Stewart’s real­i­sa­tion that he was approach­ing tra­di­tion­al retire­ment age plant­ed the seed of retire­ment in his mind. 

“I was still enjoy­ing the job [in the APY Lands],” he says, ​“but I thought that no mat­ter what any­one says, there are oth­er things in life apart from working.”

Karen’s deci­sion to retire was fast-tracked when her hus­band sold his busi­ness. She decid­ed it was time, also fac­tor­ing in the length of time she had worked in the health care indus­try and the needs of her family.

June moved to Mar­ree in SA’s north ear­ly in her career and nursed there for around 40 years.

Just recent­ly, she decid­ed it was time to scale things back and she now works casu­al­ly as a home care assistant.

“I wasn’t sure if I was real­ly ready to retire,” June says. ​“You don’t always feel as old as you are… I am still as busy as before, as [I am] very involved with com­mu­ni­ty. Prob­a­bly even hard­er to get away now!”

For Tra­cy, whose name has been changed for pri­va­cy, the deci­sion to retire was heartbreaking.

“Put off retir­ing until you real­ly need or want to,” she says. ​“Age is no bar­ri­er to doing var­i­ous tasks safe­ly and we have skills that remain valu­able [until lat­er in life].”

Prepar­ing to leave work

When the time does come to retire, it’s impor­tant to work close­ly with your employ­er to ensure an effec­tive han­dover, Karen says.

“I noti­fied my boss in Decem­ber – that was giv­ing six months’ notice,” she says.

Plan­ning for the con­ti­nu­ity and best out­come for the health ser­vice is very impor­tant. I’ve stepped into jobs where some­one has left sud­den­ly and there’s been no han­dover… Going in, and hav­ing to work out how the ser­vice func­tions with real­ly no knowl­edge, is a hard task.”

A qual­i­ty han­dover can also be a feel-good expe­ri­ence, Stew­art says. He is tak­ing a grad­ual approach to retire­ment and is still work­ing for brief peri­ods in the APY Lands.

“I believe there’s a point in any job where it would be worth­while pass­ing onto some­one younger, so they can get things going and maybe bring in some new ideas,” he says.

“It’s nice to do a good han­dover – it makes it more sat­is­fy­ing for your­self that you’ve hand­ed over and com­plet­ed most of the tasks you should’ve done before you retired.

“In retire­ment, you always have options – whether it is vol­un­teer­ing for an organ­i­sa­tion, or work­ing part-time some­where. At the moment, it’s easy to get a hold of that kind of work – they’re look­ing for peo­ple everywhere.”

June tells CRANAplus Mag­a­zine she worked alone in Mar­ree for around 30 years but nowa­days there are oth­er staff to hand over to. Because she lives in town, she’s been able to con­tin­ue pass­ing on knowl­edge even after her offi­cial retirement.

“They still call on me occa­sion­al­ly to ask me ques­tions and occa­sion­al­ly I’ve gone to help, manned the desk when some­body was sick,” she says.

“Not total­ly stop­ping work has def­i­nite­ly helped with the change,” she con­tin­ues, refer­ring to her new role in home care.

“If you real­ly feel you’re not ready, [stay­ing involved in some way] makes you feel like you’re still doing some­thing you spent lots of time train­ing for, and have been doing for years.”

Prepar­ing for life at home

Prepa­ra­tion for retire­ment ought to begin as soon as you decide you are retir­ing, inter­vie­wees for this arti­cle agree.

Tra­cy advis­es read­ers near­ing retire­ment to make their homes more live­able while they’re still working.

“One should plan ahead to retire bear­ing in mind that income stops, so if not plan­ning to move into a pur­pose-built retire­ment home, do every­thing to the house that needs to be done to make it safe to retire in,” she says.

“For exam­ple, periph­er­al vision dete­ri­o­rates, so ensure lit­tle step-type edges are smoothed out. If you have an under-bench oven, can you safe­ly remove the hot roast at 80 years old? Maybe refur­bish the kitchen while there is still an income to replace the cost.

“Con­sid­er devel­op­ing a pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with gar­den­ing and clean­ing ser­vices before you need them so that you are hap­py to engage them when you can no longer do the tasks.”

Prepar­ing your finances is also key, says Stew­art, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to set­ting up a retire­ment income stream with your super fund.

Finan­cial readi­ness is a long-term project that ought to begin 10, 20 or more years before retirement.

“A lot of peo­ple wouldn’t have a lot of super at this stage, cer­tain­ly from my gen­er­a­tion,” he says.

“If you can afford it, just keep putting a bit extra into your super – so you’ve got a ready source to get by.

“The most impor­tant thing is to get rid of your mort­gage. [It would be hard] to con­tend with a mort­gage or rent if you didn’t have an ade­quate income from super.”

Pur­su­ing hobbies 

Karen and her hus­band used to play golf reg­u­lar­ly, but work­ing away it became imprac­ti­cal and so she quit – after promis­ing her­self that she’d play again when retired.

“Prob­a­bly three months out from retire­ment, I made sure to have a lit­tle hit, to get into the swing of it,” she says.

“My hus­band had already organ­ised for me to be mea­sured and bought new clubs… Now I’m play­ing two or three times a week.

“We also decid­ed we’re going to get anoth­er dog… and to get my gar­den ready for an open garden.” 

How­ev­er, play­ing catch-up around the house has put some of Karen’s well-laid recre­ation­al plans on pause for the time being.

“When you retire and walk back in [to your house] – not real­ly hav­ing lived there for 20 years – you can be in for a sur­prise,” she says.

“I haven’t emp­tied the shelves for 20 years. Because I wasn’t here… This must hap­pen to a lot of rur­al and remote nurs­es return­ing home – you can’t get to it until you’ve got time and are back liv­ing at home full-time.”

Stew­art, a pas­sion­ate pho­tog­ra­ph­er with a pub­lished book of pho­tographs called Palya, says his inter­ests have been keep­ing him busy dur­ing his retirement.

“Being rea­son­ably active with a pas­time, hav­ing an inter­est… That’s prob­a­bly the most impor­tant thing,” he says.

“I’ve got thou­sands of slides I’ve got to sort out still… I thought when I did retire I’d vol­un­teer and do some work with the muse­um. Also, that I’d have more time to catch up with friends, which is always put on the back­burn­er when you’re working.”

The emo­tion­al aspect

Stew­art has expe­ri­enced some doubts about whether he has made the right deci­sion, but he expects this is a com­mon expe­ri­ence and has been able to see his doubts as an inevitable part of his retire­ment journey.

“It’s that nag­ging doubt whether you are doing the right thing,” he says, ​“but you can’t go on work­ing for­ev­er so at some point of time you are going to have to face the decision.”

Karen says she now has a phi­los­o­phy that ​“when you leave work, leave work”, because it’s impor­tant not to med­dle with the ser­vice that you have retired from, and to respect one’s successors. 

Although she ini­tial­ly thought she would keep up her reg­is­tra­tion, she ulti­mate­ly decid­ed not to because she had already ​“switched it off in my brain”.

“There are cer­tain events when work­ing as a health pro­fes­sion­al, that do leave us with some resid­ual stress, and I don’t think we’ll ever get away from that.

“But I try not to dwell on it, but to recog­nise it’s there and know to seek help if it is not man­age­able for me.

“I fin­ished my career dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and do feel a tad guilty about leav­ing a huge work­load to my suc­ces­sors. Now, I’m very hap­py to engage in the recre­ation­al pur­suits that I have and to give time to my hus­band, fam­i­ly, friends and dog.” 

June recog­nis­es the impor­tant role rela­tion­ships play in health care, which is one of her moti­va­tions for stay­ing involved.

“When I first got here hard­ly any­one went along to the health ser­vice,” June recalls.

“They’d only go when they were just about on death’s door. So I would encour­age them to go, to be proac­tive. When they realised I’d be stay­ing for a while, they start­ed get­ting used to me.

“[When it came time to retire], the com­mu­ni­ty wouldn’t let me leave!” she says, tongue in cheek. ​“So they found me some­where to live.

“Grad­u­al­ly, I’ll prob­a­bly do less and less. But at the moment, I’m get­ting around okay and doing things, so I’m happy.

“You’ve got to be hap­py with what you’re doing – what­ev­er you’re doing.”