How far away is your retirement?
Regardless of your age, it can be difficult to imagine that future period of time that may be so different from your daily life today. But it’s important to visualize the future as much as we live in the present.
While some suggest that the whole concept of retirement may be replaced with other life patterns, due to our lengthening life spans or our changing career trajectories, it’s useful to imagine, and occasionally re-imagine, a life beyond full-time work.
Retirement can consist of time devoted to:
- Family
- Home
- Travel
- Hobbies
- Service
- Or even work
But if retirement is marked by less of a focus on earning money, how can we plan for these satisfying uses of our time?
I always advise to “Start At the End,” so that all of your goals are taken into consideration along the long path of your life-cycle.
How do you expect to balance all of your life plans and goals with your final phase in retirement?
There are a number of tools available to help in the visualization of a good retirement:
- Retirement calculators – I recommend the AARP Calculator in particular
- Guidebooks on retirement activities and volunteer work
- Advice regarding second careers
- Travel and tour blogs and guidebooks
What’s the best way to put your imaginings into a concrete format? Whichever ways work for you:
- Lists
- Narrative
- Itineraries
- Drawings
- Journaling
- Spreadsheets
- A combination of the above or any other means
Once you’ve generated a lot of inspiration, ideas, and enthusiasm, you can fill in the blanks with the financial planning piece – always making sure to consider the possibility for surprises:
- New opportunities
- Emergencies
- Worst-case scenarios
When you sketch out the dreams and prospects for your retirement years, what do the pictures look like?