Retirement rarely unravels because of one bad decision. More often, it’s the result of a decade of small choices made too late — or not made at all.
For many South Africans, retirement still feels abstract while they’re busy building careers, businesses, and families. There’s always another milestone first. Another year. Another priority. Yet somewhere between your mid-50s and early 60s, the future stops being theoretical. Time compresses. Options narrow. And financial decisions start carrying far more weight than they ever did before.
This ten-year window before retirement is unlike any other phase of your financial life. It’s when momentum matters more than ambition, structure matters more than effort, and clarity matters more than growth at all costs.
When Time Becomes the Constraint
Earlier in life, time is forgiving. You can recover from poor investment choices, periods of under-saving, or financial distractions. In the final decade before retirement, time stops being an ally and becomes a constraint.
What makes this period so powerful is also what makes it dangerous: every decision compounds rapidly, but there is far less runway to correct course. Gains accelerate, but so do mistakes.
This is why two people with similar wealth at 55 can arrive at retirement in completely different positions.
Peak Earnings, Peak Responsibility
For most professionals and business owners, the highest earning years arrive just before retirement. Ironically, this is also when people feel most tempted to ease off on financial discipline, children are leaving home, debt feels manageable, and retirement still feels “a few years away.”
In reality, this is the final opportunity to meaningfully strengthen your retirement position. Contributions made now benefit from remaining growth, tax efficiency, and scale. Capital deployed wisely in this phase does more work than at any other point in your life.
What you do with surplus income during these years often matters more than everything that came before.
You’re Not Too Late — But You Are on the Clock
Many people enter their mid-50s carrying quiet anxiety about retirement. Perhaps savings didn’t keep pace with income. Perhaps portfolios grew organically without a strategy. Perhaps decisions were made in isolation rather than as part of a bigger picture.
The final decade still offers room to fix this — but only with intention.
This is the period where fragmented investments need to be brought into a single, coherent framework. Where underfunded plans need to be addressed decisively. Where money must be structured to work together rather than in silos.
Without simplification and direction, complexity becomes the enemy of outcomes.
Tax Planning Has a Deadline
Tax inefficiency is one of the most expensive mistakes retirees discover too late.
The years before retirement provide unique opportunities to plan around future withdrawals, manage capital gains exposure, utilise prior disallowed contributions, and structure investments in a way that protects income over time.
Once retirement begins, flexibility diminishes sharply. Decisions that could have been optimised become permanent. This is why proactive tax planning during this decade often delivers greater long-term benefit than chasing additional returns.
The Shift From Building Wealth to Living Off It
Investment strategies that worked during accumulation can become risky when retirement approaches.
This transition isn’t about abandoning growth — it’s about redefining risk. Sequence risk, liquidity risk, and income sustainability suddenly matter far more than headline returns.
During this phase, portfolios must be designed not just to grow, but to withstand volatility, generate reliable income, and support spending needs without forcing poor timing decisions.
Retirement doesn’t fail because markets fluctuate. It fails when portfolios aren’t designed for reality.
Retirement Becomes Personal
Roughly ten years out, the conversation changes.
People stop asking how much they might have and start asking how they’ll live. What a normal month looks like. What they want their time to be spent on. What freedom actually means to them.
This is where financial planning becomes life planning. Numbers only matter insofar as they support the life you want after work ends.
Estate Planning Is No Longer Optional
As retirement nears, estate planning moves from “important” to essential.
Wills, beneficiary nominations, trusts, and offshore assets must be reviewed and aligned. Poor structuring can lead to unnecessary taxes, delays, and unintended consequences for loved ones.
This is not something to address once retirement begins — it must be settled while decisions can still be made calmly and deliberately.
Medical Costs: The Silent Risk of Retirement
Healthcare is often the single biggest threat to long-term retirement sustainability.
Medical inflation continues to rise faster than general inflation, and many retirees underestimate how significantly healthcare costs influence drawdown strategies.
Planning for medical aid, gap cover, long-term care, and healthcare funding must be integrated into the broader retirement plan — not treated as an afterthought.
Pressure-Testing Reality
A plan that works only in ideal conditions isn’t a plan — it’s a hope.
Before retirement, strategies should be tested against real risks: market declines early in retirement, inflation shocks, longevity, and changes in family circumstances. Identifying vulnerabilities early allows for adjustments while time is still on your side.
Money Should Serve Meaning
The most successful retirements are not defined by balance sheets alone.
They are shaped by purpose, how people spend their time, how they remain engaged, and what they want their wealth to achieve beyond themselves. Financial decisions are stronger when they are guided by meaning rather than fear.
Why the Right Advice Matters Most Now
In the final decade before retirement, financial complexity increases. Investment decisions affect tax outcomes. Tax decisions affect income. Estate decisions affect everything.
This is where experienced, integrated advice becomes invaluable.
If you are within ten years of retirement — or even closer — this is not a period to drift. It is the decade that quietly determines whether retirement feels constrained or confident.
Take control while choice still exists. The work you do now defines the freedom you experience later.
