When you think about preparing for retirement, it’s often the financial questions that come to mind.

Have I got enough? When can I afford to stop working? What will my income look like?

But there’s another side to retirement that can be just as important to prepare for:

What changes when work is no longer part of your everyday life?

That was one of the themes that emerged from our latest Financial Wellbeing Podcast, when we spoke to Steve Johnson, founder of the Wellbeing Science Institute, about his work in elite sport.

At first, professional sport and retirement might not seem to have much in common. But one idea from the conversation makes the connection surprisingly clear: normalising change.

Elite athletes experience transitions throughout their careers. They move through teams and contracts, deal with injury and changing roles and, eventually, face the end of what can be a relatively short sporting career.

Steve’s approach is not to treat those transitions as unexpected events. If change is a normal part of the journey, we can recognise it, understand what it might mean and prepare for it. And that idea extends far beyond sport.

What else changes when work stops?

During the conversation, Steve described some of the things an elite athlete can lose when their sporting career ends.

Income may be one of them. But they might also lose status, friendships, a support network and part of the identity they have built around being an athlete.

What if we replaced “leaving elite sport” with something closer to many of our own lives? Retirement, selling a business or redundancy.

The parallels quickly become apparent.

When one of these transitions approaches, it’s natural to concentrate on the financial questions.

Have I got enough? When can I afford to stop? What will my income look like? What happens to the business?

Those are important questions. But work may currently give you much more than an income.

It might provide structure to your week. It might be where many of your friendships and relationships sit. It can bring status, purpose, challenge and a sense of being useful.

It can also become part of the answer to a much bigger question: Who am I?

The business is ready. Are you?

At Ovation, we’ve worked with many business owners preparing for succession or a sale, and this was explored in the podcast.

One of the observations was that people can do an excellent job of preparing their business for what comes next, without doing the same for themselves.

Then the business is sold. The meetings stop. The phone rings less often. Decisions that once depended on you belong to somebody else. And you may find yourself asking: Who am I now?

Our identities can easily become wrapped up in what we do.

“I’m a business owner.”

“I’m a doctor.”

“I’m the person people come to for advice.”

There’s nothing wrong with taking pride in those roles. But when one role has occupied a significant part of your life for many years, leaving it behind can involve a bigger adjustment than a financial plan alone might suggest.

Normalising change helps us prepare

This is where Steve’s idea becomes particularly useful.

Selling a business isn’t simply a transaction. Leaving a long career isn’t only about replacing a salary. These are normal life transitions, and recognising them as such gives us an opportunity to prepare not only financially, but personally.

If you’re approaching a transition like this, you might ask yourself:

• What does my work give me today, apart from income?

• Which of my relationships and routines are connected to it?

• How much of my identity comes from what I do?

• Which parts of my current life would I like to keep?

• What might I want to make room for next?

You don’t need to have every answer. The useful starting point may simply be recognising that these questions deserve as much thought as some of the financial ones.

Start with the person

One idea that stood out during the podcast was to start with the person.

Steve’s approach to wellbeing in elite sport looks beyond performance to the whole person and the wider life around them.

At Ovation, financial planning isn’t simply about reaching a number that says you can afford to retire. Money matters. It can provide security, flexibility and choices. But the purpose of the money is the life it enables you to live.

That’s why our Financial Planners are trained in coaching skills as well as financial planning. The conversation shouldn’t stop at whether you have enough. It can also explore what you’re moving towards and what you want the next stage of your life to look like.

So, if retirement, a business sale or another significant change is on the horizon, there is another question worth adding to the financial ones:

What will change in my life when my work changes – and what would I like to put in its place?

If you’d find that conversation useful, speak to your Financial Planner at Ovation. If you’re not already a client, get in touch with the team and we’d be happy to talk.