Creating A Retirement Plan

I’m a planner by nature so during my years of working for Corporate America, creating a retirement plan was something I did quite often.  Keeping my mind focused on the goal kept my spirits up while I labored in a job that I didn’t really like that much.  I did a lot of planning as part of my job so creating a personal retirement plan was a natural thing for me to do.  In my job and in my preparation for retirement I realized that it was important to build some flexibility into the plan.  Something will always come up to change your forecasts and it is important to understand that.  I distinctly remember two events that caused my retirement forecasts to change dramatically.  The first was terrorist attack on September 11, 2001.  It was a tragic day and many people lost loved ones in the attacks on the Trade Center, the Pentagon and the flight that was brought to the ground.  My financial losses could never compare to the loss of human life and the way our world changed on that day.  But the fact remained that my 401K was devastated along with everyone else’s.  My dreams of possibly retiring at 55 were gpne and, even though it was a longshot at best, it was still sad to see my retirement date pushed out further.

The second event was the financial crash in the fall of 2008.  That was even worse and took longer to recover from.  Was it even worth creating a retirement plan if it could all be wiped out with a single event?  Yes, it absolutely was.  I think it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who said that a battle plan is useless, but planning is essential.  There is a lot of truth to that.  And there’s a lot of learning that can occur when you are forced to change your strategy.  But there’s more to retirement than finances.  This website does not even pretend to offer financial advice except to tell everyone to save as much as possible as early as you can.  Time is critical to building a nest-egg.  But that’s not why this website was created.  The pages you can skim through here are dedicated to helping people make the most of their retired lives – to Enjoy Retired Life as much as possible.

Think About Creating a Retirement Plan that is Flexible

That sounds obvious but the number of people I have met (especially men) who complain about being bored is mind boggling to me and incredibly sad.  Many people planned their finances but not their time.  After working forty, fifty or more hours per week, they reach their goal of retirement but now are facing a lot of time with nothing to do.  Many people picture themselves on a golf course every day and that’s a wonderful pursuit.  But, at some point, you have to find something that will be mentally challenging and will satisfy a need or something inside of you that is hard to describe.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against golf.  Our son is addicted to it and sees it as his own lifetime challenge, but I think even he might say that there’s more to life than a round of golf.

Creating a retirement plan should encompass your retirement activities and those should be carefully thought out to ensure that they will provide you with a bit of a challenge, a sense of satisfaction and the ability to keep it a part of your life as you age through this wonderful period of your life.  For me, it was writing.  I enjoy capturing all the great things we have done through our six years of retirement to date and putting them down on paper.  When you couple those words with some pictures, you’re creating a journal of your life that you can look back on at any time.  Who knows, maybe your children will read your words and see the record that you leave behind.  I wish my parents had done something like that.  They lived through the Depression and World War II so it would have been interesting for them to share their memories.  I’ve gone one step further and created a website for all the ideas that I’ve come across on how to get the most out of retirement.  It goes without saying that we don’t know how many days we have ahead of us, so it makes sense to get the most out of each and every day.  Creating a retirement plan that will detail how you’d like to spend your time might help you realize all the things you’d like to do.  Did you want to learn a new language or start a new business?  Did you want to climb Mt. Everest or dive for buried treasure?  It’s never too late.  You may have to modify your goals a little bit but the fun is in the planning and doing, not just the dreaming.  It’s time to get busy and Enjoy Retired Life! 

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