The Hero’s Journey in London: The New Retirement Story in One Day
A Leadership Walking Tour for Financial Services Professionals
Retirement at 65 is an artificial finish line that no longer fits our time.
This one-day London walking experience helps financial services professionals, organisations, clients, and employees replace the old story of retirement with a new one: a life of continued purpose, reinvention, contribution, and freedom—at any age.
Led by Peter de Kuster, the tour uses London’s greatest stories—biography, literature, art, film, and history—to explore how remarkable people did not retire from life. They reimagined it, again and again.
The New Retirement Story
The traditional retirement model assumed that people traded physical capital for a paycheck and needed to stop working when their bodies could no longer continue. In today’s knowledge economy, people also trade intellectual capital, experiential capital, and relational capital for income—capacities that can remain valuable for decades.
The question is no longer only:
“When must I retire?”
It is:
“What is the expiration date on my intellectual capital, my experience, and my contribution?”
And, more personally:
“How will I spend my 168 hours each week? How will I invest what I know, what I have experienced, and who I am into the next phase of my life?”
The old goal was to grow old with lots of money. The new goal is to live rich—with enough financial security, meaningful work, strong relationships, learning, health, and contribution. “Dying rich” cannot compete with “living rich,” and making a living does not measure up to making a life.
From ROI to Return on Life™
This experience introduces Return on Happines (ROH) as a practical alternative to ROI-only planning: getting the best possible life with the money and resources you have.
Rather than beginning with products, portfolios, and performance, the new retirement conversation begins with life:
- What do you want your time to feel like?
- What work, learning, or contribution still energises you?
- Which relationships matter most?
- What does “enough” mean for you—and enough for what?
- How will your money serve the life you want to live?
The tour helps participants turn financial planning into life-centred planning: a process focused on individual goals, needs, purpose, and circumstances rather than a one-size-fits-all retirement age.
The Four Shifts Reshaping Retirement
The day explores four modern trends that are ending retirement thinking as we know it:
- The evolving pursuit of fulfilment — People increasingly want meaning, identity, and wellbeing, not merely a larger portfolio.
- The end of the paternalistic employer — Careers are increasingly self-directed; people must design their own transitions and next chapters.
- The dismantling of ageism — Experience, judgement, relationships, and wisdom remain valuable long after conventional career endings.
- A new role for financial services — Advice must move beyond distribution and performance reporting toward life-centred conversations that connect money with meaning.
Audience
There are two versions of this programme available.
| Version | Designed for | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Professional Version | Organisations and advisers serving retirement-aged customers | Educates teams and advisers to lead deeper, more human retirement conversations and move from product-led advice to Return on Happiness planning. |
| Client Version | An organisation’s clients and customers | Helps participants explore their own next chapter, define what “enough” means, and design a meaningful use of time, talent, and resources. |
| Client Version — Employee Education | Organisations providing retirement education to employees | Equips employees to prepare for longer, more flexible, and more purposeful working lives and transitions. |
The Professional Version is ideal for wealth managers, financial advisers, private bankers, pension and insurance leaders, client-experience teams, HR and talent leaders, and executives. The Client Version can be delivered as a distinctive client event or as part of an organisation’s employee financial-wellbeing and retirement-education programme.
The London Journey
London is the perfect setting for this conversation. It is a city of reinvention: a place where writers, artists, leaders, scientists, and entrepreneurs repeatedly created new identities, new work, and new contributions across different phases of life.
The route connects iconic places with people and stories that show what it means to keep evolving:
| Time | Place | Story | New Retirement Story theme |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09:00 | Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark | Shakespeare continually reinvented dramatic forms; the Globe itself was rebuilt centuries later from an idea that endured. | Creativity has no expiry date |
| 10:15 | Tate Modern, Bankside | A former power station became one of the world’s leading modern-art museums. | Reinvention means changing the frame, not abandoning the story |
| 11:45 | Lunch near Borough Market / Southwark | A living marketplace of traders, makers, and food entrepreneurs | Work as craft, community, and renewal |
| 13:15 | National Portrait Gallery, Westminster | Portraits of Shakespeare, Dickens, Churchill, and other figures whose identities and influence changed across life phases. | Who are you beyond your current role? |
| 14:30 | Churchill War Rooms | Churchill’s later-life leadership, writing, and renewed public purpose after political setbacks. | Experience and resilience can become a second act |
| 15:45 | Charles Dickens Museum, Bloomsbury | Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby while living here, turning observation and lived experience into enduring contribution. | Turn experience into contribution |
| 16:45 | Bloomsbury closing session | The Bloomsbury Group brought together writers, artists, economists, and thinkers who challenged inherited conventions. | Design your own circle, purpose, and next chapter |
The Stories We Explore
Shakespeare’s Globe — Creativity Without an Expiry Date
Shakespeare’s continuing relevance shows that a career can be a series of reinventions rather than one climb followed by a cliff edge. The Globe’s modern reconstruction also demonstrates how an idea can be revived, reinterpreted, and made meaningful for a new era.
Leadership question: What capability, curiosity, or contribution of yours deserves a second life?
Tate Modern — From Power Station to Cultural Power House
Tate Modern occupies a former Bankside Power Station, transformed into a major home for modern and contemporary art. It is a powerful metaphor for later-life transition: the structure remains, but its purpose is radically renewed.
Leadership question: What part of your experience can be repurposed rather than retired?
National Portrait Gallery — Identity Beyond the Job Title
The gallery’s portraits show people not as fixed types but as figures whose roles, reputations, and influence changed over time. Shakespeare’s portrait became the first acquired by the gallery and helped shape his enduring cultural identity.
Leadership question: If your current title disappeared tomorrow, what would remain valuable about you?
Churchill War Rooms — The Second Act of Experience
Churchill’s story is not simply one of endurance; it is one of renewed purpose, continued writing, and leadership in a later phase of life. The War Rooms preserve the underground spaces from which he and his wartime government directed Britain’s Second World War effort.
Leadership question: What hard-won experience are you underusing—and who needs it now?
Charles Dickens Museum — Experience Into Contribution
Dickens lived at 48 Doughty Street from 1837 to 1839 and wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby there. His work shows how observation, social concern, and imagination can become a contribution that outlasts a career.
Leadership question: What story from your own life could become guidance for someone else?
Bloomsbury — A Life Designed With Others
Bloomsbury became associated with an influential circle of writers, artists, and intellectuals, including Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and John Maynard Keynes. Reinvention is rarely solitary; it is sustained by conversation, friendship, challenge, and shared ideas.
Leadership question: Who belongs in the circle that will help you imagine and sustain your next chapter?
What Participants Leave With
Every participant leaves with practical tools—not only inspiration:
- A personal 168-hour weekly design for the next phase of work and life.
- A map of their intellectual, experiential, and relational capital.
- A personal definition of “enough”—and what that enough is for.
- A second-act plan built around reinvention rather than withdrawal.
- Practical questions for client conversations that move from ROI to Return on Happiness.
- A renewed language for helping clients and colleagues live richly, not merely die rich.
Who Will Benefit
This experience is designed for:
- Wealth managers, private bankers, and financial advisers
- Pension, retirement, insurance, and investment leaders
- Client-experience, advice, and distribution leaders
- HR, talent, wellbeing, and employee-benefits leaders
- Executives preparing for their own next chapter
- Clients and customers participating in a Client Version event
- Employees taking part in an organisation’s retirement-education programme
No financial-planning background is required for the Client Version. The Professional Version includes additional language, frameworks, and conversation tools for advisers and client-facing teams.
About Peter de Kuster
Peter de Kuster is a storyteller, leadership guide, author, and founder of The Hero’s Journey & The Heroine’s Journey project. He helps professionals discover, tell, and live a more intentional story about their work, leadership, and life—using biography, literature, film, art, and the stories of great cities as mirrors for personal transformation.
Peter’s work is built on a simple premise: the stories people tell about themselves shape what they believe is possible. He helps participants examine the story they currently live by, identify where it no longer serves them, and create a more reality-based and purposeful narrative for the next chapter.
He began his career by building a branding agency in Eindhoven before creating a global ecosystem around storytelling, transformation, and meaning. For more than 20 years, he has combined storytelling and marketing expertise to help individuals and organisations address questions of identity, leadership, career direction, and meaningful growth.
Peter is the author of the Hero’s Journey and Heroine’s Journey book series and has written more than 50 books. His academic background includes an MBA in Marketing, an MBA in Financial Economics, and university studies in Sociology and Communication Sciences.
His method uses the Hero’s Journey and Heroine’s Journey frameworks to help people connect their values, traits, skills, and experiences to a clearer sense of purpose and direction. He leads city-based learning journeys, private tours, keynotes, certification programmes, and one-to-one story coaching in cities including London, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Florence, Barcelona, Berlin, Madrid, Venice, Antwerp, and New York.
Peter created The New Retirement Story in One Day to bring his storytelling approach to one of the most consequential transitions in modern life: the end of retirement as a fixed age and the beginning of retirement as a designed, evolving chapter.
Practical Details
- Title: The New Retirement Story in One Day — London Edition
- Guide: Peter de Kuster
- Versions: Professional Version for organisations and advisers; Client Version for clients, customers, and employee retirement education
- Format: Guided walking tour with biography, literature, film, art, facilitated discussion, and reflection exercises
- Duration: One full day, approximately 09:00–17:00
- Start: Shakespeare’s Globe, Southwark
- Finish: Bloomsbury
- Group size: Ideal for teams, leadership groups, client events, and employee-education programmes
- Price: €995 per person, excluding VAT
- Group discounts: Available when multiple people from the same organisation attend
- Contact: peterdekuster2023@gmail.com
Booking
To reserve places or arrange a private Professional Version or Client Version for your organisation, email Peter de Kuster at peterdekuster2023@gmail.com with:
- Organisation name
- Number of participants
- Preferred date
- Professional Version or Client Version
- Any leadership, client-advice, employee-education, or wellbeing themes you would like emphasised
This is not a day about retiring earlier.
It is a day about designing a longer, richer, more intentional life—and helping clients and colleagues do the same.