There are two big things working against you as you begin to create your perfect retirement plan. But they’re not what most people think. In this post, I’m going to go over these roadblocks and what you can do to make sure it doesn’t happen to you. 

First Roadblock: Salesperson Disguised As Advisor 

The first thing that’s stopping you from creating a successful retirement plan is the fact that salespeople, disguised as advisors, are selling the wrong kinds of retirement plans. Anyone can call themselves a financial advisor and – this is really unfortunate – the majority of advisors are actually salespeople in disguise. You’ve probably already experienced this if you’ve talked to a few advisors. They might work for an insurance company that insists that every solution to your money problems is an annuity or a life insurance policy from that company (and probably pays them a commission). Another example is the advisor who works for a big XYZ firm with a reputable name, but they recommend mainly mutual funds that are conveniently held at XYZ or created by XYZ, regardless of if it’s actually a good fit for you or not. 

Now, even if you can avoid the financial salesperson and find a respectable and credible fiduciary advisor, they might be trained in everything financial, and they might have a bunch of letters after their name and be really smart. But from what I’ve seen, even those top advisors are still going to be missing this next crucial aspect of your successful retirement plan.

Second Roadblock: An Advisor Who Focuses Only On Money

Often even the best advisors only focus on the money piece of retirement. Now don’t get me wrong; receiving great financial advice and having the numbers work for you is a must, but there are other factors you need to have in place if you want to create your perfect retirement. Imagine you created a plan that shows you achieving one hundred percent success and not running out of money. There’s going to be major misalignment in your retirement years, if that plan isn’t built without first understanding: 

• your values,
• the things most important to you,
• your purpose, and
• the things that will bring you fulfillment in retirement.

For instance, you might have heard of wealthy retirees who have more than enough to live on, but they’re not happy. They got the money piece right, but they didn’t figure out what makes them truly fulfilled and content in these later years. Retirement without fulfillment is really the ultimate failure.

The sad news is that many people in retirement don’t figure this out until it’s too late. They don’t understand why they feel unsatisfied or they just don’t feel like they thought they would. There are five stages of retirement and stage three is actually this feeling of disenchantment, so it’s common. Don’t feel bad if you’re in this stage, but if you’d like to find out more, click here to learn more about the five stages of retirement.

There’s Another Way 

Disenchantment is an easy trap to fall into. And, unfortunately, that’s the way that the retirement industry is set up right now. The process is:  first tell me your numbers and then I’ll tell you what’s possible. What if instead, you flip that around? Discover what’s most important to you and how you want to live and what brings you joy and fulfillment. And then fit the numbers into that plan. That’s the way that I prefer to do it, and how many of our clients do, too. It’s possible. And that, I believe, is the key to your perfect retirement. You want to get the money part right. However, you also want to get the emotional or psychological part, the purpose part, right too. 

If anything in this post resonated with you and you want to have a private retirement planning session with me, click here to set up a meeting. I’d be delighted to talk with you.