Retirement planning is not just about the money you'll need.
What will you do when you no longer have an office to go to? Who are you once you have been stripped of your executive title? What will provide the next adrenaline rush in your life?
As Baby Boomers near the end of their careers, it's clear many don't have a clue of what's next or even how to answer those questions. Only after the action stops do many retirees realize they need to replace the stimulation, the social network and the psychic rewards that come from work. Retirement planning is also about how to fill your time with worthwhile pursuits during the close to 25 years in this phase of life.
Experts say many people retire only to discover that work provided key sources of psychological fulfillment, such as status or a sense of purpose, that aren't easy to replicate. How are you going to continue to engage the world when you stop working?
If the answer to that question isn't obvious, you may need to put as much time into planning your retirement lifestyle as planning your retirement budget. Working with a personal coach can yield insights into your personality and retirement readiness that help you better understand the role work plays in your life.
Retirement is not an "on-off switch" where you weren't retired and then you are.
80 percent to 90 percent of workers who believed they would enjoy retirement find they feel unhappy and unfulfilled once retired. He prefers to live in Florida to play golf all winter long. She favors Maine. Neither know how to overcome the difficulties of making their previous separate lives mesh now that careers are over and retirement has begun.
"Retirement is as major a transition as getting married or becoming a parent," says Phyllis Moen, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who has studied how couples prepare for the sunset years. "Like becoming a parent, retiring transforms the marital relationship, puts it out of kilter for a while. You have to renegotiate."
Figuring out how to use close to 25 years in this new phase of life takes some guidance. This work should be done when people begin thinking of retirement, preferably 10 years before and no less than five. Answering the questions of where you want to live and how you want to use these bonus years to have a meaningful life without regrets.
If there is one thing we know about the Baby Boomer generation, its that their retirement will be very different from the generation before them. Living 25 years of leisure, watching TV and playing golf is bound to make them restless, rudderless and without a purpose.
Later-in-life career changers don't care about taking it easier and often work as hard or harder than they did in the jobs they left behind. A Merrill Lynch retirement survey of more than 3,000 Baby Boomers reported that 83% intend to keep working....and....56% of them hope to do so in a new profession.
Source: BusinessWeek, July 24, 2006