So you’re going to retire… Then what?

I think one of the harder questions to answer when you start thinking about retirement is what will you do with your new found freedom. I guess there are lots of choices out there, but is there really anything that is a good fit for me and my wife. We both like to golf. That’s good, but you can’t play golf 24/7. Even if the two of us were golf addicts, I am not sure the old body could survive much more than a couple of rounds per week. I wasn’t referring to my wife when I wrote “old body”. I need to be clear on that. I do want to live long enough to actually retire. What other things could we do together? I guess traveling would be something that would be appealing. Maybe volunteer work. This is not as easy as I thought.

It is easy to say that you want to retire, but there will be a lot of time to fill when you finally reach that “sweet spot” in life. Now is the time to start answering the question of what you really can fill all that time with. You may have a plan in your head, but if you are married, then you better make sure your better half is in sync with the plan. If they have there own plan and it is not in alignment with yours, there is going to be a big problem at the end of the rainbow. I have mentioned many times about how communication is critical to the relationship with your financial planner. Well surprise! It applies here too. We all become very comfortable over time and think we know how our spouses think, but this is not an area that we can leave to chance. This is not a discussion that will be a 15 minutes sit-down and you’re done. This is going to be harder than picking a financial planner was.

I hear a lot of people say that they start retirement out with a bang, but then they get bored. Most people can figure out what the “big rocks” are in their retirement plan, but there is an awful lot of sand needed to fill in the rest of the space. Make sure you spend a lot of time planning “what” you are going to do with your time during retirement. This is the planning that most people preparing for retirement skim over. You are planning for the rest of your life. Most people think they will just do more of what they like to do. More is not always better. It is not always feasible. Be realistic. Can you really do something two or three times as much when you have more time on your hands or does that take away from the fun of doing it? I think that is why people get bored. They over do the things they enjoy and turn them into a routine not an event.

The other thing you want to be careful of is saying you will do something when you retire that you don’t do now. Why don’t you do it now? Lack of time? I doubt it. There should be some scaled down version of just about anything you can think of that is doable now. If you say time is what is stopping you, then you are fooling yourself. Don’t wait until you retire to try something you think would be good for retirement. If you wait until it is time to fill the time, you may find that what you thought you wanted to do is not a good fit. Then what will you do?

It is surprising how many people retire and then within a year want to go back to work. I would venture to say most of them have way to much time on their hands. Most people like to be productive. Too much time breeds discontent. Really think through what you want to do when you retire. Put together a daily plan for the first year and look at where your time will be spent. You may be surprised. If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?