Have I saved enough for retirement? Perhaps we should also be asking: who do I want to spend retirement with?We talk endlessly about retirement planning, pensions, financial security, ageing and longevity.
But there's another form of retirement planning we rarely discuss: friendship.
As Millennials and Gen X think about later life, female friendship, co-housing, communal living and the loneliness epidemic are becoming part of the conversation. And for women in particular, who live longer and are more likely to live alone in older age, perhaps we need to start investing in our friendships with the same seriousness that we invest in our pensions.
I started thinking about this because of my mother. She's in her 80s and lives alone in South London. But she isn't lonely. Her spare room resembles a left-luggage department because it's permanently filled with the suitcases of friends and family coming to stay. I recently walked in on her, her sister and one of her closest friends drinking port and cackling like teenagers.
Watching them, I realised something. My mother has created the 1970s feminist dream of the female commune almost by accident. And she's reaping the rewards of 50, 60, even 70 years invested in friendship.
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