(And What You Can Actually Do About It)
There’s this moment that happens to almost everyone approaching retirement, and it’s rarely discussed at dinner parties or in those glossy financial magazines that make everything look like a solved equation.
You’re sat there, perhaps with a cup of tea going cold, looking at your pension statements, and a very specific type of dread creeps in. Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind. The “is this actually going to be enough?” kind.
And then, because the universe has a cruel sense of timing, your boiler packs in. Or your daughter needs help with a house deposit. Or inflation does that thing where a weekly shop somehow costs what a monthly shop used to cost, and you’re left wondering if you’ve accidentally time-travelled or if money has simply lost all meaning.
Welcome to the retirement financial squeeze. It’s real, it’s widespread, and it’s frankly exhausting.
The Pain Points No One Prepared You For
Let me be blunt about what’s actually keeping people up at night:
The pension that looked adequate in 2015 now looks distinctly inadequate. You did the sensible thing. You saved. You planned. And then inflation decided to have a party, energy prices went absolutely feral, and suddenly your carefully calculated retirement income is stretched thinner than you ever imagined. The rules changed whilst you were already playing the game.
The care cost cliff-edge. This is the big one that lurks in the background like a financial boogeyman. You might need care. Your partner might need care. Your parents might need care right now. And the costs are genuinely terrifying; we’re talking £1,000+ per week for residential care in many areas. The middle-class retirement dream can evaporate faster than you can say “means-tested benefits.”
The employment gap. You’re not ready to fully retire (mentally, physically, financially, take your pick), but the job market treats anyone over 50 like a relic from a museum. The irony is brutal: you’ve got more experience, wisdom, and competence than ever, but companies are busy hiring people who think Excel is “retro tech.”
The intergenerational squeeze. Your kids can’t afford to buy homes. Your grandchildren need help with university costs. Your own parents need support. You’re the bank, the safety net, and the emotional support system, all while trying to ensure your own financial survival. It’s like being the filling in a very expensive sandwich.
The “I should have” spiral. Should have saved more. Should have invested differently. Should have bought that second property in 2005. This particular form of financial regret is utterly pointless but somehow irresistible. It keeps you up at 3 AM scrolling through property websites at what your house could have been worth if only.
The bewildering complexity of it all. Between state pensions, private pensions, ISAs, drawdowns, annuities, inheritance tax planning, and a thousand other acronyms and options, the system seems deliberately designed to confuse. You need a PhD in financial planning just to understand what questions to ask.
The Bit Where I Don’t Patronise You With “Just Budget Better”
Right. Let’s address the elephant in the room.
Most financial advice for retirees is either patronising rubbish about “cutting back on your morning coffee” (as if that £3 latte is the reason you’re £200,000 short of a comfortable retirement), or it’s impenetrable technical advice that requires you to already be wealthy enough to afford a financial adviser who speaks in actual English.
Neither is helpful.
The coffee thing particularly irritates me. If your retirement plan falls apart because of coffee purchases, the problem isn’t your coffee habit; it’s the entire bloody system. We’re not talking about tightening the belt a notch; we’re talking about fundamental shifts in what retirement looks like and how we fund it.
So let’s talk about actual, practical things you can do. Not theoretical “if you’d started at 25” nonsense, but actionable steps for where you are right now.
The Digital Opportunity You’re Probably Ignoring
Here’s the truth that almost no one is saying to people in their 60s and 70s: You are sitting on a goldmine of knowledge, experience, and perspective that the digital economy desperately needs and will actually pay for.
I know, I know. You’re thinking: “I’m not a tech person. I don’t do TikTok. I can barely work WhatsApp.”
Stop it.
The digital world isn’t just for 25-year-olds filming themselves dancing. It’s a marketplace for expertise, and you have something that no amount of university education can provide: decades of real-world experience.
Think about what you know how to do. Really think about it.
You’ve probably:
- Managed teams
- Navigated difficult workplace politics
- Raised children (possibly the hardest project management job ever)
- Survived recessions
- Built things, fixed things, created things
- Developed expertise in your field that took 30+ years to accumulate
- Learned lessons the hard way that others would pay to avoid
That’s not nostalgia. That’s intellectual property.
What “Going Digital” Actually Looks Like (Without Becoming Someone You’re Not)
Let me give you some genuinely practical examples, because vague “monetise your knowledge” advice is useless without specifics.
Consulting and coaching. If you spent 35 years as a project manager, accountant, teacher, nurse, engineer, social worker, whatever, people who are currently doing that job will pay for your insight. Not in a formal, stuffy way necessarily. Sometimes it’s just Zoom calls where you help someone navigate the exact problems you’ve already solved. Hourly rates for experienced consultants start at £75-150 and go up from there. Even doing 5-10 hours a month adds £500-1,500 to your income.
Creating digital products. This sounds wanky, I know, but hear me out. That thing you know how to do? You could record yourself explaining it. A video course, a PDF guide, a template, a checklist. You create it once, sell it repeatedly. A retired architect I know created a £27 guide on planning permission for home extensions. He sells 40-50 a month. That’s over £1,000 monthly for something he created once.
Writing and content creation. You have stories. The internet runs on stories. Starting a blog, a newsletter (I write several of these on Substack), or even a Medium publication about your area of expertise (or just your life experience) can generate income through multiple streams: advertising, sponsorships, paid subscriptions, or simply by establishing you as an expert who then gets paid consulting work. It’s slower than some options, but it’s real.
Online tutoring and teaching. Platforms like Outschool, Tutor.com, or even just advertising locally via Facebook groups, if you can teach something, people will pay. Music, languages, academic subjects, crafts, and business skills. The hourly rates are decent, and the schedule is entirely yours.
E-commerce without the faff. Print-on-demand services mean you can sell products (t-shirts, mugs, art prints, whatever) without holding inventory or handling shipping. If you’ve got any creative skills, or even just good taste and design sense, this is more accessible than ever. Or buy wholesale and sell on eBay or Amazon, people are making legitimate side incomes doing this from their kitchen tables.
The “warm professional” approach. Here’s the thing: you don’t have to become some slick personal brand guru. Actually, please don’t. The world has enough of those. What works is being authentically yourself, just… online. Share what you know in your own voice, help people solve real problems, and charge fairly for it. That’s the entire formula.
WARNING! The next couple of sections may seem like things you dont want to think about…but
Dominus Owen Markham
WE HAVE TO! (So please dont skip them)
The Immediate, Boring Stuff You Should Also Do
Right, back to earth for the practical financial housekeeping that isn’t exciting but matters:
Audit every direct debit and subscription. I mean, actually audit them, not just glance at your statement whilst feeling vaguely anxious. Write them all down. You’re probably paying for things you don’t use or don’t remember signing up for. The average person in the UK has about £50-70 monthly in subscriptions they’ve forgotten about. That’s £600-840 annually.
Challenge your bills systematically. Phone, broadband, insurance, everything. You’ve probably been a loyal customer, which in Britain translates to “profitable mug.” Threaten to leave. Actually, leave if they won’t negotiate. The loyalty penalty is real and costs loyal customers £4.1 billion annually, according to the FCA. Your loyalty means nothing to them; stop giving it.
Understand your pension options properly. Book time with Pension Wise (the free government service) or pay for proper independent financial advice if you have complex pensions. The decisions you make about drawdown versus annuities, when to take your state pension, and how to access your private pensions aren’t trivial choices. They’re worth thousands or tens of thousands over your lifetime.
Sort out your benefits entitlement. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that £15 billion in benefits goes unclaimed annually. Pension Credit, Council Tax Reduction, Cold Weather Payments, check what you’re entitled to using a benefits calculator. Pride is expensive; claim what you’re owed.
Get your housing costs under control. If you’re a homeowner, can you reduce costs through equity release (carefully), downsizing, taking in a lodger (£7,500 annual tax-free allowance), or even just remortgaging? If you’re renting, could you negotiate, move somewhere cheaper, or access housing support? Housing is likely your biggest expense; even small reductions matter enormously.
Ruthlessly prioritise your spending. Not “cut everything fun”, that’s miserable and unsustainable. But actually decide what matters to you and what doesn’t. Marie Kondo your finances. If seeing your grandchildren brings you joy, spending money on travel to visit them is worth it. The gym membership you haven’t used in eight months isn’t.
The Psychological Shift That Changes Everything
Here’s what I’ve noticed talking to people who’ve successfully navigated the retirement financial squeeze versus those who remain perpetually anxious:
The successful ones stopped thinking of themselves as “retired” or “past it” or any of that defeatist rubbish.
They repositioned themselves, in their own minds first, then to the world, as experienced professionals who are now available on their own terms. Not desperate for work. Not pathetically clinging to relevance. Just… available for interesting projects, with decades of wisdom to offer, at fair rates.
It’s a subtle but profound psychological shift.
You’re not begging for scraps from an economy that’s moved on without you. You’re offering valuable services to a marketplace that’s largely staffed by people who don’t know what they don’t know yet.
The digital economy is, paradoxically, crying out for the perspective that only comes with age. Everyone’s so busy optimising for the algorithm that they’ve forgotten to optimise for, you know, actual human wisdom.
What About the Care Costs Time Bomb?
Right, we can’t pretend this doesn’t exist, so let’s be honest about it.
The care costs issue is potentially catastrophic for middle-class retirees in the UK and probably in many countries. The current system is designed to exhaust your assets before providing support, which means a lifetime of saving can evaporate paying for care.
What can you actually do?
Plan for it explicitly. Most people engage in magical thinking about care costs (“I’ll probably be fine” or “I won’t need care”, or “I’ll die suddenly in my sleep”). The statistics suggest otherwise. Model different scenarios: what if you need care for two years? Five years? Ten years? How does that look financially?
Investigate care insurance. The market for this is limited in the UK, and the products aren’t great, but they exist. Immediate needs annuities, deferred payment schemes, and pre-funded care plans. Have actual conversations with specialists about whether any of these make sense for your situation.
Consider the property angle carefully. Your house might be your biggest asset and your biggest vulnerability. Some people plan to use equity release to fund care. Others plan to sell. Still others put the house in trust to protect it (be very careful with this; it’s complex and can backfire). Whatever you do, do it with professional advice and do it early.
Look at the family conversation. This is uncomfortable, but necessary. What are everyone’s expectations? Will adult children contribute to care costs if needed? Where would you want to receive care? These conversations are horrible, but they’re better than making crisis decisions whilst Mum’s in hospital and everyone’s panicking.
Build up ISAs strategically. Money in ISAs doesn’t produce income that affects means-tested benefits, and you can access it without triggering tax complications. If you’re building reserves for potential future care costs, ISAs are often more useful than keeping everything in pensions.
The Bit About Enjoying Your Actual Life
Right. Important point that gets lost in all the financial anxiety:
You could get hit by a bus tomorrow.
I don’t say that to be morbid. I say it because there’s a real danger of spending these years—which might be the healthiest, most free years you have—in a state of perpetual financial anxiety, postponing everything good until you’ve “solved” the money problem.
The money problem might never be fully solved. That’s uncomfortable but true for most people.
So you need to make decisions that balance financial prudence with actually living.
Some spending is investment in quality of life and should be protected: seeing people you love, doing things that bring you joy, maintaining your health, and engaging with the world. That matters more than squeezing every penny into savings for a future that may never arrive in the form you imagine.
Other spending is just… leakage. Waste. Things you thought you wanted but don’t actually care about.
Learning to distinguish between the two is possibly the most important financial skill for this phase of life.
A Final, Probably Controversial Thought
The traditional model of retirement, stop working at 65 (or much later now as Governments push the finishing tape), enjoy a decade or two of leisure, then decline, was based on life expectancies and economic conditions that no longer exist.
Most people in their 60s and 70s now are still perfectly capable of contributing, creating, and earning. Not necessarily in the same ways they did before, and certainly not on the same punishing schedules, but meaningfully nonetheless.
The problem isn’t that you can’t work. It’s that the traditional employment market doesn’t want you.
Fine. Build around it.
The digital economy doesn’t care about your age. It cares about your ability to solve problems and create value. That’s it. No HR department is making assumptions about your capacity based on your birth year. Just: can you do the thing people need? Will you show up and do it well?
If the answer is yes, there’s money to be made.
And frankly, the combination of your experience, your financial need, and the opportunities available through digital platforms means there’s never been a better time to create a portfolio of small income streams that add up to something meaningful.
You’re not going to replace a full-time salary. That’s not the point. The point is adding £500-2,000 monthly, doing things you’re actually capable of doing, on schedules you control, solving problems you understand.
That transforms the financial picture from “How do we survive on our pension?” to “How do we live comfortably with our pension plus our portfolio of projects?”
It’s different. It’s possibly better. It’s certainly more interesting than the traditional retirement script.
Start Somewhere
If you’ve read this far and you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, that’s normal. The retirement financial squeeze is overwhelming.
But here’s what I’d suggest:
Pick one thing from this article. Just one. The easiest one, the one that feels most doable, the one that makes you think “Yeah, I could probably do that.”
Do that thing this week.
Not “think about it” or “research it” or “wait until the right moment.” Actually do it.
Audit your subscriptions. Call your broadband provider. Sign up for Pension Wise. Create a LinkedIn profile. Write down what you know how to do. Whatever.
Momentum matters more than perfection.
The retirement financial squeeze is real, and it’s not going to resolve itself through worry or wishful thinking. But it’s also not the end of the world, and it’s absolutely not a reflection of your worth or your competence.
You’ve survived this long. You’ve navigated multiple recessions, career changes, family dramas, and probably at least one truly terrible haircut in the 1980s.
You can navigate this too.
You just need to start.
The information in this article is for general guidance only and shouldn’t be considered personalised financial advice. For specific advice about your situation, speak with a qualified independent financial adviser. Also, I’m a writer, not a financial adviser, so take everything here with the appropriate level of salt.
Until Next Time
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