The PINS of Your Retirement

The half nobody plans for

If you're reading this, I'm guessing you're either thinking about retirement, approaching it, or already there and finding it's not quite what you expected.

If you've got the financial means to retire — or you're on track to get there — then congratulations. A lot of people in the current economic climate won't be able to consider any form of retirement for many years past the standard age, so you're already in a fortunate position.

But here's the thing that caught me off guard, and that I think catches most people off guard: having the money sorted is only half the problem. Maybe less than half.

The non-financial side of retirement — what you actually do with your days, who you spend time with, what gets you out of bed in the morning — turns out to be at least as important as the financial side. And most of us give it almost no thought at all.

What I didn't see coming

I have two degrees and spent 22 years in IT software sales. High-activity, high-energy roles — managing multiple clients and opportunities, a lot of social networking, a lot of client and partner interaction. Basically, a lot of socialising with purpose.

I first retired in 2018 at 53. Modest house, enough invested to give me a reasonable income for 30 years, zero debt. Enough for a solid annual draw-down and the ability to travel for three to four months a year. By any measure, I'd made it.

And then one day — well, over several months — I retired, and overnight it all went away. The phone stopped ringing. There was no email. I'd become invisible.

I had no purpose and I didn't know what to do. And yet, hang on — wasn't I supposed to have "made it"? Why then did I feel lost?

One of the big problems I faced was that I was very tied to my job and my role. I was my job and my job was me. So when I retired — when I stopped working — my whole reason for being suddenly disappeared.

I've seen this pattern with multiple people who retired and then almost instantly aged fifteen years in two, got sick, and died soon after. If any of that resonates, read on.

"The net-net of this paper is that you need to proactively work at and on your retirement, probably in a similar way to how you approached your job — assuming you were successful at it. Retirement does not equal holiday. Far from it."

What retirement actually is

The dictionary will tell you retirement is "the point at which someone stops working." Which is technically true, but it's only about 10% of what retirement actually is. That definition describes a single event and says nothing about the decades that follow.

Here's how I'd put it: retirement is the beginning of a third phase of life, after education and career. It's the chance to experience the world from a completely new perspective. It doesn't necessarily mean stopping work altogether — it might mean short-term contracts, part-time work in a different field, consulting, volunteering, or some combination of all of those.

For me, it's about finding the right balance of things I feel comfortable with and want to do. I call this my Retirement Balance, and it's different for everyone.

Your Retirement Balance

My current balance looks roughly like this: 2–3 months working in short-term contracts, 3–4 months travelling offshore, and 3–4 months at home combined with some form of volunteering for causes that interest me. Your balance will be different, and that's the whole point.

The important thing to recognise is that your Retirement Balance isn't static. It will change as you get older, as your health changes, as your interests shift. Mine has already changed between my first and second periods of retirement.

This Retirement Balance sits within a framework I put together during my first retirement to help me manage the transition. I called it PINS.

The four dimensions

PINS stands for the four things your job was providing that you now have to replace. Most people don't realise how much of their identity, social life, intellectual engagement, and daily rhythm came directly from their work — until it's gone.

Each dimension in detail

Purpose — the hardest and the most important

I've put Purpose first because it's the most important of the four — and the hardest. When we retire, we've stopped working, our kids have probably left home, and we now have to work out who we are and what we're about. For many of us, that means thinking about it seriously for the first time ever.

What struck me quite clearly was that — much like preparing financially for retirement by starting in my 30s — I should have put more effort into thinking about my purpose early on. That would have been at least as useful as the financial side.

A couple of things worth knowing from the research:

• People with a clear purpose lead more fulfilled lives, live longer, and have better mental health. Multiple studies back this up.
• It doesn't seem to matter how much money you have. There's no causal link between having $10M and having a better chance at happiness or purpose than someone with $200k. Beyond having enough to live on comfortably, additional wealth will not help you lead a more fulfilled life.

I won't pretend to be able to tell you what your purpose should be — there are thousands of books, articles, and frameworks out there for that. But of all the PINS, purpose is the one that deserves the most thought, the earliest attention, and the most patience.

Intellectual stimulation — the easiest to fix

This one is a lot easier to understand and deal with than purpose. The good news is that this is arguably the simplest of the four PINS to solve.

Just reading for one to two hours a day will radically increase your options for intellectual stimulation. Beyond that: puzzles, crosswords, learning a new language, returning to academic study, taking a course, picking up a new hobby that challenges you — gardening, woodworking, cooking, music, whatever appeals.

It doesn't matter what it is. What matters is that you build it into your day, deliberately and consistently. The world is your oyster here — make sure you dive in and take advantage.

Networking — the one that requires courage

A lot of our social networks are built around who we work with and for. Once you retire and the leaving functions are done, you often find that the only thing holding those relationships together was a shared interest in work. Once that's gone, they slowly fragment and disappear.

Hopefully you're lucky enough to have lifelong friends. But you'll often find it hard to make new deep and lasting friendships at this age. That said, there are still plenty of opportunities:

• Volunteering for causes that interest you or that you believe in
• Returning to the classroom — evening classes, workshops, short courses
• Enrolling in a new sport or activity — bowls, golf, hiking groups, whatever appeals
• Joining community organisations or interest groups

The key point here is to be very proactive. Get out and start doing things. Join things. Put yourself out into your community. This can be hard and a little nerve-wracking at the start, especially if you're more on the introverted end of the spectrum. But persevere and see what happens.

Don't give up after the first few attempts. If something isn't working out, don't feel you have to keep going if it's genuinely painful — but don't bail after the first awkward meeting either. Give it a fair go.

Structure — your own scaffolding

Structure means a structure for your day. When you're working, this is all more or less prescribed — you start at a particular time, it ends at a particular time, and what happens in the middle is largely driven by other people and goals.

When you're retired, there is generally no one telling you what to do and when. You are now your own master and must set your own goals and timelines.

I found it helpful to stick to my work rhythms as much as possible at the start — rising at roughly the same time, eating, reading, and exercising along the same lines as when I was working. Having a basic rhythm to fall back on makes a real difference.

Set yourself some goals. Not the corporate kind, but personal ones. What do you want to achieve this week? This month? This quarter? It sounds a bit corporate, but without some form of self-imposed structure, days merge into weeks and months of comfortable but unfulfilling drift.

Finding your Retirement Balance

Retirement can be a fantastic third phase of life — but it doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen without a reasonable level of thought and work.

Your Retirement Balance is the particular combination of activities, commitments, and rhythms that works for you. There's no universal template. One person's balance might be part-time consulting, regular travel, and a weekly volunteering commitment. Another's might be full creative immersion, daily exercise, and deep investment in family. What matters is that the balance is chosen, not defaulted into.

And it will change. Revisit it regularly — quarterly is a good cadence — because what works at 60 may not work at 70.

Concrete next steps

1. Assess each of the four PINS dimensions honestly. Where are you strong? Where are the gaps? Most people find Purpose the hardest and Structure the most immediately actionable.
2. Start with Purpose — it's the hardest one and benefits most from early and ongoing attention. If you're still working, start asking the question now.
3. Build something intellectually stimulating into every day. Reading is the easiest starting point — commit to one hour a day for a month and see what happens.
4. Join something new this month. Volunteer for something. Put yourself out there. It will feel uncomfortable at first. Do it anyway.
5. Write down a basic weekly structure. Stick to it for a fortnight and see how it feels. Adjust from there.
6. Revisit your Retirement Balance and your PINS assessment quarterly. They will change, and that's fine — the point is to keep the assessment active rather than let things drift.