Retiring changes more than your daily routine. Your income comes from new places, some insurances end with your job, and the phone and email you have used for years may belong to your employer. This checklist covers the practical side, so the first months of retirement are about the life you planned, not about paperwork.
Pension ages, state pensions and tax rules differ a great deal from country to country. Check your government's official guidance and your pension providers for the details that apply to you.
A few months before
- Make a list of every pension you have: state pension, workplace pensions from each job, and private savings. Note the provider, the policy number and how to contact them.
- Look for pensions from old jobs. They are easy to forget after a few changes of employer. Old payslips and annual statements help.
- Ask each provider what you will receive, from when, and what choices you must make. Some need you to apply; payments do not always start by themselves.
- Check whether your partner is covered if you die: survivor's pension, life insurance, beneficiaries. Make sure the beneficiaries are still the right people.
- Find out the tax on your pension income, so you are not surprised by the first payment.
- If you are unsure, get independent advice. Choices made at this point can be hard to undo.
Insurances that change
Some insurances come with the job and stop when you leave. Others are linked to your pension and change when you start taking it.
- Health insurance through work: does it end? Can you continue it privately?
- Life, disability and critical illness cover through your employer or pension.
- Travel insurance, if it was a work benefit.
- Car insurance, if you no longer drive to work every day. Lower mileage may change the price.
- A company car, if you have one: when it goes back, and whether you need your own.
Work devices and accounts
This is the part people often forget until the last week. Your work phone, laptop and email are usually your employer's, and they will be closed when you leave.
- Move your phone number to a private plan if the number is yours to keep. Ask your employer well in advance.
- Change any accounts that use your work email: banks, shops, the doctor, clubs, the pension provider, government services.
- Copy personal photos, contacts and documents from the work phone and computer.
- Sort out two-step login codes that arrive on the work phone. Move them before the phone is handed back, or you may lock yourself out.
- Return keys, cards and equipment, and get a receipt.
A new budget
Most people have less income in retirement, but some costs fall too: travel to work, lunches, work clothes. Others rise: heating while you are home in the day, travel, hobbies, helping children and grandchildren.
- Write down your monthly income after tax, from each source.
- Go through the regular payments: mortgage or rent, electricity, heating, water, phone, internet, insurances, subscriptions.
- Cancel what you no longer use. Retirement is a good moment to check every subscription.
- Set aside money for larger costs: the car, the roof, the boiler, a holiday.
- Think about the house: will it suit you in fifteen years? You do not have to decide now, but it is worth a conversation.
A good moment to get the papers in order
For many households, retirement is the first time in decades with time to sit down together and go through it all. It is also the moment when the knowledge is freshest: you still remember why each pension exists and which insurance covers what.
Use some of that time to write down how your household runs, for each other and for your children:
- The bank, the accounts and whose name they are in.
- The pensions and what the other one will live on if one of you dies.
- The insurances, with policy numbers and where the papers are.
- The bills paid automatically, and the ones that are not.
- How the house works: water, power, heating, the people you call.
- A will, a power of attorney and your wishes. Our guide to wills and power of attorney explains each one.
In Handover: Money and bills has Pension and income and Bills paid automatically, and Personal insurance and pension covers Pension, Beneficiaries and What the other one will live on.
It is not morbid. It is the same thing you would do before handing over a job: write down what only you know, so that someone else can carry on. And the person most likely to need it is your partner.
Your digital life
Once the work devices are gone, your own phone and computer carry everything: banking, email, photos. Agree how your partner or a trusted child could get in if needed. Do not write passwords in plain text; write where they are kept and who can help.
In Handover: Phones, computers and passwords records where passwords are kept, and codes go in a sealed envelope that only the right people can open.