If the rest of your life started today, what would you do with it?
This, in my opinion, is a much more thought provoking question than the one people usually get when asked about retirement. The usual question being, “how much do you need?”.
I recently found a book that I’d read a number of years ago. It’s written by an Australian palliative carer called Bronnie Ware. This woman spent years caring for people in their last few weeks. Over the years, she documented the most frequent regrets that people shared with her. It’s little surprise that none of them discussed money.
However, almost every regret had a money decision underneath it. I’m biased due to my job but I still think it is worth raising the decisions that came up. Usually one made twenty years earlier, or never made at all.
What did people say they regretted?
Five things came up again and again, across very different lives, regardless of age, gender or status.
Patients wished they had lived their own life rather than the one expected of them. They wished they had not worked so hard. They wished they had said what they felt. They wished they had kept up with their friends. And they wished they had let themselves be happier.
That is it. No mention of a fund choice or a fee structure.
People who work in end-of-life care hear a version of this every week. I have heard enough of those conversations second hand to know the list does not shift much.
Are you planning for your retirement, or somebody else’s?
The first regret is about living the life other people expected. In money terms, it shows up as a plan built around a retirement nobody ever actually described.
Most people start with the number. How much do I need? That’s not the best place to start. You cannot price a life you have not pictured. What is it that you want in retirement?
If we are to look at the numbers, let’s start with the Pensions Council’s Irish Retirement Living Standards. This places a moderate retirement at around €27,600 a year for one person and €37,200 for a couple. The full State Pension (Contributory) is €299.30 a week at 66, which is about €15,560 a year. Lots of assumptions in there and as you can see, the State Pension is not close to covering the standard.
These figures should be your baseline. Your figure depends entirely on what you want the years to look like, and nobody else can tell you that. It will shift depending on your health requirements, whether you are renting or how much you plan to travel.
So go back to the question at the top. If the rest of your life started today, what would you actually want in it? Answer that first. Then you can start looking at how much you will need in retirement.
What if you never want to stop working?
The second regret is the one that is focused on work (rather than career): “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard,” is how Bronnie Ware put it.
I mention that difference as I know plenty of people love what they do. I know self-employed people in their sixties with no intention of stopping, and a few who will still be at it at eighty. That is not a problem to be solved.
The problem is not working. The problem is having no choice about it.
Retirement is not when you stop working. It is when you can afford to stop working. That does not mean you have to.
Business owners and self-employed people feel this most sharply. They are the worst-pensioned people I meet, and it is almost never carelessness. The business always has a more urgent claim on the money than they do, and there is no HR department quietly enrolling them in anything.
There is a middle setting people forget about too. Some occupational pension schemes allow retirement from age 50, subject to the scheme rules, and cutting back to three days in your early sixties is often far more achievable than stopping outright. Both need planning years ahead of the year you want to do it.
If you are within ten years of the point where you would like the choice, book a free call. This is the stage where advice makes the biggest difference and where the decisions are hardest to undo.
Why do so many couples never talk about money?
The third regret is about never saying what you felt. The money version of it is quieter, and it is everywhere. One person handles the finances and the other has no real idea what is there.
I see it at the worst possible moment. Somebody has died or become seriously ill, and their partner is sitting at a kitchen table trying to work out what exists, who holds it and who to ring.
It is a problem that can be easy to resolve and an important one. If you are part of a couple, you should both know what pensions are in place, who the providers are, what protection cover is running and where the paperwork lives.
The same goes for your children, if it affects them. Telling people what you want, while you can, saves them from guessing on your behalf later.
What does a retirement with nobody in it cost?
The fourth regret is about letting friendships go. It sounds like the least financial of the five. It is not.
Retirement budgets get built on fixed costs. The house, the bills, the food, the insurance. The social life is treated as optional, so it quietly falls out of the plan.
Then people retire and find that seeing anyone costs money. Coffee, lunch, the golf subscription, petrol to the other side of the country, the flights to visit someone who moved abroad.
If your children have emigrated, that is an additional cost. It tends to increase rather than shrink. A visit to Australia twice in five years is a very different plan to Australia every year, and it gets harder to do cheaply as you get older.
Health is the other one people leave out. Spending patterns change. The early years lean towards travel and doing things, the later ones towards care and support, and a plan that assumes your sixties will repeat unchanged into your eighties is the plan that gets caught.
The HSE’s Fair Deal scheme helps with approved nursing home costs, but you still contribute from your income and assets, and it does not cover extras like hairdressing, therapies, going to mass or activities. It’s worth understanding how it all works, before anyone in the family needs it.
When considering “right sizing” – think twice about moving somewhere cheaper purely to release equity. It works on a spreadsheet. It works less well if it puts an hour of a drive between you and everyone you know.
Why do people who saved well still not spend it?
The fifth regret is about not letting yourself be happier. In pension terms it produces something I genuinely did not expect when I started this job. People who did everything right, and then could not bring themselves to enjoy any of it.
They spend forty years being told to save. Nobody ever tells them when to stop. So they underspend through their sixties and seventies, when they are at their healthiest, and leave behind far more than they meant to.
Two actions can help you balance the figures. The first is knowing exactly what your income can sustain, so spending feels like a plan rather than a risk you are taking. The second is giving some of it away while you are still here to see it. Take advantage of tax-free thresholds for gifts to children and consider other ways to maximise the power of your savings.
A pension is not a prize for dying with money left over. It is there to be spent.
So what do you actually do about it?
- Write down what you want the rest of your life to look like, in plain words, before you look at a single figure.
- Find every pension you have, including the ones you left behind with old employers.
- Work out the gap between what you have and what that life would cost.
- Have the conversation with your partner, and with your family.
- Look at it again every couple of years, because life changes.
None of that requires you to be good at finance. It requires you to start.
Frequently asked questions
How much do I need to retire in Ireland?
There is no single figure. The Pensions Council’s Irish Retirement Living Standards suggest around €27,600 a year for one person and €37,200 for a couple at a moderate standard. The full State Pension (Contributory) is €299.30 a week at 66, so most people need private savings on top of it.
Is it too late to sort my pension in my fifties?
No, though the options narrow. Additional Voluntary Contributions can still make a real difference in the last working years, with tax relief at your marginal rate subject to age-related limits. The sooner you look, the more room you have to work with.
Can I go part time instead of stopping altogether?
Often, yes. Some occupational schemes allow retirement from age 50 subject to scheme rules, and many people reduce their hours before stopping completely. It depends on your scheme, your employer and whether your income carries it, so look at it well in advance.
What happens to my pension if I die before I retire?
It depends on the type of pension and how it is set up. This is exactly the detail worth confirming while you both can, rather than leaving your family to piece it together. We will go through what your particular arrangements do.
Should I spend my pension or leave it to my children?
That is your call, not ours. It should be a decision though, rather than something that happens by default. Giving during your lifetime uses tax-free thresholds that otherwise go unused, and you get to see it land. We can show you what your income supports either way.
Talk to us
Book a free 15 minute call at lynxgroup.ie/booking. No obligation, and no sales spiel. We will look at what you have, what you want and what the gap actually is.
You can also read more about how we work on pensions and savings and investments.
Progress, not perfection. That is how we think about your money, and how we work with you.
About the author
Gareth Watkins is a director of Lynx Financial Services, a Qualified Financial Advisor and an economics graduate of UCD. He advises individuals, families and business owners on pensions, protection and investments.
Information correct as of 5 August 2026.
- Warning: You may lose some or all of the money you invest.
- Warning: Past performance is not a reliable guide to future performance.
- Warning: The value of your investment may go down as well as up.
- Warning: Benefits may be affected by changes in currency exchange rates.
- Lynx Financial Services Limited is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Registered in Ireland, number 302693.
- Sources: Bronnie Ware, Regrets of the Dying, bronnieware.com. The Pensions Council, Irish Retirement Living Standards 2024. Citizens Information, State Pension (Contributory) and the Fair Deal scheme.
