According to Geraldine...........

??????????

Saw the comment where someone said the article was too 'fluffy' for a serious topic. Not like Gransnet then

I'm still on the first career – I can't think about a second one at the moment.

On about my fifth I think. Lost count.

My new career is not being a wage slave any more. I have no desire to work ever again.

I am with you there Nellie.

I'm with you Nellie. Why would I want to go back to all that. When I get time I'll start a new thread about all the things which are good about being retired. Too busy now

"^Extended retirement isn't affordable and it isn't terribly good for us. All the research on healthy longer lives shows that the more engaged and involved we feel, the better we age, physically and mentally. Assuming that people will bow out of being useful because they have hit a numerical age – 65 isn't very old these days – is a waste of their capabilities.^"

Don't assume that! We can be useful without being employed. I feel 'engaged and involved' why does anyone assume you have to be emplyed to be those? Presumably the 'employed' have no understanding of what it is like to be retired.

I'm on my third career.

Nellie Moved Oh I do agree! I feel very involved and engaged, and know that I am using all my professional skills to good effect, in the community in which I live and further afield, without charging for them - preparing a training PPT now (apart from the fact that I stopped to visit GN!)

AND I can say "No!" if I don't want to do something. That is a very important factor.

I would not like to be bound by timetables, reports, meetings, motorways and sheer exhaustion again. Up at 5.15? Perish the thought.

I am way too busy to take a job. I have agreed to babysit GD 15 months old four days a week for the next 18 months. This GD is into everything, she pushes the dining chairs out and climbs on them to get up on the table, climbs up onto her brother's bunk bed (the ladder is now removed). If she can she will climb the ladder up onto her brother's cubby house which is on stilts. Today she was trying to climb onto her brother's desk so she could get up on his bed. She stands on chairs then starts rocking them until they are swaying back and forth. Runs through the sprinkler then runs off squealing with laughter when you try to catch her. Today she was attempting to climb out of her high chair. She dropped her father's mobile in the toilet, he doesn't leave his things lying around anymore.

And the DGC, of course, take up time willingly given! DS1 and family down on Monday, so that's next week sorted.

If you have skills that require technique, knowledge and thought rather than strength and stamina, fine. It really does depend on the job as well on your health. I know a number of teachers at various levels, craftspeople, people running their own businesses who will go on until they drop. But as Ariadne says, if your job requires target hassle and macho breakfast meetings and boring travel, what is the attraction? I know people who, while still fully able to carry on teaching or doctoring or whatever have lost heart and enthusiasm to the point where they go off and do their own thing.

People who are employed have no understanding of what it is like to be retired. They seem to think we sit and watch daytime TV all day!

There may be many reasons for carrying on working after pension age but there are also many good reasons for retiring even if you have always loved your job. Retirement gives you opportunitities you will never have had before so if you can afford to retire why not do so and go out and have fun?

There are some good comments under the article. Like how ridiculous it is to compare the Pope' s 'job' with things like teaching or shelf stacking in a supermarket. And how people like Alex Ferguson only o n with their jobs because they would miss the limelight if they retired.

Go on. Sorry.

The other thing to consider is the job market for young people.
In my profession newly qualified graduates now struggle to find jobs, so I feel no compunction about having retired.
I worked hard for my pension and now I'm enjoying being able to do all the things I never had time for, when I was working.
I'm also putting money back into the economy, going out for lunch, taking classes, taking public transport etc.
the most important thing though is having the freedom to visit my grandchildren whenever I want to - this would be very restricted if I was working as they all live a long way from me.

And actually the writer of the article hasn't got a clue about what it can feel like, physically, in later life, or how things can suddenly start to deteriorate quite out of the blue!

Write it again in another twenty years missus! hmm

And don't give the buggers any more ideas about our pensions.

I feel I have always had 2 careers, teaching, for which I was paid, and being a wife and mother*... or is that 3 careers?
Then there's voluntary work, does that make 4? [Hmm]
Counselling family, friends, school children and their parents (5)
* which also involves catering (6) cleaning (7) taxi-driving (8).......
Come on GNs there must be more

And don't think because you exercise (go to the gym regularly?) will do anything to keep you out of trouble when this ageing thing cuts in - it won't!

I have walked/cycled miles in the course of my lifetime, and rarely found time to sit down for long, but that did nothing to stop the muscles in my back deciding to pack up on me now, leaving me breathless with the effort of walking upright.

Just you wait madam. It's all in front of you.

Those of us who can retire need to remember how fortunate they are - our children's generation will not be so fortunate.

"Bring on those second acts" she says

That is, if you're not knackered after 40 years on the first!

Fluff is right.

I agree with jo8 about exercise not warding off old-age. I know any number of people who were very fit and health-conscious, now crippled with arthritis, bad back and other ailments.

In my younger days we were made to feel guilty about being SAHMs (stay at home mums) by stupid magazine/newspaper articles. Now it seems it's going to follow us into our old age.

I am off out for a long walk now (I am still trying!) and I wouldn't have time for that if I was sitting at a supermarket checkout all day. Noble as that would be, I'm sure.

Thank you for that jo8 I read it and thought that it would e good to copy and paste the best bit for all to see and encourage.

Alex Ferguson is dominating the Premier League at the age of 71

Warren Buffett is outsmarting the stock markets, wisecracking as he goes at 82.

Mary Berry is enthusing the nation's bakers and despatching our soggy bottoms at 77

81-year-old Rupert Murdoch's tweets are obsessively parsed for clues to his corporate strategy.

The Queen topped the Woman's Hour Power List at 86.