Bec Wilson answers: Will I make the wrong decision?

1. Start with the decisions you actually need to make  

You probably don’t need to decide where you’ll live when you’re 80, or what your spending will look like when you’re 90. You might not even need to decide on your final date for full retirement yet. Focus on the decisions that matter in the next year or two and leave yourself permission to make the other decisions when you know more about what you want.

Some good early decisions might include: thinking about when you want to start reducing your work hours, what you want the next two to three years to look like, what you want your super to deliver for you in the next three to five years, how much you’d like to spend in the early years, and what you’d like to start making more time for outside of work.

2. Test the things you can test

Some decisions can be made incrementally, and they don’t have to be permanent. Could you try working four days a week before you retire completely? Or could you live on your planned retirement budget for a few months and see what that feels like? Could you take a longer holiday and see how you actually feel without the structure of work? I’m a big believer in trying on little bits of retirement before you buy the whole box.

3. Take care with decisions that are harder to undo

Of course, there’s some important decisions you might only ever make once or twice as you approach retirement. These ones need to be made carefully by - slowing down, getting the right information, testing different scenarios and where needed, getting some financial advice. Choices like selling your home, making big financial commitments or deciding how to turn your super into retirement income are all important things that can’t be easily undone. 

4. And finally, accept that you won’t know everything  

You don’t know exactly how long you’ll live, or what investment markets will do. You don’t know what your health will look like in 20 years, and you don’t know what unexpected opportunities might come your way. None of us do. The aim is not to predict the future perfectly - it’s simply to make good decisions with the information you have today, and leave room to change course if you decide you want to (or need to).

So where do you start?

Get out a piece of paper and write down all the retirement decisions currently swirling around in your head. Get them out of your head and onto a page. Then, put them into three buckets - NOW, TEST and LATER. 

Decide what really needs a decision now. What you could test before you commit to it. And what you’re worrying about that you actually don’t need to decide until later. 

Then, focus on the NOW bucket. Work out when these decisions need to be made and what information you need to make them. Is it a conversation with your partner? Or is more information needed? Some calculations and modelling? Or some financial advice?