The Work You Should Do Ahead of Time to Make Retirement Fulfilling

I recently listened to one of my favorite podcasts, and the guest being interviewed told a compelling story about the tragic experience of his mother, who never got to enjoy a long-awaited retirement. The mother had spent her career in the nursing field, always caring for others, and after moving into more of a management role decided it was time to leave the profession and retire. The tragedy came less than a year later, when after finding herself feeling lost and depressed in this unfamiliar state of not having work to identify with, she took her life. While she was prepared financially to retire comfortably, she was not prepared mentally and emotionally for the change that came. The podcast guest went on to explain how this devastating situation fueled him to write a book and create a program to help people facing this critical life transition go into it with their eyes wide open and well prepared to make this next stage of their life the best stage of their life. I really liked the phrase he used to describe it, which was “Figuring out what they are retiring TO instead of what they are retiring FROM.” The point of that line of thinking is that if you are only retiring to get away from work you no longer want to do, you may find yourself disappointed and unfulfilled when you make that leap into retirement. I am not endorsing the book since I have not yet had a chance to read it, but simply based on the clarity and passion with which the author spoke about this subject, I would encourage anyone who is approaching this life transition to consider getting a copy of the book entitled “Retirement Stepping Stones” by Tony Hixon. This is a topic I’ve thought about and sought to encourage my clients to consider when they are approaching retirement and created a Retirement Transition Program to facilitate that preparation. In this issue of the newsletter, I’d like to share 5 tips that can help you, or someone you love, make that transition gracefully.

Understand Your WHY
A couple of exercises I usually go through with new prospective clients is asking them to identify what they find important about money and to understand what their core values are. The reason we cover these items is because financial planning is not about building wealth for the sake of having a lot of money, but instead it is to support the life you want to live. In recent years, there has been a lot of attention placed on behavioral finance, mostly from the standpoint of how it affects investment decisions, but the truth is psychology and emotion drives almost every decision we make in our financial lives. If that is the case, having a good handle on what motivates us and aligns with what we value is incredibly important to understand so that what we do financially is consistent with the person we want to be. Having an understanding of your WHY is even more important as you enter retirement because unlike when you are working in a career pursuit and the majority of your time is wrapped up in that work that may already be determined for you, in retirement you have nothing but time to spend on what you want to do. While there may be hobbies you enjoy, that may not fill as much time as you think, so if you don’t feel a sense of purpose outside of what your career brought, you may find yourself unfulfilled in this new life experience.

Identify the Activities that Bring You Joy
For people who not only want to leave the work of their careers in the rear-view mirror but also have expectations for things they want to do more of, now is the time to figure out what you like to do outside of work and perhaps try out some new activities that you hadn’t engaged in before. The key is to make it personal to you, not to simply follow what someone else has done or what you’ve read that others do in retirement. It’s your life, and spending time doing the things that bring satisfaction to you is what you’ve earned. Exploring it in advance is worth your while because you may feel more pressure and less enjoyment when you try to figure it out on the fly. It may be that the activities you enjoy cost money, and it may be easier to not only cover the cost of it while you’re still working, but you can perhaps afford to try some new things without being worried about whether you like them or not. Having a diversity in the activities you engage in will be helpful because when you have ultimate time freedom, it can be easy to get bored with doing the same thing over and over again over what may be decades of your retirement life.

Assess and Cultivate the Relationships that Matter to You
No matter how much of an extrovert or introvert you are, humans are relational beings, and something in us desires to be in relationship with others. During a career, it is likely that you will have developed relationships with co-workers and others you interact with professionally, even if you don’t consider them to be friends. Nevertheless, those relationships help to fulfill that desire to be in relationship. If you have not had as much time to build or nurture relationships outside of your work circles, it would be a good idea to do so ahead of retirement. It could be that those relationships are people that can serve as a support system or sounding board for you, or they could be people who engage with you in the activities you enjoy. An important thing to think about in that regard is whether the people who are close to you will still be working when you are retired. If that is the case, they may not have as much time to spend with you as the time you have available to spend with them. Finding people who are or will have a similar amount of time freedom as you can serve to make your activities more enjoyable.

Explore Your Interests and Passions
As you look towards a retirement future, think about the things you’ve said to yourself, “If only I had the time…” Whether it is some skill or activity, a volunteer opportunity, or a cause you’ve wanted to serve in, in retirement you can be free to pursue these objectives freely. Assuming you’ve prepared yourself well financially, you don’t have to worry about getting paid for it, and if you’re good enough at it that someone will pay you for it, all the better. If it is something that you already have some exposure to, you may want to find out if there are other ways to enhance your aptitude for it. If it is something brand new, you may want to begin building your skill set for it ahead of time and then seek to increase it as you have more time to devote to it. Again, starting on this in advance can be helpful if the activity is something that may require you to make some kind of financial investment into because while working, you probably will have greater capacity to afford it and not have to be as concerned whether you get good at it right away. If you’re the type of person who feels the need to do some kind of work, whether for pay or not, you may want to establish some “for fun” activities to go along with the more vocational ones.

Establish Dreams to Shoot for and a Legacy to Leave
Whether we’ve formalized it or not, most of us have some kind of bucket list of things we want to accomplish in this life. Retirement is the perfect time to check those items off the list. For many of those things, you will need to have made provisions financially to achieve them, but that may not always be the case. It is worth the time to sit down and see what those dreams are that you want to achieve and then begin making plans for when and how to bring them about. For some people, part of their list of dreams is to be a blessing to others, leaving a legacy that allows you to share a piece of your life with them. While leaving money to loved ones is a great goal to have, your legacy goes far beyond what you leave monetarily. We discussed this in Vol. 210 of the newsletter, but it bears repeating that the life experiences you’ve had are valuable and should be shared with the people you care the most about. As you approach a new chapter of your life in retirement, it is the perfect time to capture what your life has meant and put in place the provisions to share that with the world.

Stewardship Emphasis

Nothing brings clarity to the mind more than time to sit and explore your inner self. If you want to be more happy with what you see inside, you can begin to change that today.

The Empowerment Channel |Volume CCXV | Dedicated to Promoting Financial Education through Stewardship