The concept of retirement planning brings up the image of you working with your investment counselor or setting up your 401K so you have adequate financial resources when you retire. And it is true that a big part of being ready to retire involves being ready financially to be able to step out of the work world and start to take life easier.
But just as life is not just about making money, retirement is about so much more than having the money not to work. Preparation for retirement also means preparing to live a simpler life, preparing to become a “senior citizen” and a grandparent and preparing to look at life differently.
Your health care is going to be an important issue in your retirement years. As you enter retirement, you may be strong as an ox and active and full of health and life. But any of us can fall prey to poor health or accidents. And if your employer from whom you retired does not extend your health care insurance for you to continue your coverage past your employment, you should make other plans. You can continue the same coverage that you had under the Cobra system but that can get pretty costly and dip into your finite retirement savings pretty significantly. Medicare can be helpful too. But to be perfectly comfortable that you have coverage, look to Medicare supplement insurance so you maintain the same quality of care in retirement that you have now in the working world.
Don’t just limit your retirement planning to your money. Your retirement will be a time of a big change of lifestyle and a change to your values and how you spend your time as well. You will have more time on your hands and studies show that those who enter retirement without “an agenda” can become adrift in all that time and that isn’t healthy. Human beings are doers so even though you may no longer be working for a living, find ways to be productive and make a difference in your community. You can start finding those opportunities long before retirement so when you finally step out of the work world, expanding those hobbies and volunteer efforts is as natural as can be.
In addition to the change of where you spend your time each day, you may have even a bigger change in where you live ahead for you in retirement. Many times people who step into their retirement years find that maintaining the house where you raised the kids is just not necessary and more work than it worth. Selling the home and using the equity to finance a leisurely retirement life is a great way to go. But you should start early both preparing the home for sale and preparing the family that “grandma and grandpa’s house” is going away.
In addition, where you go to live is something that can be great fun to dream about and doing some research on just the right place. You may choose to rent a small place in an older part of town and enjoy a whole new lifestyle in that setting. Or you might go for a high-rise condo with a view of the river or a nice quiet apartment in a retirement oriented apartment complex where you and other retirees can explore this new world together.
Above all it’s important to embrace the retired lifestyle with the enthusiasm and excitement that you might greet any new opportunity. Don’t let being retired mean just not working. In fact, go through the mental and emotional exercises of putting the working world behind you and redefining yourself in this new role. You are retired now and you are a senior citizen and maybe even a grandparent.
These are not negative things. There is a strong role for grandma and grandpa in society and in your family. And the world takes great joy in a senior citizen who embraces that time of their life and sets out to be the best senior citizen they can be. If you predetermine that this is the kind of retired person you are going to be, that attitude will propel you past that sudden change of life shock and get your retired life off in running in an exciting way that will lead to many happy and fun times in your life of leisure as a retired person.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Hidden Dangers of Retirement
We can all remember a time when we took the children to some event or theme park that was supposed to be “totally awesome”. Then when the kids get there and see that Mickey Mouse is a guy in a suit and that the rides are about the same as the local Six Flags, an inevitable let down and disappointment sets in. And that is no fun for the parents on the trip home when all of those expectations did not come to pass when the kids came face to face with reality which did not line up with their dreams and hopes.
But sometimes even adults can be guilty of letting dreams and images of a golden time ahead get the best of us. We often develop a mythology of how retirement will be when we get there and when that retired life actually starts, there are some real, down to earth adjustments that need to be made. So if you can know some of the hidden dangers of retirement in advance, it is so much better to go into retirement with your eyes open and have realistic expectations.
There are two negative reactions to the sudden shift of lifestyle in retirement. They are loneliness and boredom. Even if you are going to be home all the time, there is no question that once you stop going to an office or having regular responsibilities, you can often feel a sense of loss and grief because you miss the people, the regular human contact and the fun of being out and that can result in loneliness that can get pretty chronic.
For men especially the feeling of boredom can also set in pretty fast when the challenge of the work world goes away. In a lot of cases, men live for their jobs and when that world goes away, there is a sense of disorientation and not knowing what to do with themselves that is disconcerting for the family and for the retired man himself. You may have been looking forward to a less stressful life only to find that it was the stress that makes you tick and without it, you feel adrift in life with no direction or goals.
Both of these problems can be addressed by not letting your retirement life be to idle, at least not at first. You can fill your life up with volunteering, getting busy with family or by getting involved socially with other retired people. One area of volunteering that can go a long way to replace the gratification of the work place is to work with habitat for humanity to help build homes for people who cannot afford a home any other way. Both retired married partners can find ways to pitch in and it gets you out with people doing things that are worthwhile.
Give yourself time to get used to the idea of retirement and to the new lifestyle. It should be a simpler lifestyle because your responsibilities are reduced and you have more time on your hands. Be aware that if you and your spouse are suddenly around each other every day and every hour of the day, that is going to create new stresses which can also qualify as a hidden danger of retirement. By being aware that this is not the fault of either spouse but a natural reaction. The best response is just to get out and do things separately and create that natural space you are both used to more often.
There will be a natural down time when you first retire and treat the first month like vacation. But don’t stay on vacation. Let your ambition and zeal for life find new outlets. It will be fun and exciting to see where it takes you and that is what retirement is all about.
But sometimes even adults can be guilty of letting dreams and images of a golden time ahead get the best of us. We often develop a mythology of how retirement will be when we get there and when that retired life actually starts, there are some real, down to earth adjustments that need to be made. So if you can know some of the hidden dangers of retirement in advance, it is so much better to go into retirement with your eyes open and have realistic expectations.
There are two negative reactions to the sudden shift of lifestyle in retirement. They are loneliness and boredom. Even if you are going to be home all the time, there is no question that once you stop going to an office or having regular responsibilities, you can often feel a sense of loss and grief because you miss the people, the regular human contact and the fun of being out and that can result in loneliness that can get pretty chronic.
For men especially the feeling of boredom can also set in pretty fast when the challenge of the work world goes away. In a lot of cases, men live for their jobs and when that world goes away, there is a sense of disorientation and not knowing what to do with themselves that is disconcerting for the family and for the retired man himself. You may have been looking forward to a less stressful life only to find that it was the stress that makes you tick and without it, you feel adrift in life with no direction or goals.
Both of these problems can be addressed by not letting your retirement life be to idle, at least not at first. You can fill your life up with volunteering, getting busy with family or by getting involved socially with other retired people. One area of volunteering that can go a long way to replace the gratification of the work place is to work with habitat for humanity to help build homes for people who cannot afford a home any other way. Both retired married partners can find ways to pitch in and it gets you out with people doing things that are worthwhile.
Give yourself time to get used to the idea of retirement and to the new lifestyle. It should be a simpler lifestyle because your responsibilities are reduced and you have more time on your hands. Be aware that if you and your spouse are suddenly around each other every day and every hour of the day, that is going to create new stresses which can also qualify as a hidden danger of retirement. By being aware that this is not the fault of either spouse but a natural reaction. The best response is just to get out and do things separately and create that natural space you are both used to more often.
There will be a natural down time when you first retire and treat the first month like vacation. But don’t stay on vacation. Let your ambition and zeal for life find new outlets. It will be fun and exciting to see where it takes you and that is what retirement is all about.
Taking Your Retirement Around the World
One of the most common dreams many people have for their retirement years is to travel. So often when you are in the middle of building a career and raising a family, your travel consists of trips to Orlando for Disney World or doing something focused on the kids. So when you get to that phase of life where your children are grown up and it’s just you and your spouse, now you can focus on trips that are for just you two going places you to go and doing things you want to do.
So if you feel that you will be taking your travel life to a new level when you reach retirement age, there is plenty you can do to get ready. Obviously, you will need to focus your savings and financial preparations so you have an ample budget for travel when the time arrives. The last thing you want is to come up on the time when your dream of traveling together can be a reality only to find that you did not set aside the budget for it.
One way you can do that is to take advantage of the years between when the kids all move out and are done with college and the beginning of you retirement years. This can be as much as a ten to fifteen year time span when both of you can work to payoff bills and build that retirement nest egg. If your basic retirement fund for you to live on is healthy and you are meeting your financial retirement goals, to take one of the spouse’s salary and put it all aside for future travel can result is a very healthy budget to get out and see the world in your golden years together.
It might feel like it’s a little self indulgent for you to set aside so much money for you and your spouse to have travel adventures late in life. Well, you have been a good citizen, a good dad or mom, a good worker and in every respect done the right things all these years. So nobody would deny you the joy of really enjoying the thing you love the most when you do reach your retirement years together.
You can afford a few “training trips” in the years coming up on retirement from time to time to begin to retool your travel skills. If you have been in your career a long time, you may have sufficient vacation that you can take an extra week a year just for adult travel and still have plenty to go see the kids and do all the family stuff that you must do and you enjoy so much.
It will be during these training trips that you will hone your ability to stay on the road longer each time out. Traveling for long periods of time is a developed skill. You will need to learn how to pack, how to manage your international paperwork if international travel is in your plans and how to handle jet lag as well. These are “travelers skills” that you can be developing leading up to that big moment when both partners are able to retire full time and really start getting out there and seeing the world.
Another adjustment and financial resource that can put some additional funding into your travel funds is your house. Many people sell their homes late in life when you don’t need so much space to raise kids and you no longer have the desire or take great joy in taking care of a yard and managing the upkeep on a home. If you know you are going to make this big change of lifestyle away from the home bound mom and dad and toward the world travelers you want to be, you can be preparing the house for sale in the last few years before you retire.
Because you know well in advance that you have a new life of adventure and fun ahead in your retirement years, you can use the last few years before both of you stop working to get ready. Then once your retirement is official and you walk out of the retirement party at work, you can walk right onto the jet way and take off on a brand new life of fun and adventure seeing the world together during your retirement years.
So if you feel that you will be taking your travel life to a new level when you reach retirement age, there is plenty you can do to get ready. Obviously, you will need to focus your savings and financial preparations so you have an ample budget for travel when the time arrives. The last thing you want is to come up on the time when your dream of traveling together can be a reality only to find that you did not set aside the budget for it.
One way you can do that is to take advantage of the years between when the kids all move out and are done with college and the beginning of you retirement years. This can be as much as a ten to fifteen year time span when both of you can work to payoff bills and build that retirement nest egg. If your basic retirement fund for you to live on is healthy and you are meeting your financial retirement goals, to take one of the spouse’s salary and put it all aside for future travel can result is a very healthy budget to get out and see the world in your golden years together.
It might feel like it’s a little self indulgent for you to set aside so much money for you and your spouse to have travel adventures late in life. Well, you have been a good citizen, a good dad or mom, a good worker and in every respect done the right things all these years. So nobody would deny you the joy of really enjoying the thing you love the most when you do reach your retirement years together.
You can afford a few “training trips” in the years coming up on retirement from time to time to begin to retool your travel skills. If you have been in your career a long time, you may have sufficient vacation that you can take an extra week a year just for adult travel and still have plenty to go see the kids and do all the family stuff that you must do and you enjoy so much.
It will be during these training trips that you will hone your ability to stay on the road longer each time out. Traveling for long periods of time is a developed skill. You will need to learn how to pack, how to manage your international paperwork if international travel is in your plans and how to handle jet lag as well. These are “travelers skills” that you can be developing leading up to that big moment when both partners are able to retire full time and really start getting out there and seeing the world.
Another adjustment and financial resource that can put some additional funding into your travel funds is your house. Many people sell their homes late in life when you don’t need so much space to raise kids and you no longer have the desire or take great joy in taking care of a yard and managing the upkeep on a home. If you know you are going to make this big change of lifestyle away from the home bound mom and dad and toward the world travelers you want to be, you can be preparing the house for sale in the last few years before you retire.
Because you know well in advance that you have a new life of adventure and fun ahead in your retirement years, you can use the last few years before both of you stop working to get ready. Then once your retirement is official and you walk out of the retirement party at work, you can walk right onto the jet way and take off on a brand new life of fun and adventure seeing the world together during your retirement years.
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