Joan Collins is right – retirement’s a rotten idea

Joan Collins lost it in an interview last week: “I think that’s a f***ing rude question,” said the ordinarily delightful star. It wasn’t an enquiry about her age that caused the explosion but a suggestion that, at 88, she may be considering retirement. 

“Don’t use that word, ‘retire’,” she went on as she promoted her new book. “There’s a perception about getting old that’s outdated.” Dame Joan may no longer act, as such, but she has a full-time job starring in the limelight. Why would she give it up when she is so good at it and while her advancing years don’t appear to be an impediment?

By pushing back retirement age into eternity she is a poster girl for those of us who may not have reached the “r” stage yet but see it looming on the horizon. Like Dame Joan, so long as you quite enjoy what you do and are able, physically and mentally, to carry on, it is surely better than the alternative?

A couple of recent studies have shown that without a decent pension pot, post-retirement lifestyles could be something of a disappointment. 

Far from around the world cruises and a social whirl free from the pressures of deadlines, the best we can look forward to is £8 bottles of wine and two trips to Europe a year. And that is for the most comfortably off pensioners who have wisely put aside enough for a £50,000 annual income.

According to the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, retirement living standards report, a minimum pension of around £16,700 for a couple would only cover £4 bottles of wine (they don’t say how many), £67 for the weekly shop, £10 a month on takeaways and £10 per birthday present. Even a moderate retirement income would only allow £30 for a present and £750 for clothes and footwear per year.On such a budget, it may not be financially feasible to give up work, ever. Those at the beginning of their working lives should pay heed, but not many do.

Another survey by Moneybox, found that millennials – those born between 1980 and 1995 – expect to retire at 59 but are not putting aside enough money to afford to. Even the few young adults who can think that far ahead are too broke and too busy to save for their retirement. Their priorities are buying a house, saving for their weddings or paying for holidays.

Nothing could have been further from my mind in my twenties, thirties and even forties than preparing for life after work. 

Moneybox said the topic “scares” today’s youngsters, but I can’t recall thinking about it at all. This is why, here I am, with my husband, planning the next stage of our careers while contemporaries move to the country to put up their feet.

At least we are in excellent company. Apart from Dame Joan, we are confronted daily by septuagenarians, octogenarians and even nonagenarians who refuse to go gentle into that good night.

At 79, Paul McCartney continues to write and record, “just as he continues to breathe”, wrote David Remnick in the New Yorker. And continues to put down his long-time rival, quipping in the same piece that the Rolling Stones were just “a blues cover band”.

But what does Mick Jagger, a mere 78 and currently on tour in America, care as the crowds keep flocking to see him? Last year, fellow Stone Keith Richards said they would never stop: “You might call it a habit. I mean, that’s what we do.”

Work, work, work is also what the Queen does. She may be 95, but when she was seen out on a job this week, the headlines drew attention not to her unflagging stamina but the fact that she was using a walking stick in a rare display of frailty.

Of course, retirement is not really an option for our royalty in the same way it is for the rest of us, though other monarchs do hand over to their sprightlier heirs – Queen Beatrix (Netherlands), King Juan Carlos (Spain), and Emperor Akihito (Japan) have all opted out of the rat race in the past decade.

Up there with the Queen is David Attenborough, still broadcasting and agenda setting aged 95, and, more literally, William Shatner, 90, who made his first trip into space on Wednesday and is apparently a prolific recording artist, among other projects.

Back here on earth, the decision to toil on in perpetuity is not necessarily about the money. However, the prospect of giving up the car, trips to the theatre, and long holidays to France is certainly incentivising.

Some jobs and professions have shorter lifespans because of the demands they make and, perhaps more persuasively, because of their more generous early retirement packages. 

I know of able-bodied surgeons who have quit on the dot of 60 whose loss to the NHS must be felt keenly, and fleeing teachers whose wisdom would be valued well past their official retirement age.

But if you are still in the market and can put up with the pace, the hours, the tedium of the treadmill, then the rewards are great. 

No shuffling around supermarkets for fun, no hanging out with people only of your own vintage, no lowering of expectations, no stopping the world and getting off.

I can work with that.