3 Phases of Retirement
The transition can be scary, but once you find your groove, you’ll love it.
You need to do some planning and wrap your head around your upcoming lifestyle changes.
What you want
Write down what your ideal retirement looks like. List expected living arrangements and new hobbies and adventures you want to have. This will serve as a guideline when making future choices. It will also serve as a reminder of the things you once thought you wanted to do, but may later turn out not to be so important as your lifestyle changes.
Be sure to note any possible grandparent duties you will want to undertake. For a lot of folks, once you get a taste of how much fun it is to play with your grandkids, it may eat up a lot more of your time than expected. But it may be the best use of your time!
What you can afford
But before you officially notify HR of your impending retirement, make sure you fully understand your financial status. Have a good handle on what your income stream(s) will be and how much will be coming in every month. You don’t want to go all out in the first couple of years and then run out of money.
I believe creating your budget is the hardest and scariest part of retirement for two reasons.
- One, you don’t know how long you will live and, therefore, how much money to take from your assets and still have enough to last.
- And two, instead of adding to your bank balances, you will start to pull from them. If you are lucky enough to have contributed to an IRA or a 401K, it is really unnerving when those balances start dropping instead of building. If this makes you really uncomfortable, you may want to plan on getting a part-time job right away to soften the blow.
Then make a list of all your known expenses. Don’t forget to include health insurance premiums. For many people, they were automatically deducted from their paycheck and forgotten. They need to be accounted for as a future cost.
If you have a financial consultant, they can help you with all of this financial analysis. But there is value in understanding the origins of your costs and how you can affect them.
Phase 1: Getting used to not working
Many people have worked all of their adult life. When you retire, it all comes to a screeching halt. No more getting up early to dress and go to work for 8+ hours. Now you wake up whenever you want, and you don’t need to rush off anywhere to fulfill the demands of your employer.
You get to decide how you are going to fill your time. If you haven’t given it some thought, for some people, this is a paralyzing moment. Give yourself some time to adjust. You will eventually unwind and not feel like you should be preparing for a meeting or getting a report distributed.
Some folks may start to feel detached from the world. It does feel like you are losing your grip in the business world. You will come to the point where you will start to delete all the industry emails and newsletters you subscribed to for so long. If you plan to continue working in your field for a while, you may not do this yet. But, for many, the information these publications bring will no longer be pertinent in your life. Again, give yourself time to decide when to cut them off. If you want to keep your options open for a while, you can modify your LinkedIn profile so that you are still entertaining offers.
To further ease you out of your work life, schedule lunches and drinks with former colleagues. It is always fun to catch up and hear about what is going on in their lives. But you will soon appreciate being able to walk away from those lunches and the workplace politics you don’t have to navigate anymore. For an hour or so, you can live vicariously thru them and go back to your new life.
Phase 2: Discovery
The possibilities are endless! How you fill your time is only limited by your curiosity and initiative. Try anything that has ever looked interesting. You will have time to research all of those topics that have always intrigued you, but you never had time to explore. Don’t write off anything. With your new mindset, ideas that seemed crazy before now may look really worth exploring. You may find that you have talents that you never knew existed. Give yourself plenty of time to explore. Try a new hobby for a while and see if it feels good. If you don’t develop any passion for it, move on until you find something else that intrigues you. Just be patient and give yourself time. Sometimes great opportunities pop up when you least expect it.
Phase 3: Settling In
Eventually, you will be busy again. This time it will be with the activities of your own choosing. Your days will be full, diverse, and enjoyable. If you feel like vegging out on the couch, you can. But, since you are sleeping better and not so stressed out, you will have more energy to take on new things. You will have separated entirely from your past work life and settling into a comfortable rhythm. You will start to wonder how you ever kept up the pace that working demands.
You can’t predict the future. So you can’t prepare for every situation. But if you stay open-minded, stay active and take care of yourself, you will have a long and happy retirement.
Enjoy the ride!
