Their dad tells me he’s going to retire at the end of the year. I’ve told him that he should have a plan. The words of a friend “You marry for life, not for lunch” echo around.

My life is essentially organised around having fun, with a bit of fund management thrown in for good measure. I play tennis and bridge with friends, visit galleries, go to the theatre, organise and undertake some wonderful travel (Peru and Bolivia later this year) look after my nearly grown kids and throw in a bit of financial fund management to finance it all. Most days have an organised schedule but nothing that couldn’t be cancelled at the drop of a hat or the call from school.

So when he finally stops work, looking to me to provide entertainment is likely to a waste of time. My life is already quite busy and whilst we can probably rearrange things to spend a couple of mornings or afternoons doing something together, we’re not going to be each others be all and end all activity.

According to an article in the Guardian today, there are a couple of things to avoid when you retire:

Unsuccessful retirements have two main characteristics, either they tend to atrophy or they do too much: they take on too many responsibilities or they fail to put boundaries in place to stop their families demanding too much from them.

Successful retirements nearly always involve a plan:

David Kelley runs a pre-retirement course in a quiet office in central London.Distilling Kelley’s decade of expertise down to a core lesson isn’t easy but the phase “proper selfishness” jumps out. “We have to start thinking like a two-year-old when we’re thinking about retirement,” he told the group. “We get forced into adaption throughout our youth and our working lives. Now we have to get out of that habit and into one that says ‘me first’.”

Obviously many people are faced with both financial and health constraints which will have to be managed. We’re lucky, with both of us having savings and pensions in place and no obvious health issues on the horizon.

Studies show that retired people waste a great deal of time deciding what they are going to do with the rest of their lives. At 65, a man can expect to live 25 more years, and a woman 27. But they can also spend up to 15 years post-retirement reorienting themselves: just 56% say they enjoy retirement “a great deal” during this period, and just 57% feel it is working out as they planned. So it’s important to have an idea of what you want to do before you actually retire.

Apparently There are four basic factors that make for a successful retirement:

• By far the most important element is a person’s social network. Entering retirement with only your immediate family and your work network is a frequent cause of retirement depression which can be a downward spiral that is very difficult to reverse.
• Having purpose and challenging one’s mind is the second element. This usually takes the form of some type of work – whether paid or unpaid.
• Ongoing personal development should never stop a factor highlighted by the recent rapid increase in mature learners and the boom in retirement learning and development services
• The fourth element is a serious one: to have fun.

Obviously, looked at through a slightly different lens, the elements of a successful retirement are no different to the elements of a successful life.

David Kelley himself has no intention of wasting his time. Immediately after he retired, he wrote himself a business plan for the rest of his life. It read: “Two days earning. Two days learning. Three days just for me.” There are two addenda: “Don’t be afraid to say no,” and “Don’t travel anywhere before 10am.” “I hate the rush hour,” he explains.