How on earth do people work into their 60's and beyond.

[BG2015]

DP and I were talking earlier (he's now asleep at 7.15pm) and saying how do people work into their 60's and 70's.

My DP is 59, he works in demolition which can be quite an active job. He's out of the house at 6am as they travel all over the country and he often isn't back until 6pm.

I'm a teacher recently dropped to 4 days after ongoing health issues after having breast cancer in 2021. Im 55, 56 in February.

We're both knackered. Neither of us sleep very well at all. We eat healthily and used to go to the gym 2/3 times a week but now only manage walking as our form of exercise.

I'm desperate to change jobs, planing to retire at 58 and get a part time job in an office. I think once I retire DP will reduce his hours and slowly retire.

But how do people have the energy to keep working. A teaching assistant at my school has just retired at 71 and I really don't know how she's kept going.

What job is this? Sounds just what I need. Who employs you?

I gave up work in my mid-fifties as I was exhausted, as much by the crowded train commute as by the job. I’m in my 70’s now and it’s never crossed my mind to work again, I’m just very thankful that I was able to afford to give up work when I did. DH is older than me so we retired at about the same time.
Obviously if people want to go on working it’s a different story, but it must be terrible if people can’t afford to give up work when it gets to be too much, especially now the retirement age is 6 years later

I retired a couple of weeks ago in my late fifties and for me it wasn't a question of can I still do this job it was more that I want to enjoy some healthy time whilst I can as none of us know what the future holds . I've got 3 holidays booked and am loving life .

Good for you!

I cannot wait to book a holiday in September and not pay the exorbitant prices I've had to pay for the past 28 years.

People are more aware now of the need to start paying into a pension early and hopefully, once the economy improves, pension values will improve too. Those who had pensions in the 1980’s got a good lift to their investments and we all hope that later generations will benefit in the same way.

The wfh/ hybrid thing was making a massive difference but we are now seeing a trend of back to the office. Whether this will return to the full 5 days who knows.
But wfh was brilliant for getting little tasks done throughout the day eg putting the washing on, which reduced the house workoad at the end of the day. Plus of course no commute in rush hour traffic.

Commuting 5 days a week in my 50s and 60s will finish me off

And that's before considering the actual day job on top

Some people need to work. It keeps them purposeful and focussed and positive. I’ve known people retire and drop down dead less than a year later.

Just turned 50 and am tired of working, of office politics, or the grind of commuting. Keep thinking there must be more to life than this, am questioning the value in what I am doing. Used to love my job with a passion. But would happily stop in the next 5 years if I had the money to do so, which I won’t sadly!

I retired at 63 because I was just burned out. I just couldn't work any longer. I love being retired.

A physio here. I worked tilll I was 74 because I loved my work and could adapt the sort of patients I treated to my physical capacities.

My parents are in their 70s, my dad still works but is a writer so he walks to the office when needed and types, he hasn’t worked a 9-5 for a good many years.

I'm 63 and work full time. I'm absolutely knackered with an arthritic knee and no energy for anything else. I don't have the energy but I'll have to work until 67 as I have no choice. I'm divorced and was a single parent for many years and so need every penny I can get to have a decent retirement income.

I'd like to work but on my own terms. A hobby business that my non existent inheritance could have funded in an ideal world. Working for 'the man' into my late 60s fills me with dread.

Possibly economic necessity. Alternative explanation is desire for company. I used to work in a supermarket. One of my colleagues has just retired at the age of 82. She worked part time but was always hanging around the staff room for at least an hour every shift. I think she was just lonely and wanted the company and was prepared to put up with a lot of hassle. Final straw was apparently newly installed touch screens.

Because we are having our freedoms slowly taken from us. They want us to work until we drop to save a few quid. I doubt when I get to the current retirement age a state pension will be on the table. I have a shit private one which I certainly wouldn’t be able to live on. DH’s private pension is ok but we’ve worked out that to be comfortable we need to have a certain amount of savings, paid off the mortgage and basically continue to keep cutting back. We are absolutely knackered and only 44. Busy family, both work full time, husband coaches football, school stuff, the usually family stuff thrown in where we are expected to visit every bugger who has retired but they can’t visit us as they are too busy. Life is full on and the work life balance is way off because we are too stressed, we get ill because we are run down all the time, have to send the kids to school when ill because we get shafted with fines if we don’t, expected to go to work ill because you’ll get a warning. I could go on. Wellbeing isn’t a priority and family life and time isn’t a priority. We can’t afford to relax and it’s so crap. We can’t afford to do anything else other than work. It’s wrong. Squeezed for all we are worth.

I work 6 days a week. I'm 74 and a counsellor with my own practice. I love my job and find it fulfilling so it doesn't seem like work. I'd be bored rigid if I didn't go out every day.

It certainly does feel like a return to Victorian times where unless you owned a big business and had vast amounts of capital you were fucked.

This seems to have all gone wrong in the past 15 years. Thank fuck our mortgage is nearly paid off so we won't be on the streets at least

I work with a couple of nurses that are in their 80s. They are so slow and, in my opinion, a liability in the work place. Their minds are sharp as a knife, just physically very slow. I think it's each to their own, the people in their 50-60s are much fitter than our our grandparents were at that age. However if you already have an illness, it can be tough working full time.

Sure by this age your mortgage is paid off, so you should be able to reduce the number of hours you both work?

I think it all depends on your job. I retired from being a teacher at 60 but carried on working as TA until I was 72. I only retired because we moved to live nearer my daughter. I worked part time and of course got the school holidays off. I did work every day. I loved my job.

Depends on the desk type job. I suspect a lot of these jobs will be lost to AI in the near future.

I found it invigorating! Love being around young people -the kids make me laugh a lot and I have a good relationship with my classes and colleagues. I do think being around younger people keeps you more active mentally and physically.
I do o going it sad on here that people on here in their 40s are talking like they are elderly…

Erm, no choice? People just do what they have to do.

I'm going to have to work until I drop thanks to my stbxh squandering hundreds of thousands of pounds.

This is actually a good point. I'm constantly seeing people with "anti-elitist" leanings knocking the idea of university and basically saying that all 18yos should go train as a plumber.

But jobs like those are hard on the knees and the back. The years when you can actually do core plumbing work and the like may be limited.

Which does not mean "don't become a plumber," but it means that if an 18yo does decide to train in that type of job, they should make sure they have a broad enough range of "academic" training and experience to allow them to transition "sideways" in their career at some point to something less demanding (i.e. a job that has more of a desk-based component but is still related to the plumbing field or whatever).

They are now. Most teachers currently in their 50s will be in some combination of older schemes which have normal pension ages of 60 or 65 depending on when they joined, and the new scheme which is tied to state pension.

I can go at 55 if I'm willing to take 80% of my full pension. I am very very tempted to do as OP plans, leave teaching when I can and find a part-time job to help the finances along at least while DC2 goes through uni (DC1 is finishing this year). I am constantly exhausted and often stressed in my job right now.

I’m in farming and I think a lot of it is to do with having a purpose or passion and feeling needed. Lots of relatives work right up till their death or very very old age of their 90’s. My 85 year old father in law is still invaluable. A lot of farm workers would retire but then “still do a harvest” or a bit of relief work

But we’re on a different planet to the rest of society. Just reading the teaching thread and it’s normal for farm workers to work 50-60 hour weeks with nowhere near the holidays or pay teachers get. Lots of farmers have teaching partners who help out on the farm in the holidays too. Not great standards of work and I wish it was better but there’s not the money in it.