As more employers are investing in this region, the individual financial circumstances of individual families are looking more interesting than they might have done a few years ago.

For the more mature workforce, as well as bringing a level of security, that also means  there may be more scope for a retirement that lives up to expectations.

In this video for the Business Brew podcast, I talked to Neil Parker, CEO and Founder of Pensions and Retirement Planning firm Joslin Rhodes, to find out how Teessiders are planning for their life after work.

Among the things Neil discusses are: 

The first chat

"We spend a lot of our time sitting people down and saying right we'll have a dig through that don't worry but just for now, pop that to one side because you keep talking about retirement. Tell me what that looks like for you because it's just a word,and it can mean a million different things to a million different people so that's our first question what does retirement look like to you?

"And you can see that somebody who a minute ago had a thousand questions and was very bubbly, all of a sudden looks at you with a blank expression because they've never actually thought that bit through."

Teessiders

"You need to know your stuff, don't get me wrong, but where you have the real value is in helping people particularly Teessiders, because I know the area and I know how they think and I know how they worry about things in in life and when it comes to money and stuff. "

"We have plenty of thank-you cards, but there is not one that says 'thank you for looking after my investments' or 'thank you for sorting that tax issue out' because they don't talk about the technical stuff, it's all about 'thank you for removing the worry'.

The dream

"The thing to do is to sit down with your loved ones and say, look, what would a great day, week or month look like? I find that's a great starting point.

"What would Monday look like? What would a great Tuesday look like? What would a great Wednesday look like? And I mean, sketch it out on a little and then put your holidays in over the year. One big holiday in the summer? Are we going to go every month? What are we going to do? And slowly you start to put a bit of flesh on the bones."