Anne’s story: Feeling comfortable and confident in retirement

My main concern about retiring was having the income I’d need to do what I wanted to do. After my husband passed away four years ago, I was also worried about spending time on my own and work was an important way of keeping me busy. I had the chance to take a redundancy, but I knew my mental health was worth more than any amount of money.
When I started meeting with Roxanne from StatePlus, I felt it was time to make a change, but I still worried I’d be short of money. She suggested taking six months long service leave at half-pay to try out retirement and see how I liked it. After taking another six months, I knew I didn’t want to go back. It was a relief to stop working so hard and I was enjoying having the flexibility to look after myself with more time at the gym.
Some of the best advice I had from Roxanne was to set a budget, something I hadn’t done before retiring. Being a little more careful with money is giving me freedom to travel the world and that makes it easy to stick to my weekly spending targets.