The Retired Lifestyle

Many people choose to retire when they become eligible for the aged pension. At the moment, you become eligible when you reach 65.5 years-old. 65.5 seems quite young when you consider the life expectancy in females is 84.6 years-old and for males it is 80.4 years-old.

Based off those statistics, most retirees will be able to experience anywhere from 15 to 20 years after retiring. When considering how much people can accomplish in their first 20 years of life, it is fair to see the life in retirement as a whole new life stage.

Janice McKinnon is one of thousands Australians who are retired. At the age of 67, she has embraced her life as a retiree.

"It's like being young again," Janice said. "I live in a retirement village and it's like our own little community.

"When it is someone's birthday we get together and have a big party. We go out for day activities like bingo and shopping. We even get our own excursions.

"My favourite thing I've been able to do is go down to Canberra for a week," she said. "I never really got a chance to spend time down there and enjoy it when I was younger, but now I got to go down there with all my friends and just enjoy it. We went to some pubs, did some site seeing, all the things you would expect to do on a primary school camp, except the pubs that is."

For such a long time we thought of retired life as that waiting period between your working career and when you eventually leave this world. But people like Janice have embraced it and given herself a new lease on life.