Thoughts

Is there a best time of year to retire?

by James Wallis

When it comes to selecting an actual date to retire, people often select default dates. This could include:

  • Their birthday
  • Their spouse/partner’s birthday
  • Christmas
  • The date that their state pension become payable

The point of retirement is a significant milestone in someone’s life and is also a change in an individual’s lifestyle, so from my perspective it doesn’t really make sense that if you have the opportunity to decide when you want to retire that you wouldn’t also select the exact date and time of year.

Now you would be well within your rights to question what date or time of year would make to a multi decade retirement. However, I have been fortunate to see, talk with and help many people go through this point in their life over the past decade and hopefully you would agree that I am talking from an informed position.

So what do I think?

From my experience, it would appear that retiring in the Spring or early Summer would be preferable. This would mean that the best months of weather are ahead in the northern hemisphere, meaning that it is possible to get out and experience things straight away. This might be getting out into the garden, taking trips away within Europe immediately or getting straight into outdoor activities such as golf during the warmer months. Essentially starting as they mean to go on!

By contrast to this, those who retire during the colder months have often spent much of this indoors and longing for the weather to change to take action on the things they wanted to do.

This isn’t to say that those who retire at a different time of year can’t also enjoy the first few months of retirement too, but from what I have seen it hasn’t been as preferable unless they have been intentional about plans for those first few months.

Therefore if you are still at the point where you are considering your future retirement and you have the ability to consider exactly when you would retire in the year, it would be worthwhile given consideration to this as well as making some plans for the first few months.