Retiring Well

When it comes to retirement, there are two things we need to get right in order to make this next stage of life the best it can be. The problem is that the entire financial industry focuses on just one. A lot of people achieve financial security in retirement, but then they have this settling feeling of misplacement or not feeling as happy as they expected.

Retirement Part 1 – The Financial Aspect

The first piece is where the majority of time is spent during retirement planning, and that’s the financial side of the equation: if you have enough; if you can afford to maintain your pre-retirement lifestyle; if you can help your family; are you protected against downturns, etc. This financial part is essential to retiring right – without it, you’ll inevitably feel the uncertainty, and that can lead to more stress or worry leading up to, or in, retirement.

Once you figure out the financial piece, you’ve got that plan set and you feel good about it and the system you’ve set in place to regularly monitor it, that is when you want to make sure that you’re prepared for the non-financial part.

So, what’s the non-financial part of retirement?

Retirement Part 2 – The Non-Financial Aspect

What is the non-financial part of retirement? It’s those things that lead to fulfillment, joy, peace, and freedom, and most importantly, significance.

This part is essential to creating a fulfilling retirement. If you don’t plan ahead for this, it’s common for retirees to go through the honeymoon phase of retirement where everything feels amazing and they enjoy this newfound freedom that they have in their life. Then there comes a letdown stage. You might feel bored, lost, even depressed.

You might be thinking, no way, I’ve got tons to do if I were to retire. If that’s you, that’s great! It’s incredibly important to find sustainable ways to feel a sense of accomplishment or progress in your day-to-day life with hobbies and interests that you have. That sense of progress is an important part to just our mental success in retirement.

There tends to be two types of people. You have the “I can’t wait to retire, I’m going to have plenty to do,” and then the, “I know I can retire, but what am I going to do?” It can be difficult to transition from the last 30-40 years of working, and then all of a sudden that part of your life is just over. It’s that much harder of a transition when much of our social connections and even our purpose is tied to work. When it’s gone, that’s a big adjustment to get used to and it can be jarring for some.

Find Your Purpose in Retirement

We have a friend and client of ours who is a doctor and shared this feeling with us before he was retiring. He knew he wanted to prepare so that he was 100% confident moving into this next stage. We shared the solution of how we saw other people do it, some other people who have gone before him and retired and are living their ideal retirement. The solution is really just time away from work to reflect and think about this next stage of life to find that purpose-driven retirement. The problem with that is that that time to think and reflect is not easy to do for many people, especially when they’ve got their head down working.

That’s why we created this Find Your Purpose in Retirement eight-day email course.

This is going to be a series of eight short guided exercises you can go through to really get closer to that feeling of fulfillment and what ideal retirement might look like for you. All you need is something to write with and a journal or something to write on. You can spend 5 to 10 minutes each morning for the next eight days and answer the questions, or you can just let them compound. The Eight Days comes via email, so on your next day off or your next slow weekend morning, you can answer all of them in one big session. Since we can’t walk everyone through this, these emails are the next best thing to figuring out the non-financial part of your retirement so that you can find that joy – that freedom and significance – that you’re looking for.

Check out the retirement journal eight-day email course below! If you’re approaching retirement or if you’re already in it and this resonated with you, feel free to reach out to us.