Retirement’s Gift - Adventist Book Centre Australia [with ABC Christian Books, Better Books and Food and Christian Life Resources]

Retirement’s Gift

Time to Grow Your Life and Faith

by Bruce Manners

If you retire at the age of 60, you can, statistically, expect to live for another 20 years.
You can do a lot of living in 20 years—or not. That depends on you.
Retirement promotion tends to be self-focused and pleasure-centred, which might be fine for a holiday, but not for 20-or-so years of living.

Retirement’s gift is time to take more control of your life than you ever have, to reaffirm and strengthen your faith, and to live it more fully.
Retirement’s Gift is a guide to living your best retirement.

This book also makes a great retirement gift for a new or up-coming retirees.

Reviews and Endorsements


[Bookshelf Review]

Retirement’s Gift came to me as a timely and welcome gift. It arrived after seven years of semi-retirement, as I found myself moving and savagely downsizing my university office in a final campus relocation. As precious artifacts from my professional life went into the skip-bin, I found myself wondering if I really had made a difference and created a legacy of which I could be proud. Bruce Manners’ book was soothing, reassuring, and challenging all at once—especially for any person of faith, with a long history of engagement in Christian life, community and service. I expect that most recent retirees have experienced the slightly uncomfortable feeling of wondering about questions of identity and purpose. The way Bruce writes, I know he started to wonder, too, and I said to myself, “Ah, so I am not the only one! This author truly understands me.” Other chapters and issues underscored this: I was reading a deeply sympathetic and understanding author. Bruce is not so much a walking encyclopedia as a fellow traveller who knows the crucial angles for retirees on the issues he addresses. This brings me back to my skip bin, when after my moment of panic, my friends and my spouse reassured me. They said, “You cannot just judge a legacy on paper and cardboard boxes and folders and files going into a bin.” Bruce agrees. He asks us to do some honest stocktaking—not to create discouragement or regret, but to remind ourselves that it’s OK to look in the mirror and be proud in the very best sense. Retirement’s Gift reminded me that I had only ever had around 8000 days of retirement and that I had done reasonably well in the first 2400 of them. I was encouraged to finetune my ongoing sense of purpose. I was glad to be reading the book this many days into retirement. It had a ring of credibility. It spoke truth. It spoke courage. It will be strong food for thought and reflection for the days remaining in my retirement. —Dr Lyell Heise, Conjoint Lecturer, Avondale University Seminary


[Endorsement]

“Retirement’s Gift provides thoughtful and wise advice on how to live your best life in retirement. It made me look forward to this period of my life with increased enthusiasm.”—Dr Darren Morton, author, Live More Happy, Director, Lifestyle Medicine & Health Research Centre, Avondale University


[Endorsement]

“Reading Bruce’s book is more like having a comforting yet challenging chat with a friend—you laugh a lot but there’s lots to think about afterwards. His stories are nicely balanced with research, interesting facts and interviews with experts. I was most intrigued about what my 18-year-old-self might say about where I’d ended up and finding purpose for the future.”—Professor Joanne Earl, Researcher in Retirement Planning and Adjustment, Macquarie University


[Endorsement]

“Bruce Manners knows more than most Australians about living a fulfilling and purposeful retirement. His new book, Retirement’s Gift is full of wisdom and acumen about how to best live our ‘fourth quarter’ retirement years, which can be the most fraught period of our lives. His insights into living as a person of faith during these years are especially helpful.”—Paul Arnott, Executive Director, Q4: Rethinking Retirement.