sometimes will either delay retirement or it has such an impact on them when it's forced upon them?

Elizabeth: Definitely and if you think about any social situation you go into, people say oh hi what's your name? Shane. And what do you do? I work for AustralianSuper. Exactly, it's almost always like the second question you'll get asked in a social situation. In the world we live in it's often a really core part of our identity and so just kind of being able to hand some of that knowledge over, I'm moving into retirement so I'm planning to do whatever it is that that journey looks like for you, can be important to mentally transition your own identity.

Shane: It's an amazing topic and probably could go on forever but the actions that you've given our listeners are fantastic. Before we talk a little bit about what other actions may be available, can you just let our listeners know if they were interested in hearing more about Transitioning Well or be in contact with you, how would that happen?

Elizabeth: So, you can follow us on our social media, we're on Facebook, LinkedIn. We often post information through our LinkedIn, we've got a blog and a newsletter. So, as I said before, we work right across the career lifespan, so everything from grads moving into the workplace, through parents moving into parental leave, people relocating, moving through menopause right up to retirement transitions. So, love to have you get in touch and if people have got questions, more than happy to deal with them.

Shane: Fantastic. And AustralianSuper is trying to understand and communicate better to our members and Australians about the different elements of retirement. So we've launched an Elements of Retirement Guide, which is available on our website, which touches on many of the topics that we have covered today. So, Dr. Elizabeth Clancy from Transitioning Well, thank you so much for joining us and we'd love to have you back again sometime.

Elizabeth: Absolute pleasure.

Shane: Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today. If you're an AustralianSuper member and you would like to join us to share your story or have a question or topic you would like us to cover, then click the link in our show notes to get in touch. If you've enjoyed this podcast, subscribe and share with your friends and family. See you next time.