Can anyone recommend a retirement planning course please? Are they worth attending? We will be funding the course ourselves. How much should we expect to pay?
You would learn more on this forum about retirement than you would at any retirement course. I should point out prior to retirement I attended a Retirement Course run by the HSE. It was a terrific day with lunch included and cost me nothing. A former Cork football star attended and gave a speech about personal safety and the need for good locks on your door and some obvious hints about not accumulating too much money in your home in case of robbery (retirees being easy targets to criminals). A person with a Social Welfare background gave a talk on pension entitlements and his most helpful remarks were to apply for any pension six months at least before it is due. Another speaker spoke about well-being and meditation which had my leprous eyes rolling upwards.
There was no investment advice although I bet many financial companies would have paid for a foot in the door. Most of the advice received at the seminar was pretty obvious to me and I don't think many learned much more than they already know. Perhaps this thread is an opportunity for somebody to promote investment in retirees or for somebody else to advise of the pitfalls of investing.
Did you find that that exercise helped you to relax?
A sibling of mine attended a retirement planning course in the civil service recently and had a similar experience. Just people stating the obvious and nothing new learned.
Did you find that that exercise helped you to relax?
A sibling of mine attended a retirement planning course in the civil service recently and had a similar experience. Just people stating the obvious and nothing new learned.
For me (Public Service Retirement Seminar) the two best things were:
the Social Welfare advice on PRSI and pensions (by following this I managed to accumulate enough Class A contributions to make me eligible for a fraction of the State Contributory Pension)
the need to be very conscious of the changing dynamic in the relationship between the working partner and the partner who was used to being in the house on her own and who mightn't be quite as delighted as I was at the exciting prospect of my being at home 7 days a week!
The worst bit was the elderly retiree who bored (most of) us senseless with her long-winded presentaion about the number of countries that she had visited since she had retired. I assume that this was meant to reassure us that we weren't all going to curl up and die shortly after retiring, but it was tiresome in the extreme.