For a long time, I had a system for dealing with retirement planning. It was simple, consistent, and deeply flawed: I didn't think about it.
This wasn't laziness. I was financially responsible in other ways — I tracked spending, I had savings, I understood compound interest in the abstract. But retirement? Retirement was something that happened to other people. Older people. People whose lives had settled into a final shape that mine hadn't reached yet.
I was in my early thirties. Retirement was forty years away. Forty years. What possible difference could my actions today make to something that distant?
As it turns out: an enormous difference. But I had to learn that the hard way.
The Real Reason We Avoid It
Here's the honest truth about why so many people in their twenties and thirties avoid retirement planning. It's not because they're lazy or irresponsible. It's because they're afraid of the answer.
At some level — often unspoken — there's a fear that if you actually look at the numbers, they'll tell you something you don't want to hear. That you're behind. That retirement is further away than you hoped. That the life you're imagining isn't going to be financially possible.
And here's the thing: not knowing feels safer. If you haven't looked, the answer might still be fine. Looking closes that possibility.
So you don't look. And the years pass.
The Moment Something Shifted
For many people, there's a specific moment when the avoidance stops. For some it's turning 40. For others it's a conversation with a colleague who retired early and seemed genuinely surprised you hadn't started planning. For others still, it's a redundancy, or a health scare, or watching a parent struggle financially in old age.
My moment was quieter than any of those. My wife asked me a simple question: would we be able to retire by 60 and fulfil our dream to travel to the places we always spoke about? I had a look at our pension assets and tried to work out where we'd end up. I struggled. The tools available were either too simplistic or overly complex. In the end I had to build the tool to answer what was a simple question. And when I did, the number was... fine. Not far off 60 but not 60. Enough for a comfortable retirement but not enough to travel as much as we wanted.
I had to change "fine" to "freedom."
I didn't know how to move and track fine to freedom. And for the first time, that felt like a problem worth solving rather than a fact worth ignoring.
What I Learned When I Actually Looked
The first thing I learned was that bad news doesn't get better with time. Every year I had spent not knowing was a year in which my options narrowed. Compound growth works for you if you start early. It works against you if you don't.
But — and this is the part nobody tells you clearly enough — looking isn't just about finding out where you are. It's about discovering what you can do.
Because retirement planning isn't a fixed verdict. It's a system with levers. And when you understand the levers, you stop feeling like retirement is something that happens to you and start feeling like it's something you can shape.
The Levers Nobody Talks About
When I finally started modelling my retirement properly, what struck me wasn't how far away it seemed — it was how much small changes moved the dial.
Increasing my pension contributions by a modest amount each month? My ExitAge moved forward by more than two years. Setting a slightly more realistic retirement spend — one that reflected the life I actually wanted rather than an assumed percentage of my salary? Another shift. Accounting for the investment property I'd been treating as a separate financial universe from my retirement planning? The picture changed significantly.
None of these were dramatic sacrifices. But each one was a lever. And having levers means having agency.
That's the thing about avoidance: it feels like protection, but it's actually the opposite. When you don't know where you stand, you can't do anything about it. When you do know, you can. Even if the number isn't what you hoped, knowing it means you can start moving it.
The Tool That Made It Concrete
What finally made the difference — what turned retirement planning from an abstract obligation into something I actually engaged with — was having a tool that reflected my real life.
Not a generic calculator that assumed I had one savings account growing at an average rate. But something that could handle my pension, my investment property, my share portfolio, and my remaining mortgage separately. Something where I could set my own retirement spend rather than accepting a formula's guess. Something that showed me my ExitAge — not as a static number, but as a figure that moved when I pulled the levers.
ExitAge is that tool. And the reason it works isn't because it's complicated — it's because it's flexible. It models your life, not a textbook average.
If You're Still Avoiding It
If you're in your twenties or thirties and retirement planning is a tab you've never opened, here's what I'd say to you:
The fear that the answer will be bad is understandable. It might be. But bad news in your thirties is extraordinarily more fixable than bad news in your fifties. Time is the most powerful variable in retirement planning — and every year you spend not looking is a year you can't get back.
And the more likely truth? When you actually look, you'll find that you have more to work with than you thought. And that small, consistent changes — in what you save, in what you plan to spend, in how you think about your assets — can shift your retirement date in ways that feel genuinely exciting rather than frightening.
The worst outcome of looking is that you find out sooner, and can do something about it sooner. The worst outcome of not looking is that you find out later, when your options are fewer.
Stop not looking. Your ExitAge is waiting to be found.