You’re not done. You’re just working out what’s next — on your own.

Nobody hands you a plan for this part of life.

When you were younger there was a script. School, work, maybe a marriage, maybe children, a house, a mortgage. You didn’t have to decide much — you just kept up.

Then somewhere in your fifties or sixties the script runs out. The kids are grown. The job’s changing or ending. A marriage might have ended. And for the first time in decades, the next twenty or thirty years are actually yours to design.

That’s a gift. It’s also a bit terrifying — because designing something means making decisions, and making decisions means knowing what you’ve got and what you actually want. Most of us don’t. Not yet.

And if you’re doing it on your own — no second income, no one else’s savings to fall back on, no one to talk it through with at the kitchen table — it can feel like standing at the bottom of a very big hill with no map.

I made this because I needed it.

A while back I sat down to work out my own retirement. I had a property to sell or not sell, retirement savings I didn’t fully understand but knew weren’t enough, and a hundred questions I didn’t know who to ask. I didn’t want to walk into a financial adviser’s office — I wanted to understand it myself first.

So I did it with AI beside me. Not because I trusted it blindly, but because it was there at eleven at night and it didn’t make me feel stupid. It took weeks. It asked me things I’d never considered. It got things wrong and I corrected it. And the plan I ended up with looked nothing like the one I started with — because so much of it turned out to be about what I actually wanted, not just the numbers.

Next Chapter is that whole process, written down, so you don’t have to work it out from scratch.

Meet the women.

You’re not the only one. Throughout the workbook you’ll meet six women, all doing this on their own — divorced, widowed, or never married.

• Susan, who owns her home and has retirement savings, and still lies awake wondering if it’s enough.
• Fiona, who has no house, no partner and not much put away — and a quiet fear she’s left it too late.
• Margaret, widowed, holding onto the investment property he said they’d never sell.
• Karen, starting again after a divorce settlement she’s too frightened to touch.
• Anne, who doesn’t want a traditional retirement at all.
• Jenny, already retired, wondering if she’s allowed to actually enjoy it.

None of them is you. You’ll probably recognise yourself in at least one before you’ve filled in a single box.

How it works.

This isn’t a workbook you fill in and put in a drawer. It’s one you work through with AI open beside you — the workbook on one side, a chat window on the other, going back and forth.

Every one of the eleven modules has the same three parts:

• Where I’m atYou write down what’s true for you. Not what you’d like. What’s true.
• What to askThe actual questions to put to AI, ready to copy, including the ones you’d never have thought to ask.
• What I found outSpace to write down what came back: the answers, the surprises, and the things you now need a professional for.

You don’t have to use AI — every page works with a pen. But it’s faster and far less overwhelming with it, and the workbook shows you exactly how, even if you’ve never used it before.

It all builds to your Blueprint: a one-page summary of where you stand, what you want, and the few specific things to take to an accountant or adviser.

What’s inside.

• Eleven modules — where you are today, what matters most, money and retirement savings, work and purpose, property, investing, family and relationships, health and independence, putting it together, different paths and stories, and your one-page Blueprint.
• Six women whose situations you’ll recognise.
• A full prompt library — the exact questions to ask AI for every area.
• Your one-page Blueprint (the final module) — ready to take to an accountant or adviser.
• A fillable PDF — type into it on screen, or print it.
• A plain-English guide to working with AI, and a simple rule for keeping your private details safe.

Who it’s for.

The AI bit, if you’re nervous.

You don’t need to be techy, and you don’t need to pay for anything. The workbook walks you through it in plain English: how to start, what to type, and what to do when it gets something wrong. If you can text a grandchild, you can do this.

And there’s one simple safety rule front and centre: never put account numbers, your tax file number or Social Security number, or passwords into a chat. Everything else, share. The workbook shows you exactly where the line is.

You started this chapter not knowing where to begin.

By the end of Next Chapter you’ll have a clear picture of where you stand, a sense of what you actually want, and a one-page plan you can act on — or hand to someone who can help.

You don’t have to become a financial expert. You just have to become someone who asks better questions.