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Your 5-Year Retirement Countdown
20th October 2026
Are You Really Ready to Retire?
Retirement is one of those things that always seems to be a few years away.
Then suddenly it isn’t.
You start counting in months rather than years and questions that were once fairly theoretical become rather important.
How much will my pensions actually pay? Can we afford to retire? Will the mortgage be gone? What will our bills look like? And perhaps the question people don’t think about enough:
What am I actually going to do all day?
There’s far more to preparing for retirement than choosing a date and waiting for your pension to arrive.
So we’ve put together a simple Rentasenior retirement countdown, starting five years before you retire.
We’ve also created a free Excel spreadsheets that you can download and use at home.
FREE DOWNLOAD 1: Retirement Countdown Planner
Our first spreadsheet gives you a checklist starting five years before retirement and takes you right through to retirement and beyond.
Download the free Rentasenior Retirement Countdown Planner
You don’t have to complete everything at once. Save it and come back to it as retirement gets closer.
5 years before retirement – find out where you stand
Five years might seem ridiculously early to start thinking seriously about retirement.
It isn’t.
The advantage of starting now is that if you discover something isn’t quite right, you’ve still got time to do something about it.
The first job is simply to find out what you’ve got.
If you’ve worked for a number of companies during your career, you may have several workplace pensions. There might even be one you’ve completely forgotten about.
Make a list of them.
Write down the provider, policy or membership number, approximate value and when you expect to be able to take the pension.
Then check your State Pension forecast.
Check your State Pension forecast – GOV.UK
It’s also worth looking at your National Insurance record.
Check your National Insurance record – GOV.UK
Don’t assume everything is correct simply because you’ve been working for 40 years. Check it.
Then start thinking about what retirement is actually going to cost.
And that’s where our second spreadsheet comes in.
How much money will you actually need?
People often concentrate on how much their pension pot is worth.
That’s important, but there’s another question that’s just as useful:
How much does your life cost every month?
It’s surprisingly easy not to know.
The mortgage or rent is obvious. But then there’s council tax, electricity, gas, water, broadband, mobile phones, TV, insurance, cars, petrol, pets, credit cards, loans, holidays and dozens of smaller expenses.
If you’re supporting children through university, that’s another potentially substantial expense.
So we’ve created a second free spreadsheet.
FREE DOWNLOAD 2: UK Retirement Money Planner
Download the free Rentasenior Retirement Money Planner
You can use it as a single person or as a couple.
Enter your monthly income from:
State Pension | Private Pensions | Part-time Work | Full-time Work | Other Income
Couples can enter their incomes separately.
Then work through your household spending.
The spreadsheet includes mortgage or rent, council tax, electricity, gas, water, broadband, TV, mobile phones, home insurance, loans, credit cards, car finance or leasing, car insurance, fuel, servicing, food, pets, holidays, entertainment, university costs and plenty more.
Put the real figures in.
At the bottom you’ll see the number that really matters:
Money left at the end of the month
If your expected retirement income is £3,500 a month and your normal life costs £3,200, you’ve got £300 left.
If your expenditure is £3,800, you’ve discovered a £300 monthly shortfall.
Finding that out five years before retirement gives you options.
Finding it out six months after retiring is rather less convenient.
2 years before retirement – have a rehearsal
By now you should have a much better idea of what your pensions could provide and what your household actually costs.
Update the figures in your Rentasenior Money Planner.
Then try something that sounds simple but can be remarkably revealing.
Live on your retirement income for three months
Suppose you and your partner currently bring home £5,000 a month but expect to have £3,400 after retiring.
Try living on £3,400.
Put the other £1,600 away.
After three months, ask yourselves:
How did that feel?
If it was perfectly comfortable, that’s reassuring.
If you were dipping into the £1,600 every fortnight, you need to understand why.
You’ve also potentially saved another £4,800 while carrying out the experiment.
12 months before retirement – things are getting real
Now it’s time to start checking the details.
Speak to your pension providers and understand their timescales and the options available to you.
Check your employer’s notice requirements.
Update your State Pension forecast.
Review your savings and debts.
And have another look at your Money Planner because your circumstances may have changed considerably since you first completed it.
For general information about pensions and retirement, MoneyHelper is a useful starting point.
MoneyHelper – Pensions and Retirement
People aged 50 or over with UK defined contribution pensions may also be eligible for a free Pension Wise appointment.
There are some pension decisions where getting proper regulated financial advice may be sensible. Don’t make a major decision simply because your friend Dave retired three years ago and told you what he did.
Your circumstances aren’t Dave’s.
6 months before retirement – stop thinking about money for a moment
You’ve checked the pensions.
You’ve done the spreadsheet.
You know roughly what the bills are.
Now there’s another question.
Imagine you’ve been retired for six months.
It’s February.
It’s raining.
It’s Tuesday morning.
You’ve had breakfast, watched the news and it’s 9.30am.
What are you doing today?
This part of retirement gets surprisingly little attention.
Work doesn’t only provide money.
It gives you somewhere to go. People to talk to. Problems to solve. A reason to get up. People who need your knowledge.
After 30 or 40 years, that structure can disappear on a Friday afternoon.
Some people absolutely love it.
Others find it much harder than they expected.
So plan your time as well as your money.
Perhaps you’d like to travel.
Look after the grandchildren.
Join a walking group.
Volunteer.
Learn a language.
Go fishing.
Restore a car.
Spend more time gardening.
Or perhaps you’d actually like to carry on working occasionally.
You don’t have to stop working completely
Retirement doesn’t have to mean working five days a week or not working at all.
There’s an enormous amount of space between the two.
You might quite enjoy doing five or ten hours a week.
Not because you desperately need the money, but because you enjoy being useful.
And if the extra income pays for a holiday, even better.
That’s one of the reasons we created Rentasenior.
Someone who has spent 35 years as an accountant doesn’t stop understanding accounts because they’ve retired.
A retired teacher can still teach.
An experienced gardener can still help somebody with their garden.
The same applies to DIY, decorating, cooking, pet sitting, IT support, bookkeeping and countless other skills.
You may have finished with the daily commute and office politics.
That doesn’t mean you’ve finished being useful.
1 month before retirement – check everything
Now go back to the Retirement Countdown spreadsheet.
Make sure the important things have actually been done.
Check when pension payments are due to start.
Check the bank details.
Understand what happens to any benefits provided by your employer.
Make sure you have some accessible money available for unexpected expenses.
Check your important documents.
If appropriate, review your will and whether arrangements such as a Lasting Power of Attorney are relevant to you.
For information covering England and Wales:
Lasting Power of Attorney – GOV.UK
And then do something rather more enjoyable.
Plan your retirement celebration.
After decades of working, you’ve earned one.
Retirement day
That’s it.
No alarm tomorrow morning.
It can feel wonderful and slightly strange at the same time.
Don’t feel you have to create the perfect retirement immediately.
Give yourself a little time.
But keep using the Money Planner.
The first year will tell you far more about what retirement actually costs than all the estimates you made beforehand.
You might spend less on commuting and lunches.
You might spend more on heating because you’re at home during the day.
You might travel more.
You may discover that Sunday lunch with the family costs considerably more when you’re paying for everyone.
Real life rarely follows a spreadsheet perfectly.
The spreadsheet simply helps you see what’s happening.
6 months after retirement – do a proper check
Get the two spreadsheets out again.
Look at what you thought would happen and compare it with what actually happened.
Are you spending more than expected?
Are you spending less?
Are your pension payments what you expected?
Have any big expenses appeared?
Do you need to adjust anything?
Then forget about the money for a moment.
Ask yourself:
Am I enjoying retirement?
Are you seeing enough people?
Are you doing the things you said you’d do?
Do you miss work?
Or perhaps more accurately:
Do you miss the job, or do you miss feeling useful?
There’s a big difference.
Give yourself an annual Life MOT
Once a year, sit down for an hour with a cup of tea or coffee and go through everything again.
Check your income.
Check your spending.
Check your pensions.
Check insurance renewals.
Look at the house.
Check your will and important documents.
Check when your passport and driving licence expire.
Think about whether anything has changed within the family.
Then ask one final question:
What do I want to do during the next 12 months?
That’s every bit as important as checking the bank balance.
Because retirement planning shouldn’t simply be about making your money last until you die.
It should be about making something of the years in between.
Download both free Rentasenior retirement planners
Rentasenior Retirement Countdown Planner
Start five years before retirement and work through the things worth checking at each stage.
Rentasenior UK Retirement Money Planner
Enter your income and household expenses and see what you’re likely to have left at the end of each month.
It works for individuals and couples and includes State Pension, private pensions, employment income, housing, household bills, debts, cars, holidays, pets and family expenses.
Both spreadsheets are free to use.
And remember:
You may retire from your job. You don’t retire from your skills, knowledge or experience.
Visit Rentasenior.co.uk to find out more.
The information and spreadsheets in this article are intended as general information and budgeting/organisation tools. They aren’t personalised financial, pension, investment, tax, debt or legal advice. Pension and retirement decisions can have significant long-term consequences. If you’re unsure about your circumstances, consider taking appropriate professional advice.
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