The Retirement Survival Guide
What Nobody Tells You About the First Year, and the Bits That Actually Help
The pilot for the survival guides. Retirement is the only major life change people are congratulated for and then left alone with. This one covers the year that starts on the Monday after the last Friday: the month that catches almost everybody out, what to write in the card, and a short serious chapter with real phone numbers in it and no jokes.
Not out yet. This page exists so the work is visible while it is being made, which is more honest than a placeholder.
What is in it
- The years you could have been born, and what a house, a week of work and a pound actually cost in each of them.
- What has changed since, with the figures rather than the sighing.
- The honest bits about the age, written by somebody not pretending it is fine.
- Quizzes and things to argue about.
- Things you can now say and get away with.
- Around forty pages to fill in, which is the part that survives.
Formats and price
| Format | Price | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Hardback | £16.99 | The gift version. Survives being kept. |
| Paperback | £9.99 | The one most people buy. |
| Ebook | £4.99 | Read it, but you cannot write in it. |
Where the material came from
The sourced tables in this book are published free on the site. If you only need a line for a card, take it from there and keep your money.
Part of Survival Guides, an Home Truths series.
Frequently asked
- Is The Retirement Survival Guide a book about pensions?
- No, and deliberately not. There is no financial advice in it anywhere. Where money comes up it points at Pension Wise and the MoneyHelper pension specialists, which are free, impartial and backed by government, and which are better than anything a gift book could tell you. Regulated financial advice needs FCA authorisation and a humour book will never have it.
- Does it make jokes about getting old?
- No. There are no jokes in it about knees, memory, hearing or not being able to work the internet. That is the standard material in this part of the shop and it is the most common reason retirement gift books get three-star reviews. The jokes here are about the situation: the leaving do, the card nobody knew what to write in, the Tuesday afternoon with nothing in it.
- Who is it for, the person retiring or the person buying it?
- Both, and it is written to work for each. The buyer is usually a colleague chipping in at a leaving do who wants something funny that is not rubbish. The reader is the person who goes home on Friday and does not come back on Monday. About a third of the book is genuinely useful advice, and that third is what makes it worth keeping after the joke wears off.
- Why does it not print the State Pension age?
- Because it moves. The State Pension age depends on your date of birth, it has changed before, and GOV.UK states plainly that it may change again following review. A printed book that names an age would be wrong for some readers on the day it shipped and wrong for everyone eventually, so the book sends you to the GOV.UK calculator instead.