Retirement Planning: It’s About Much More than Money
For too many people approaching retirement, financial planning gets all the attention. Whether they’ve overlooked, ignored, or avoided the nonfinancial challenges, they risk being unprepared for the profound personal and life changes that retirement brings.
Some people enjoy their first few months of retirement because they take a trip to an exotic location and enjoy some much needed time-off. Unfortunately, that feeling of zen only lasts for a short period of time before reality sets in.
People who don’t pay enough attention to non-financial matters in retirement risk falling into any one of several kinds of traps, from not knowing what to do, not having any socialization, or not physically being able to do the things they love.
Plenty of retirees wake up in the middle of the night a year or so later with panicked thoughts: “What the heck am I going to do with the rest of my life? Never mind that, what the heck am I going to do tomorrow? Or the next day? Oh my God, this is a disaster! Maybe I should go back to work?”
“The bottom line is don’t count on relationships based on sports to keep your social calendar full. If the bulk of your friendships come from a country club setting, think about different ways to spend time with the same people away from the golf course or tennis court. ”
How to Maintain Relationships
What happens when all your social activity revolves around work?
Many of us develop close friendships with co-workers and colleagues. If this is you, start thinking about ways to either further develop those relationships or opportunities to develop new ones. Without a plan, it’s too easy to have just “do lunch” once in a while. Unfortunately, without common work issues to discuss, it gets too easy to blow off lunch plans and drift apart.
Besides work, many of us form friendships over mutual sporting interests like golf or tennis. You might think when you retire you’ll be able to play five rounds of golf a week. But what happens when your drive goes from 250 yards to 220, 200, 180, etc.?
Worse yet, what happens when that backache or bad hip stops you from playing at all? The human body just isn’t designed to keep swinging clubs and rackets without pain, injuries, setbacks, or all three in our seventies, eighties, and beyond.
The bottom line is don’t count on relationships based on sports to keep your social calendar full. If the bulk of your friendships come from a country club setting, think about different ways to spend time with the same people away from the golf course or tennis court.
A Lack of Experience and Denial
How do these things happen? How do so many smart, successful people fall victim to the same retirement issues due to lack of non-financial planning? One reason is a lack of experience.
Most approaching retirees have practically no real-world experience with what people actually do after they retire, not to mention how their lives change. After all, most thirty-five-year-old men and women don’t hang out with seventy-year-olds.
Your only resource for retirement life might come from your parents or grandparents. The problem is that retirement from generation to generation has drastically changed. People live longer today, generally have more resources at their disposal, and retire earlier than they did in your parents’ generation. Some folks retire in their fifties today.
Denial is the second highly likely explanation for not planning the non-financial aspects of retirement. It’s that unconscious psychological defense mechanism people have for avoiding a problem or issue.
As we age, we know retirement is coming, but we may not want to face the facts that we’ve invested so much of our lives into work. Furthermore, we’re likely uncomfortable with the idea that we have no idea what to do next.
Coming to grips with the specifics of retired life and the uncertainties of growing older is challenging, stressful, and even a bit scary. Many otherwise prudent and capable individuals avoid coming to grips with the nonfinancial issues altogether, so if this sounds anything like you, you’re not alone.
Don’t Focus Too Much on Money
If retirement is in your near future—three to five years or so—don’t let a lack of experience or denial cause you to not enjoy your retirement.
The truth is this, without the fulfillment and satisfaction of a happy and healthy continued life experience, all the money in the world won’t matter anyway.
For more advice on the non-financial aspects of retirement planning, you can find Retiring? on Amazon.
Ted Kaufman is the former U.S. Senator from Delaware succeeding Senator Joseph Biden. Ted was Biden’s Chief of Staff for nineteen years and led his presidential transition planning in 2020. He taught at Duke Law School for twenty-six years. At 81, he and his wife, Lynne, celebrate their 61st anniversary this year. Bruce Hiland’s career included McKinsey, more than four years as Chief Administrative Officer at Time Inc., twenty years of independent consulting, and four startups. Now 80, he and Ginny, married fifty-seven years, are enjoying their family, dealing with aging, and harvesting the fruits of their labor.