23rd November 2021
- Over one-third (34%) of people aged 45-54 have no plan for their remaining working years.
- This compares to roughly a quarter of 35-to-44-year-olds and 25-34-year-olds who had no plan for the time between age 50 and retirement.
- 41% of those in the 45-54 age group said they planned to continue in their current job and work full time. A further 10% said they would stay in the same role but move to part time hours. Only 5% said they planned to stop work completely.
- Relatively few in this age group fancied a change in career (5%) or to start their own business. This contrasts with younger age groups with 15% of 18-34-year-olds hoping to change career. In the 18-24 age group 13% hoped to start their own business.
Survey of 1,000 people carried out by Opinium on behalf of HL in September 2021.
Helen Morrissey, senior pensions and retirement analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown:
“These findings point to a worrying lack of planning among those closest to retirement on how they plan to spend their remaining working years. The pandemic may well have played a part in this with the economic upheaval potentially causing chaos for people’s retirement planning with many older workers retiring early after being made redundant.
There’s also the chance that the investment market volatility we saw earlier in the pandemic has had an impact on people’s pensions causing them to put off their plans for retirement a while longer.
However, we are also seeing some encouraging signs, particularly among younger age groups, notably the shift away from a cliff edge retirement where people choose to retire completely on one day. Easing into retirement by working part time is often a better way of managing such a huge change from a financial and emotional wellbeing perspective.
We are also seeing younger generations planning to use the time from age 50 to retirement as an opportunity to try something new. This could be a whole new career, or even starting their own business. It is hugely positive to see people embrace this time as an opportunity to inject new life into their career rather than just counting down the days until they finish working.”