Not ready to stop work or retire? You’re not alone

June 20, 2026 — 5:00am

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We have all inherited a traditional idea of retirement and frankly I think we need to push on its boundaries because it really was designed for a different era.

Retirement was created in the early 1900s to get old people out of the workforce where they were slowing down the factory lines. Most people who made it to retirement arrived in poor health and didn’t survive long enough to enjoy it.

Then, over the next hundred years, it morphed to become a period of life: one where we largely expected to live a more quiet existence in old age, on a pension. But even that idea has been thwarted.

Thanks to longer lives and superannuation, retirement today is a multi-stage period of life that could last 30 to 40 years. On average, just a quarter of that time will be spent in poorer health.

A 65-year-old woman today is expected to live to 90 at the median and she has a one in four chance of living to 95. A 50-year-old should expect an even bigger bounty: a median life expectancy of 91, and a one in four chance of getting to 97, which will surely expand in their lifetime. That’s not a wind-down at the end, it’s multiple phases of life where you really get to come into your own.

For a growing number of Australians this new chance for a longer life, and new financial freedom via superannuation, is reshaping how midlife and retirement years are viewed.

And superannuation arrived just at the right time to make this possible.

In fact, superannuation climbing to meaningful contribution rates is what has given us the financial means to truly change things up and actually start to choose what those extra years can look like. For the first time, reaching your sixties doesn’t have to mean the beginning of the end. It can mean........

© The Sydney Morning Herald