Creating a Happy Retirement. Dr Ronald W. Richardson

       “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.”

      Robert Browning

      This book is about planning a happy and satisfying life in retirement based on your own goals. It is not about financial planning for retirement. We presume you have done the math and know when you will be able to retire financially. On the other hand, you may not know how much money you will want or need for your retirement until you have decided on the kind of life you want in retirement. This book will help with that.

      What will your life in retirement look like? What will you actually do on a day-to-day basis? More importantly, will it make you happy? Most people, in planning for retirement, focus on their financial plan but spend very little time on the question of what they want to do with their life in retirement. A 2010 Consumer Reports survey of retired people found that only 19% were “highly satisfied” with their planning for retirement.

      Once you have the money for retirement, what comes next? That is the question we want to help you answer. There is no “correct” answer. It will vary from person to person and couple to couple. We considered starting with various examples of ways people have retired, but that would undercut the purpose of this book which is for you to discover how you want to do retirement in your own unique way.

      We are not entirely satisfied with the word “retirement” for saying what comes next after a lifetime of work. The word has a kind of negative connotation, as if one is “dropping out of life.” The word really describes the ending of a phase of life – the work phase – but it does not adequately focus on what comes next, the next phase of life. Retirement is only a doorway into a new life.

      In much of Europe, people call this next phase of life the Third Age. In childhood, the First Age, the structure of our life is imposed on us by our family and by our schooling. In the Second Age, as working adults, we have more freedom of choice about the sort of work we will do, but life is still structured for us within that work framework.

      In the Third Age, we have the freedom, within the limits of our income and physical well-being, to plan the life we want for ourselves. It is the time when we can finally say, “I want to run my life in a way that is primarily about what will make me happy.” We can structure our lives in just the way we want, spending time, for the most part, doing only what we want.

      This does not mean that life in retirement needs to be self-centered, hedonistic, and focused only on our own selfish ends. It could be that what will make us happy is a life of service to others, rather than a life of simply spending 365 days of the year improving our golf game. It could mean developing a whole new business. It could mean a life focused on grandchildren. The point is that we now have the freedom to choose what we want to do.

      The challenge in this Third Age, after a lifetime of having our lives structured for us, is, “What do we want? How do we want to live our life now?”

      During our working years, we have holidays in which we take time away from work to do what we want. Often, people think of what they do in their vacation time, when away from work, as what their life in retirement will be like. That may well be the case, but we want to suggest a more thoughtful approach to this issue. Thus, this book is primarily a workbook for you to do the planning for a happier and more satisfying life in this Third Age.

      We have written it to help you think about your unique answer to the question of what next. It will also help couples discuss and develop a mutual plan that takes into account each partner’s wishes.

      In Part I, we raise some of the preliminary questions that are necessary to consider in approaching retirement. This addresses the context of retirement. It is about the larger social, philosophical, religious, and practical questions of what retirement means for you.

      In Part II, we offer a framework for actually making plans for your own life in retirement. The structure is very similar to how we approached our own early retirement and what has worked for us and for others we have talked with.

      You may not like the word “plan.” Some people do not like the very idea of planning. Some of you from the business world may say, “Oh please god! No more planning meetings!” We hope you will experience this book differently.

      Or you may want your life to develop in a more intuitive or spontaneous way doing “whatever feels right at the time.” We accept that. We know that “we plan and God laughs” and that “planning is what we do while life happens.” There is truth to these sayings. Things do happen that can completely wreck a plan. Not all our plans or every part of our plan will necessarily be lived. Life is too unpredictable for guarantees. As someone once said, the first point in Plan A should be have a Plan B. Clearly, for example, major health issues for us or our family will affect our plans.

      However, we believe that having goals and planning how to achieve them gives us a direction to sail even in the midst of life’s unanticipated storms. Planning is an opportunity to think about what is important to us in life, what will make life more satisfying, and how we want to go about incorporating those things into our future, whatever our circumstances.

      Most people who have had successful careers have made use of foresight in making their plans for both their work and their private life. Whenever opportunities came along for advancement at work, one of their considerations was, “Where will this step take me? Will it take me closer to my ultimate goals or will it take me further away?” Having a personal plan helps us to answer these questions.

      You may not want to do the “work” part of this workbook. Perhaps it will be enough for you to just read the questions and let them percolate in the back of your mind. Some people do their planning that way, and that is fine. We have found, however, that the struggle to do the work, to actually to put your thoughts into words and onto paper and then discuss them with someone important, especially with your partner if you have one, is extremely effective. It helps to clarify and refine your thinking and to make your plans more concrete and specific. Of course, you are free to make use of this book in any way you want or toss it in the garbage right now!

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