Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife 

Prime Time is a new life stage coined by author and retirement expert Bec Wilson. It describes the powerful middle stretch of life somewhere between ages 47 and 70 - where people have more freedom, financial confidence, and choice than ever before. With longer lives, grown-up kids, and decades of super behind them, Australians in Prime Time are redesigning life on their terms, before their epic retirement begins.

It’s a funny thing - if you’re 50 today, chances are you’ll live to around 95, maybe even 97. So this whole idea that you’re on the downhill run aiming for retirement just doesn’t stack up. A lot of people aren’t even ready to contemplate the R-word (retirement) just yet – but they do want some of the lifestyle benefits.  

If you had kids in your 20s or 30s, they’re probably starting to stand on their own two feet now - even if they haven’t quite left the nest. They cost less. They need you less. And suddenly, there’s more space in your life. More time. Maybe a bit more money too. And it’s time to reshape things from running on the wheel – which let’s face it, most of us do relentlessly during our adulting years; to first do the financial work that will set ourselves up for the rest of our lives; then to start enjoying more lifestyle, then maybe go part time; before we retire,  

We forget that we’ve had compulsory super for 33 years in Australia. And for most people in their 50s they’ve been paying into super at a significant rate for decades - So, whether we noticed or not, we’ve been building a financial base that gives us more CHOICES in this phase than any generation before us. And that still has plenty of time to do more work if we get in and tidy things up in our late 40s and 50s.

So we’ve got these new years – years previous generations frankly didn’t have because they got old a lot earlier in life.  We’ve got the ability to have more financial certainty; and we’ve got a hunger to live our lives more true to who we are.  And finally – we’re in the position to be able to put those jigsaw pieces together.  

But what really makes this your prime time? There’s no rulebook. No templates like in previous stages of our lived telling us we need to ‘climb the career ladder’ or ‘get married and have kids’  No set path. No one’s telling you what this next chapter should look like - which means you get …. CHOICE. And that’s where the magic is. Understanding your choices, knowing what you’ve got the power to do.

Well, we’ve had superannuation for 33 years - but most people have more or less ignored it. And the thing is, it can be powerful.

As we move into this next stage of life, the goal used to be simple: retire. But that’s changed. With longer lives—and the possibility of enjoying our work or adapting it into something more meaningful—the real goal now is choice.

For most people in midlife, I think there are three clear financial and lifestyle phases:

• The Setup Phase
• The Lifestyling Phase
• The Part-timing Phase

Only after that do we move into what I call Epic Retirement. And for many in their 40s and 50s today, full retirement can come later—because they can start enjoying the benefits of retirement earlier, if they make conscious decisions about money, work, and lifestyle now.

Here’s a stat worth pausing on: only 31% of people retire by choice. And the average retirement age is 64.8. That tells us something important—we’re not planning well enough.

And to be fair, the super system hasn’t been around long enough to give today’s 60- and 70-somethings the kind of choices future retirees could have. But for those in midlife right now? There’s still time. And the opportunity is real to live a more flexible life – packed with choices.