Anyone still working full-tine in their 60’s?

Exactly the same here.
I have felt that younger colleagues have ended up doing more than me, because I haven't the energy, of late.

It's horrible.

Hi, I am new to Gransnet. I am 62 and because the government have moved the state pension age for me to 66 i have to continue working. I work full time but due to staffing shortages i am working on average 50 hours a week and i am struggling no one warns you that one day you wake up and joints do not work as well as they used to, shortness of breath stops you doing the housework like you used to. I am totally fed up Ideally it would have been nice to have a choice of either working or retirement at the age i am at, but financially cannot afford to give up work until my state pension kicks in - personally I think the UK government should have put womens retirement age to 62 and brought down the mens to 62 too. It would have been a lot fairer, unfortunately most of the country do not have cushy jobs, they work hard for their living and the body bears it toll

I worked full time until I was 63. I now work part time 2 days a week doing the same type of job in another area as moved near my children when I gave up full time.

I love what I do and 2 days is great. I also do some volunteering on 2 other mornings. My full time job changed over the last few years and was much more stressful so was pleased to leave it in the end.

I’m now 68 and can’t see me stopping this job for a long time. I would find money very tight without my salary as the area is very expensive to live in with just pension income.

I could have retired at 60 but worked until 68 to make up the pension years I had lost due to child care. I was lucky because of all the local authority restructurings I was able for the last 5 years to stop being a manager and to be down graded to just an office and still receive my pension as if I had retired as a manager. That option is not available now.

I’m working in childcare at 62 and still working full time. I do plan to drop my hours but financially had to keep these hours up due to hubby not earning as much as he did. Long story. I’m off with covid now and will return next week have enjoyed being off but not enjoyed being I’ll and it’s given me a different view to a job I still love but will have to drop some hours before I retire still plan to work till 66 then hopefully retire. Fingers crossed.

I retired at 61 but , being medical, I answered Boris's call to return. It was initially for 6m ... I am still there. I will be 66 soon .
Not full time , don't think I could manage as I do feel more tired than I did when I was younger but I do enjoy it . I was quite bored being retired despite many interests .

By the way, hello dibden

I am 65 and now work four days a week having reduced from full time.
In the last year or so my health has started to deteriorate, having been extremely fit and healthy all my life, and I can’t wait to retire this year. I am very cross at the way our generation of women have been treated by the government.
My job, which I love, has changed unrecognisably recently and my heart is no longer on it- it’s time to leave it to the next generation, although I may use my skills to top up my pension if needed!

My husband and I are both in our 70s, we have our own business, which we are running down now. We still work 3 days a week and love it. It keeps us young and in touch with the world. If we go away our family take over.

Hgv driving, 12 - 14 hr days until aged 67, I was permanently shattered, especially as one job involved getting up at 3.30am ??

I take my hat off to you, mothertrucker.
Great work ethic, and brilliant username.

Yes I am at 62. I’d get very bored doing nothing so would have to find something voluntary if I retired. And as I can’t travel to where I’d like I might as well just carry on getting paid. Although if I lose my 93 year old dad I will probably give up one of my two jobs.

I worked f/t until I was almost 64, then went down to 4 days a week for the last year, and retired just before I was 65. I was a Librarian in a large FE College, so it was quite heavy work (despite all the people who think that working in a library is a nice quiet job..! ? ) as well as requiring excellent IT skills.
And everyone will have to work until their late 60s (at least) soon, so it won't be a question of whether people can - there'll be no option...?

Worked 3 days a week until I was 68. Sitting down job, so it was great. !

I worked until I was 64, as a nurse in the NHS, loved it, but was glad to finish. I went back recently on a temporary contract as part of the vaccination programme. Love retirement though, would not swap it.

DH is nearly 80 and still working.

He retired at 60 and almost immediately returned to work as a self employed Offshore Engineer, for the first decade effectively full time. He spent all his 60s and into his 70s flying round the world, mainly to the less salubrious parts of most of the countries he visited.Spending days standing on docksides in blistering hot sunshine or below freezing temperatures or going to sea in supply vessels or tugs towing barges. He was/is obese, has high blood pressure and had incipient Type 2 diabetes.

Now his work is mainly home based, all that travelling became too tiring and demanding.

The thing was, he enjoyed every minute of it.

Same with me. I loved my job but retired on December 16 of 2021. And I'll be 80 in March! I think it's great to keep working as long as you love your job and your co-workers.

It all depends on your health and circumstances.

If you are financially secure you can retire at any age. There are women of our generation who "retired" when they had their first child in their twenties.

Assuming you have a degree of choice it also depends on what you want to do with your life.

I was fortunate to be reasonably healthy and very much enjoyed my work. I intended to retire at seventy-five but , looking back, I realise I started to slow down from the age of seventy (which I could do as I was self-employed) and so I retired at seventy-three.

We are tending to live longer and longer and the birthrate is falling so working full-time or part-time after the official retirement age should be encouraged.

There should be a serious crackdown on the nonsense of age discrimination which relegates people in their fifties (or even forties) to the scrapheap.

Tell me about it!

Retirement age in Denmark was 67 for all of us born before 1955 and is now 69 for our age group and 70 for those younger.

I got out at 65 by losing my job and spent two years on unemployment benefit and having to go on courses all the time.

Neither working full time, nor the unemployment benefit system is fun once you are over 60 as no-one wants to employ you. If you do have a job it is tiring,

Be thankful you can retire at 65 - most people no longer can.

I'm 63 in a few weeks and (drumroll) gave in my notice today, been working here since June 2009 so would have been 13 years this summer. Full time, 9-5.30, I live in NW London and travel to London Bridge every day - up to Covid anyway. We have all been told back in the office full time as of last week and I'm really not looking forward to full trains in rush hour (trains busy now, but still not as rammed as they used to be). I've always worked full time, since I was 17.

I had to sell my home of 21 years due to divorce, with the proceeds I'm buying a teeny tiny place "up North"; can't afford anything anywhere near London that would allow me to continue working, commuting long distances with the prices and my Arthritis isn't feasible. I'm freaking out at not having any income, are there jobs for us 60+'s? Hoping my employer lets me do a little still remotely, but I'm going to be worrying about money for the rest of my life.

I was shielding throughout Covid due to arthritis meds, colleagues have had parents/in-laws my age pass away. I've gone nowhere, done nothing in the last 2 years. Had a TIA watching all my belongings go into storage in September 2021 when the house sold (lost vision in my left eye almost completely while driving back from the storage facility, afternoon in A&E, continuing heart observations at Hospital). I've been living at a neighbours house while trying to find somewhere to live for myself (blessings on their head) and, cherry on the cake, fractured my arm at the end of November 2021, at the shoulder, so no putting it in plaster, absolute agony. And I really feel like I'm done, need a new start, a fresh page, moving on.

Scary times. That I should have retired 3 years ago is something I think about often; that I can't claim a state pension I've paid into over 46+ years for another 3 years, and living off my scant savings till then is something of my nightmares.

I worked full time as a teacher until I was 66. Then at 69 was elected as a local councillor. Apart from fixed meetings I can pretty much allocate my time as it suits me for casework etc. Some extra evening and weekend work at the moment leading up to the May elections. After that who knows. If I don’t get re-elected (it’s a marginal seat, I only won by 5 votes) I might be retiring again at 73.

I’m 69 this year and am still trying to cut down to 3 days.
I had a bigger business, sold it and started working from home.
I work with clients that I have been seeing for 30/40 years and I love it.
My ideal is to get down to two days.

I am now officially a pensioner. (Angry waspi) I had to give up physically demanding self-employment due to a very dodgy back at 63. I missed the people but not the work and, looking back, I think I had a bit of a breakdown - I was exhausted.

I’m a stroppy cow and do not work easily for other people so him indoors and me are renovating a house (knackering again, and don’t get me started on trying to get trades in never mind call back). But we are both learning new skills (thank goodness for youtube).

I dread the thought of us sitting round together watching sh##e mobility aids adverts all fuuuung day. I need to get out more.

25 years ago, I was made voluntarily redundant into early retirement in my 50s. The only bit that was 'voluntary' was when I went, not whether. My employer needed to 'lose' half of it's staff, 35,000 of us.

My IT skills were spot on, I went back to university for a year and was prepared to be flexible, but I was a drug on the market. No one was interested in me because of my age and sex, so I joined Age Concern (as it was then) as a volunteer Home Visitor. I did do 6 months paid work for them when I did maternity cover for my manager.

In her 40s DD with a background in the arts and media decided to do an Open University degree in science and technology. In her penultimate year, she was made redundant and even though her degree was incomplete, she had a new job in a Science Research Centre, at a higher salary, within 10 days.

Last summer, at the age of 48, after a few months on furlough, she decided to move on. She had employers queuing up to take her on. They did not give a damn about her age, all they were interested in was her background in the arts and media combined with a degree in science.

She ended up with another huge salary rise and a job with prospects and a promotion plan she is expected to attain. In a year or two, they will pay for her to do a work based M Sc.

Nowadays, it seems that if you have the skills that employers really want and need, neither age or sex is a barrier against employment in jobs with prospects.

Well 4 days might be FT? I’m still front line ambulance and do 4 X 12 hour shifts that at least twice a week go to 14 or 15 and at the height of the pandemic were 60+ I’m nearly 66 yrs. but I’m still able to do it and feel I contribute not just to myself and bank balance but to the wider community too.