I was quoted in the SMH Good Weekend today. Wet leaf syndrome!

Overall, life expectancy has been increasing ­steadily over the years, with the exception of the dip during the 2020-2023 COVID period. If someone takes early retirement in their 50s, they’re likely to have decades more to live. That could be more than 10,000 days, which is a hell of a long time to fill, advises retirement coach Jon Glass, especially if you don’t have good role models, with perhaps grandparents retiring and then dying straight afterwards, or parents not adjusting well. The biggest struggle he sees is the loss of identity after a lifetime of work. A high-level doctor client confessed to him his deepest fear: that it was his job that made him interesting and without it he’d be nothing.

“But I do find that a very important consideration is whether you want to stay mega-busy and continue doing 1000 things at once when you retire early, or whether you want a much calmer life,” says Glass. “It’s so important that people give that some thought and work out what kind of person they are.

“It’s also vital, if you have a partner with whom you’ll be sharing time and space, to make sure you do a lot of communicating and planning about what you’re going to do. You might have only seen each other in the evenings and at weekends, but now it’s 24/7. So you need to make sure you have a room to sometimes retreat to, or a door you can close. Men need to avoid what the Japanese call nure ochiba, or ‘wet fallen leaf syndrome’, where they follow their wives around everywhere like a leaf stuck to a shoe.”