No need to be shy and retiring - it's time to spend

Jun 16 2008 By Sarah Evans

I attended the first retirement party where the retiree was actually a close friend. There are times in your life when certain rites of passage figure strongly. You tend to find that in your 20s there are lots of weddings to go to, followed by baby celebrations.

Then everyone is having 25th wedding anniversaries and before you know where you are, it's 50 years since the happy event.

It doesn't seem a moment since my retiring friend was a bright young thing with places to go.

There are generic features of life's celebratory milestones. Speeches are central.

At retirement occasions, these are rather less edgy than many wedding speeches because the nature of these 'dos' requires that those giving the main speech are likely to be younger than the person about whom they are talking, so a slight air of deference prevails.

Speeches look back, not forward, but unlike at a funeral where the address takes a similar retrospective direction, the person of course is there, so they are a lovely time for recognizing and celebrating that delight known as the working life.

If the person is retiring in slightly ambiguous circumstances, such as those whose leaving has been longed for by all over many years, the speeches are at their most effusive.

Clearly no social celebration can consist of mere words of praise and thanks.

There are gifts to buy, food and drink to consume. And of course cards. It is difficult to conceive of any eventually for which there is not a purpose-built card.

You need to do nothing other than sign your name - no need to bite your pen searching for just that right word -the tasteful phrases and the appropriate visual image are there for amere £2.99 or so.

Acertain brand of economist tells us to spend our way out of the current recession and I think retirement parties are the sorts of untapped market we should be considering.

The wedding industry is worth £6 billion pounds and even if you take out the £5 million that the Rooney festivities are supposedly costing, that is still a lot of money.

Retirements have got just the same potential. The celebration industry needs to wake up to the possibilities.

The themed approach seems rarely exploited on retirement.

Even the dress code can be sadly relaxed and there is little attempt to dress the main participants in complimentary colours and a form of fancy dress.

There are, of course, exceptions, but that is no good for the industry. Everyone must feel they have to do it.

You could theme it according to the year someone started work for example, so that at the moment everyone would have to dress up a la 60s.

Although that's not really any good as a money-spinner because people can generally still dig out something appropriate from a family wardrobe.

The historical commencement of the profession or trade could be a better tradition to start. But then you might not get the glitzy element so needed to get the credit cards flying.

No, I think it will have to be a completely new tradition. You can only go to retirement parties in something shiny and sparkly.

And something will have to be done to ensure the retiree and peers look nowhere near retirement age, that something costing lots of money.

Photographs at retirement parties are often very amateurish affairs -abit like wedding ones 40 years ago. This is no good at all.

There is much scope for all the paraphernalia of the studio photograph approach, filming the event, and having songs composed for it.

Then there could be pre-retirement traditions established. Perhaps employers could be expected to provide a week's entertainment for the retiree and friends.

There is an incipient tradition of travel after the retirement and this is ripe for development.

Nor should people shouldn't just turn up in their everyday modes of transport for the celebration - why not fleets of grey limousines as the expected norm?

The word needs to be out on the street that retirement parties cost an average of £20,000 then, just like with weddings, everyone will feel compelled to pay that little bit more.