Are You Sabotaging Your Retirement Goals?
If you’re a baby boomer, then you are likely either knocking on the door of retirement or you’ve already made the leap. If you successfully planned for the financial side of your retirement, then congratulations. you are ready to live the good life. Or, are you?
Before you got to this point, what was your retirement dream? Long walks on the beach? Doing whatever you want for hours on end? Or, maybe traveling the world?
What happens after you become bored with the beach? Or, the unpredictability of doing whatever you want leaves you feeling empty and unproductive? Or, after traveling a year or two, all of the cities begin to look the same or the restrictions of COVID-19 have caused you to rethink your travel plans?
It’s not enough to have financial security in retirement because money is only the foundation that undergirds your retirement goals. It’s not the fulfillment itself.
Anyone who wants a meaningful retirement must consider the non-financial side of retirement as well. This always begins with you. While your needs and what you envision as a successful retirement matter, the true indicator of what will make you happy in retirement is understanding fully what motivates you to take action. This becomes the compass for creating a successful retirement strategy.
A number of years ago I wrote a book entitled, “ The RichLife – Managing Wealth and Purpose”. At the time, I was a wealth advisor helping my clients to create, plan, and manage their wealth.
After working with a number of clients over the years and getting to know them beyond their money habits, I observed that there was not always a positive correlation between wealth and happiness. In fact, some of my wealthiest clients were not happy at all. The quest for making money had dominated their lives and they had not stopped to question what all that money was for. On the other hand, I had other clients who were affluent but not uber wealthy and yet led fulfilling and rewarding lives.
Fundamentally, I knew that money didn’t buy happiness, but seeing some of my clients suffer with the money-happiness connection, I wanted to offer a blueprint for connecting both sides of the life satisfaction coin. I wrote The RichLife to offer a recipe for connecting the two.
In the book, I use the word “ rich” to refer to those who have successfully connected their financial means with purpose in their lives. I distilled my thinking into a mantra for finding a balance between money and life fulfillment.
Live Well, Give Back, Leave a Legacy.
After retiring as a wealth advisor and becoming a retirement coach, I noticed the same disconnection between having money and perceived happiness in retirement. Many planning for retirement weren’t looking at financial security as a means to an end but rather a guarantee for retirement success which is simply not the case.
Money can support our retirement goals, but if those goals are only warm and fuzzy and don’t have the depth and substance to stand on their own, then all the money in the world won’t give us retirement bliss.
In our retirement years, it is critical that we connect the vision that we have of retirement with the reality of what that vision will really look like. We have so much to give back—wisdom, experience, time, and hopefully, money to empower, educate, and share the bounty of our lives with others—so by looking beyond the surface of retirement and digging deeper, we can live the RichLife on our own terms. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the family name on the new hospital wing or a private foundation. It can simply be a good family, wonderful children, fruits of good work, or the continuation of worthwhile activities, but for this to happen, you have to have a strategy in place that begins with you.
If you're planning your retirement and not sure you're on the right path, or you are in retirement and looking for more meaning, download this short vision exercise to get a clearer vision of the direction you should be headed.