There are some 274,000 64-year-olds in this country who will not have to retire on their 65th birthdays next year, thanks to the long overdue abolition of the default retirement age.

Announced this week the move was almost inevitable, following the government’s announced intention to move up the state pension age, but it is none the less very welcome news indeed.

Now employers will not be able to use just a date as a reason for bringing to an end the career of someone who’d prefer to work on longer, to save more or to pay off that darned mortgage. Of course, this pre-supposes that we are still doing a good job – no passengers allowed at this as at any other age.

The end of enforced retirement doesn’t mean that we will all be obliged to work on – but at least those who wish to will now be able to. In fact, according to lots of research, people want to start taking their foot off the work pedal earlier than 65.

Going part time is what older workers love: there are grandchildren to see and long promised trips to be made. But since few of us have made adequate financial provision for our retirement, working on in some capacity or other is essential to thousands of us.

And if we are fit and lively, well and enjoying our work, why not? At last the answer is clear and the one we want.

The future of retirement is now set to look very different to those days of pipe and slippers. Now that we all live longer and our health is so much better than previous generations, during our sixties we will work on, perhaps part-time, but for much longer than before.

Our lives will be a portfolio: a mix of work, volunteering and pleasures. This is a good thing in so many ways – work and volunteering keeps us engaged, we have friends at work and it uses our brains, while we will make new bonds in the ‘real’ world by taking on something unpaid within our communities.

The fact is that in our sixties our ambitions change: we are just as keen to spend time with our families and to travel as to pull down the fattest salary we can manage. But work is still a vital component in this 'portfolio decade' – now at least it can remain so until we choose to stop.