Troy Brooks, pictured with his motorbike at Belcarra Regional Park near Port Moody, B.C., has taken long road trips since retiring, and focused on hobbies such as woodworking and playing guitar.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
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In Tales from the Golden Age, retirees talk about their spending, savings and whether life after work is what they expected.
Troy Brooks, 60, Port Moody, B.C.
I retired in June, 2023, at 59, after more than 30 years in the computer graphics and animation industry. My last role was as the general manager of an animation studio in Vancouver. A very good friend of mine in the industry died a month before I retired, and my brother-in-law died a few months before that. Both had cancer and were a few years younger than me. I’ve also lost other friends my age or younger over the past decade. It puts life into perspective.
I enjoyed my work but felt there wasn’t much more I needed to accomplish and there were other things I wanted to do with my life. I got ‘packaged out’ of my job as part of a broader industry downsizing, which worked well for me. Meanwhile, my wife has shifted to working part-time at a small private Montessori school, which she finds very rewarding.
My retirement began with a trip to Africa with my wife and daughter. After that, I spent the rest of the summer and fall riding my motorcycle throughout the Pacific Northwest. When winter came, I found myself a bit disoriented. I doom-scrolled a lot, which wasn’t very healthy. Instead, I try focusing more on my hobbies and interests, such as woodworking, playing guitar and ukulele, and working out with a trainer twice weekly to keep physically active.
However, these are mostly individual pursuits. What I’ve found difficult is finding activities that include working and problem-solving with others like I used to do at work. I often fill this gap by staying connected with industry friends, including meeting them for coffee or lunch regularly. I’m also trying new things in retirement to get me out of the house. I recently started taking an art class and am looking at volunteering somewhere such as Habitat for Humanity, where I can work with people and use my hands.
My wife and I are financially prepared for retirement. The last few years of my career were financially rewarding, so we’ve been able to load up our RRSPs and TFSAs and pay off the mortgage and other debt. We’ve also reviewed our retirement plan with a financial advisor. We plan to live primarily off our investments for the next decade and defer our Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security benefits until we’re 70. We may also downsize from our house to a condo down the road to free up some funds.
I manage our investments and am considering shifting them to more conservative assets. I worry about another big market disruption and want to insulate our portfolio to ensure that we can really enjoy the next decade or so when we hope to be healthy and have the energy to travel and go on adventures.
Our daughter is 21 and attending college in the fall. We started an RESP for her when she was born, so she should be mostly self-sufficient. She has also worked hard since finishing high school and has saved enough to fund her TFSA fully. We plan to help her financially once she starts her career, including perhaps a down payment on a home. We think that’s more beneficial than maximizing an inheritance she’ll (hopefully) only get when she’s closing in on retirement herself.
My advice to others is that if you want to retire – and it makes sense financially – do it. Work can easily become your default purpose in life, but none of the friends and family we lost during the past few years wished they had spent more time at work. I think of retirement as my third act, in which all the plot points of life come together to what I hope will be a satisfying conclusion.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Are you a Canadian retiree interested in discussing what life is like now that you’ve stopped working? The Globe is looking for people to participate in its Tales from the Golden Age feature, which examines the personal and financial realities of retirement. If you’re interested in being interviewed for this feature and agree to use your full name and have a photo taken, please e-mail us at: goldenageglobe@gmail.com. Please include a few details about how you saved and invested for retirement and what your life is like now.
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