Think that you’ll choose when to retire? Think again

Opinion

Bec WilsonMoney contributor

October 17, 2026 — 5:00am

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When you picture retirement, do you see it as a life event you get to choose?

I think most of us do. With excitement and a bit of trepidation, we choose a date, telling our colleagues, “it’s time”. Then counting down the notice period, a jovial farewell lunch, complete with speeches and cake, and not long afterwards heading off on the big retirement celebration holiday of your dreams.

Only one in three Australians choose when they retire.Getty

You’ve worked, saved and reached the point where you finally get to decide what comes next. It’s a lovely vision. But it’s not really how working life ends for most Australians.

The end of our working lives is frankly a lot messier and less predictable. And I think it’s time we normalised that and taught people about how to prepare for and navigate a less ideal journey into pre-retirement. Or, better still, teach them how to take better control of their decisions earlier, so that retirement doesn’t simply happen to them.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics Retirement and Retirement Intentions data tells the real story of how we retire. Only 33 per cent of retired Aussies said they left their last job to retire – because they had reached what they perceived to be “retirement age”, could access an age pension or their super, or were retiring alongside their partner.

For the others, their last job ended for another reason. Thirteen per cent got sick, injured or suffered a disabling injury. Six per cent were retrenched, dismissed or just couldn’t find work. Others left because they were caring for someone, or for a mixture of reasons that did not fit the neat and tidy story of choosing the perfect day to stop work forever.

Only 33 per cent of retired Aussies said they left their last job to retire.

That does not mean that two-thirds of Australians had no agency over when they retired at all. Life’s far more complicated than that. But it should change how we think about retirement planning.

Rather than seeing retirement as a finish line, we should think about pre-retirement as a window, or a period where we want to have the power to make an important choice. That means thinking differently about our skills, flexibility and goals in the years before we stop work altogether.

The median super balance for people approaching retirement also shows us why simply finding an earlier-than-we-planned retirement is not really an option for many people. The median for women aged 60 to 64 sits at $174,655 and for men at $236,126. At a 6 per cent drawdown, those balances might generate between $10,500 and $14,200 each in income per year without depleting the capital quickly. For people who have to retire before they are 67 and eligible for the age pension, that can leave little room to move. They may be able to access their super from 60, but often need to combine it with whatever income support they are eligible for – whether that’s JobSeeker, the Disability Support Pension or a Carer Payment, until they reach Age Pension age. And even then, the age pension is means tested.

That’s why building choices before full-time work becomes impossible matters so much – for all of us. For most people there’s simply not enough super to absorb an unplanned five or 10 year gap in earnings.

So I would like us to talk more about the decade before retirement and ask a different question much earlier: “What would I do if my current work stopped working for me?”

With AI disrupting workplaces, ageism still impacting older employment, ageing parents needing care for longer, and the possibility of illness or injury, there’s a very real chance that at some point it might. And if you’ve been putting off your retirement planning, or planning to resign when you reach the perfect amount of super on the perfect day, you’ve got a reasonable chance of your retirement arriving before the due date.

Perhaps the demands of a senior role simply become too much to bear, your mum takes a critical fall and needs you. Your relationship ends, your employer restructures, or the industry you’ve spent the best years of your life in starts to shrink around you.

Or maybe you just hit burnout – and don’t want to travel, keep up the pace and put on a brave face to the daily pressure of work any more.

None of these things need to be a catastrophe. But they do become harder if the only financial plan you have requires you to keep working for 10 or 15 years at the level or salary you earn today.

Entering the pre-retirement window doesn’t mean stopping work forever. It’s the period when you to make more deliberate choices about what work looks like for you: fewer days in a week, maybe a less demanding role, a new career, a bit of consulting, or possibly some time out before you decide what’s next.

Think about it practically. What would need to be true for you to move from five days to four days a week at 58? Or to feel comfortable taking a lower paid and more enjoyable role at 60? Maybe you want to pause your work for six months, to care for Mum or Dad. Or you know you just need to take some time out to regroup.

Everyone’s answers will be different. But it’s worth mapping out three possible versions of your working life from here, so you can explore how prepared you are to step off the ladder if your life needs you to, without as much of a shock.

The real goal isn’t to hit your target super balance on your 60th or 65th birthday. It’s to build a life where you have more than one possible off-ramp from full-time work.

Start by writing down what your life actually costs now. And not just your mortgage, electricity and groceries. Dig deeper and break out the real annual costs that make up your life: the annual holiday, the cars, any school costs or health spending you do.

Then create three columns or three versions of the next stage of your life: continuing work as you are today, working less or earning less, and stopping work earlier than you’ve planned.

Against each column, estimate what income you would have and what spending would need to change. You are not trying to predict things perfectly – you’re really trying to see where the gaps are in your planning and your goals.

If you’d need $30,000 a year to be able to move to four days a week, for example, you can begin to work out how to create it: by reducing your debts, cutting back on fixed household spending, building up an accessible savings account outside your super or committing to a year or two more at full-time, while you can, to build up a buffer.

This isn’t an argument against building up your super balance ahead of your retirement. You will need it for the decades after you stop work altogether. It’s an argument for balancing that long-term goal with the money, flexibility and lower fixed costs that might give you choice in the years before you retire, to tackle what life throws at you.

The real goal isn’t to hit your target super balance on your 60th or 65th birthday. It’s to build a life where you have more than one possible off-ramp from full-time work and can choose the one that’s right for you, your family and your loved ones when you need to, or even better, when you want to.

Bec Wilson is the bestselling author of How to Have an Epic Retirement, a retirement educator and founder of the Epic Retirement Institute. She writes a weekly newsletter about modern retirement at au.epicretirement.net. Bec has various commercial arrangements with a range of organisations, including superannuation funds.

Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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CloseBec Wilson is the bestselling author of How to Have an Epic Retirement, a retirement educator and founder of the Epic Retirement Institute. She writes a weekly newsletter about modern retirement at au.epicretirement.net. Bec has various commercial arrangements with a range of organisations, including superannuation funds.From our partners

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