The five-year runway – what pre-retirees should start doing

I AM 56 this year. If all goes to plan, Providend should have a new management team in another five to seven years. It is a thought I hold with both anticipation and unease. For most of my working life, I have been the one helping others plan their transition. Now, I find myself on the runway, watching it shorten.

I do not think of this phase as retirement, because I am not sure I will ever fully retire. But I am clearly a pre-retiree: someone with five years or fewer before a significant change in their working life.

Through my own preparations and many conversations with clients at this stage, I have come to believe that the final five years before the transition are the most important. It is when your financial, life and health plans must all be stress-tested, and when the life you want next must start becoming real.