The Laughing Boomer Book Series
The Laughing Boomer: Retire from Work—Gear Up for Living!
Mahara Sinclaire, M. Ed.
Smashwords Edition Copyright ©2011 by Mahara Sinclaire.
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ISBN 978-0-9780600-8-4
E-Book Edition
Autumn Publications
Published by Autumn Publications
Suite 8—8623 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC V6P 5A2
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sinclaire, Mahara, 1950-
The laughing boomer: (electronic source) retire from work, gear up for living!
Includes bibliographical references
1. Retirement—Planning
2. Baby boom generation
3. Retirement—Psychological aspects. 1. Title.
HQ1062.S542 2010a 646.7`9 C2010-902954-2
Table of Contents
Chapter One—Whoosh! What’s Happening, Toto? Retirement Transition and Change
Chapter Two—Who and What Makes Your Heart Sing? Values, Personality, and Relationships
Chapter Three—Who Moved My Goalposts? Interests and Goal Setting
Chapter Five—On the Road Again Travel
Chapter Six—Pumping Iron into the Sunset Health
Chapter Seven—This Time from the Heart What Touches Your Soul? Work and Volunteer
Chapter Eight—It’s Only Money, Honey Finances
Chapter Nine—Crystal Ball, Anyone? Decision Making and Realizing your Vision of the Future
We Are Not Whistler’s Mother
Would you rather be Tina Turner or Whistler’s mother? The answer to this question reflects changing attitudes about retirement. After all, the traditional meaning of the word is the time when you stop performing your regular job, or the circumstance of being retired. A retiring personality is one that recedes into the background. To retire has traditionally meant to withdraw from your regular activities, or from life. To stop, as it were. To fade into oblivion.
We Are Redefining Retirement
Retirement is being redefined. You’ve heard the catchy phrases—retirement rocks, put old on hold, free-tirement, the silver tsunami, be inspired to retire, the famous slogan Freedom 55, now twenty-five years old. The meaning of the word within the context of later life is changing fast. Retirement is a life change, yes, but it is more a break from routine than a stopping of activities. Retirement is a chance to reorganize life on your terms, without child responsibilities, without full-time work, and to live your life at a pace that is civilized and suits you, not the other way around. It means you choose where you live on your terms, not because it is close to good schools or near your work but because you love the area. Retirement is the time when you focus on living a fulfilling life and you focus on enjoying life, instead of focusing on work, money or getting ahead.
By the time our generation has passed through this old world, new words will be invented to replace the word retirement. New ways of creating meaningful existence for later life will be the norm. Language to describe retirement will reflect a state of leisure, accomplishment and creativity. It will describe a satisfactory stage of life that younger generations will anticipate eagerly. The traditional meaning of the word retirement may even be an archaic description.
When talking to people who have changed their lifestyle in their forties, fifties, and sixties, I have found that many reject the word “retirement.” While looking forward to the freedom and choices that retirement offers, no one I have met wants to be clumped into this generic “retired” mode. Few relate to the stereotypical “senior” image. Most people think of seniors as being in their late seventies and eighties.
Some of this may be because stereotypical images about retirement have been fuelled by advertising designed by a much younger crowd. What many people actually mean when they say they are retired is that they have left a job or career that was a major focus of their lives. These people object to being cast as “old folks,” lumpy people plunked in front of televisions all day or found wandering aimlessly around shopping malls, eating early dinners and going to bed at nine. Although they may be retired, people live active lives after work. Baby boomers are laughing because we know we will reinvent retirement. We are creating a retirement revolution. Instead of slowing down, we see opportunity to do what we want.
Purpose of This Book
The purpose of this book is to provide information on the wide variety of changes you will encounter as you plan your retirement. It is comprehensive in nature as it covers some sociological, psychological, health, financial and work-related information, as well as details around housing and travel. The goal of this book is to help you identify what a fulfilling retirement would look like, and secondly, to provide options so you can create the life of your dreams. Remember: anything is possible.
Why Are Baby Boomers Important?
There are approximately 1.258 billion people between the ages of 45 to 64 in the world, according to the U.S. Census Bureau(1). This book is not for everyone, as it is written with a Western perspective, which probably includes about 500 million people. This includes the European Union (300 million), the United States (78 million), Canada (10 million), and Australia (4 million), as well as millions of others not mentioned above. Further, it is written from the perspective that you have some options available. Statistics and figures provided are primarily focused on the United States and Canada.
* * *
Being a Laughing Boomer Is a State of Mind, Not a Year of Birth
Technically, the baby boomer generation includes people born between 1946 and 1964. But the psychological age of boomers appears to be somewhat different from the ages delineated by demographers.
When I mentioned I was writing a book about baby boomers, a friend asked, “Can you stretch the age limit a little bit?” He was born in 1945 and has always felt like a boomer. A woman friend born in 1943 told me that she related to the 1960s and 1970s culturally, just as so many boomers do.
Psychologically, then, it seems that the boomer generation includes some people born in the 1940s.
At the other end of the scale, many people born in the early 1960s do not consider themselves to be boomers. These individuals see themselves as belonging to the next demographic group: Generation X. This is particularly true if they went to university later and started work during the recession in the early 90s.
The point is that being a laughing boomer is a state of mind, not a year of birth. If you are nearing or at retirement and you feel young in mind and spirit, this book is for you no matter what age you are.
* * *
What’s Different about Retiring Baby Boomers?
Our well-educated generation has held professional jobs and lived in an age where achievement and upward progression were normal and we expect the same in our retirement. In short, boomers see retirement in a very positive light. Retirement is an opportunity to do more of what we want and less of what we do not want.
Exposed for years to good nutritional information and exercise, many boomers are strong physically and are able to manage our health through lifestyle choices. While we recognize the reality of aging, many of us consider ourselves downright youthful and will not take aging lying down. We refuse to fit into the old stereotypes of retirees. Sixty is the new 40.
Some boomers bring to retirement their independent roots cultivated as youth. This generation will change the way people look at retirement, the same way we changed perceptions of youth. Retirement will become desirable, even sexy, because retirees have finances, good health, and physical fitness. We have ambition and energy. We will travel, do things we have always wanted, and continue to wield influence in the world. We will have fun.
We Are a Huge Demographic Factor
With around ninety million boomers in North America, the demographic tsunami of the baby boomer retirement wave cannot be ignored. We’ve sometimes been called “the pig in the python,” a rather unflattering title that traces our impact on Western society. The vitality and intellectual capabilities of millions of people will change the meaning of old age. The sheer size of the boomer demographic means we will have a tremendous impact upon society. Governments and corporations will need to respond to our changing needs, particularly as boomers age.
There have always been small numbers of people who made significant contributions and for whom freedom and choice existed. Stories recall unique characters that drive across the country in their eighties, skydive at 90 and perform unusual activities. However, the sheer demographic size of our age group means we will have an impact upon society. Imagine millions of people traveling to remote locations, running marathons, volunteering. This is what the future holds.
We Can Make a Difference to Society
Some of us will turn our full attention to causes we deem important, or to movements we have embraced throughout our lives such as promoting the arts, preserving wildlife, or doing good works in other countries. We can now pursue philanthropic activities without the distraction of work or raising a family. We expect success, and we have the financial means, physical strength, intellectual determination and attitude to make positive contributions to society.
We Have Choice
Freedom of choice is another touchstone of the laughing boomer. Some of us will carry on much as we did before, but millions more will shed our old skins and explore new options. Personal power can be defined as the ability to act. We may move to different countries, start brand new careers, or otherwise transform ourselves. At barbecues and around dinner tables, people in their middle years are talking about retirement options: where to live, what passions to pursue and how to implement these plans. Boomers have choice.
While making plans for the second half of our lives, we anticipate traveling, socializing, and enjoying creative or active hobbies. We want to do more than just play, however. It is also important to us to find meaningful ways to spend our time. We may have a phased-in retirement. We see ourselves as being actively involved in business and community. Many of us will return to work—though maybe not to the same job or earning the same pay—and otherwise be engaged in the economy. But with pensions and pared-down expenses, we will take the work we want, not the work we need. Having run small businesses and large corporations, we have skills and knowledge to transfer to new endeavors.
With a background of achieving our purposes and goals, baby boomers feel we can realize any future ambitions as well.
We Are Experienced with Change
The changes that we boomers experienced during our lifetimes are astounding. Change has always been a part of our existence, and the speed of change has only intensified, hurtling us forward ever faster. For people who have switched careers, homes, cities, continents, spouses, and just about everything else, retirement appears to be a repeat performance. Familiar with change, many baby boomers are also experienced in planning for it.
Many broke or changed society’s rules when we were young. The sixties saw a great period of social upheaval. From music, the women’s movement, and natural and back-to-the-land living to how we raised our children, the boomers worked hard to fix the injustices of life and change our quality of life. A glance through a university yearbook of the sixties shows the sheer number of people involved in demonstrations and activities that forced change. In retirement, boomers will continue not to accept the status quo.
Besides the societal change mentioned above, boomers invented and implemented many of the technological changes; look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Unlike the previous generation, our computer skills and continual learning through the many incarnations of computerization have honed our skills. The Internet is a major bonus in enabling us to design an excellent retirement.
Americans have been part of a number of wars, as well, and all of us are familiar with political swings to the right and to the left. We have some perspective that lets us stand back a bit and see what happens. We’ve experienced globalization, technological changes, social changes, a consumer society and the technological revolution. In a nutshell, we’ve lived modern life.
We Can Relive Our Youth (Well, Maybe the Good Parts)
Some boomers will relive our youth in retirement—well, maybe not relive it but return to the interests we had as young adults and then dropped for a variety of reasons, Phenomenal sales of products like Harley-Davidson motorcycles to an older demographic are evidence of this trend. The main buyers of these expensive toys are middle-aged men and, more surprisingly, middle-aged women, both of whom now have considerable disposable income.
Adventure travel is another fast-growing sector. Many middle-aged people book exotic and exclusive vacations to the ends of the earth, trips that their parents might only have dreamed about.
Why This Book?
If you are like me, you are not considering moving to a seniors’ residence, nor are you checking out incontinence products. You’re ready for your next great adventure. You’re ready to retire from work and gear up for living. Many books focus on financial planning, wills, and reduced living circumstances. This book is about expanding your dynamic living options, not contracting them.
So, after you have taken a couple of years, rested, rebuilt your health, re-jigged your living situation, and reacquainted yourself with yourself and with your friends and family, you may be ready to go again. You are ready to gear up for living. You may want to go back to work, even part-time, or you may want to travel. You may find a great deal of satisfaction in your hobbies or your volunteering. You may love spending time with your kids and grandkids now that you have the time. But what you are not doing is gearing down for a slow death of boredom, narrowed circumstances and reduced choices. You are out in the world, experiencing new things and living your thirty-year grand finale.
Many differences occur at this stage of life. Leaving the labor market and your career deserves careful consideration on several fronts. So does leaving your community, traveling, exploring new hobbies, and dealing with health realities or changing financial circumstances.
Baby boomers realize we have more years behind us than ahead of us, especially tremendously active years. We realize that, at the outer limits of today’s life spans, most of us will have slowed down by ninety.
Freed from the routines of work, home responsibilities, and children, we can finally do the things we previously put off. We can address unresolved issues, face our fears, and pursue additional hopes and dreams. With no more excuses left, this is our last chance to achieve these goals. This can be challenging or exhilarating.
This book will help you walk the walk, instead of just talk the talk about being a laughing boomer. The book touches on various topics with which baby boomers grapple: making the transition to retirement; determining which interests and passions to pursue; adjusting to new realities in their relationships; pursuing work and volunteer opportunities; traveling; figuring out where to live and what to do with all their stuff; managing their finances; maintaining their health; and making decisions.
I’ve met and observed hundreds of people whose short examples I’ve included in this book, with no names, and I hope that their stories capture a point worth considering.
Thanks
I’d like to thank my editors, Lana Okerlund, for keeping me going while I was still working, and Marcia Kaye, who did my final copy edit with great care. As well, many thanks to Victor Crapnell, who did a wonderful job designing the cover art and book interior and Jorge Rocha, who was most helpful providing assistance throughout the printing process. My partner Ken Grist supported me wholeheartedly through the very long process of writing and then revamping this book, and was a great sounding board. I appreciate as well the support and encouragement of my family and friends. Barry Hitchens and Ronnie Skolnick were included within my book specifically, and many people contributed their words of wisdom by sharing their stories. Thank you.
I wrote this book while I was still working at Vancouver’s Langara College and Simon Fraser University. Along the way we sold our house and then went around the world for two years. This was in 2008 and 2009, during one of the most difficult financial times the world had seen in decades. I revamped the book completely from the perspective of someone who has retired and is out there—right now in Buenos Aires, one of the most beautiful cities of the world—and as someone who has done what many want to: travel the world. This book is about living a fabulous retirement life.
Retire from work, gear up for living. Be ready for your next great adventure.
Freedom’s Just another Word for Everything to Gain.
The Laughing Boomer: Retire from Work—Gear Up for Living! is about your life. More specifically, it is a book about the next thirty years of your life—your Grand Finale. It is about your next great adventure—life after formal work ends. This book is about your hopes, dreams, and aspirations—all the things you’ve wanted to do but put off because you were, well, busy with the first part of your life. More than just your vision of the life, this book has information and solutions. It covers many aspects of the retirement process and how to adapt to the changes retirement will bring. From vague wishes and impressions about what we want to do, making our goals a reality takes quite a few steps and a number of decisions. It’s hoped this book will help guide this process in a comprehensive way.
The Laughing Boomer assumes as a given that you are not looking at retirement as the old-fashioned meaning the word implies—cast aside, or put out to pasture. Yes, of course you are looking forward to a less frenetic pace, but what you are looking forward more is the freedom to live life on your terms. You are a Go-Go, not a Slow-Go or No-Go!
I have observed that thoughts of retirement start lapping at the edges of consciousness around the age of 50. Even if you love your career, you realize you have more working years behind you than in front of you. It can take a few years to get various aspects of your life aligned. Early planning and preparation will make the transition smoother and give you greater planning scope.
We are such a fortunate generation. The bottom line is that we’ve had the great benefit of being born primarily in the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. Millions of ordinary people are laughing boomers, pursuing full and interesting lives as we near or pass the age of retirement.
We’ve had the benefit of the technological changes and access to so much information. We have the perspective of an older and wiser person. Not only have we made our own decisions and observed the consequences, but we’ve watched others live their lives. We’ve known people who showed great promise who didn’t follow through and slow starters who eventually got their act together. We’ve probably met people who are living lives we could have never imagined and been exposed to different ways of doing things.
If you want it, now is the time to live your wildest dream—to step out of your old life and into the new. If not now, when? What is your vision of your future, your hopes, wants and deepest desires? If this book could be summarized in six words, these might be: Dream big, plan well, be happy. Go out and live your life!
What This Book Covers
Many retirement books focus only on the money aspect. A few more focus on finding a new community and how to make decisions around that. These are all good topics and useful to read. This book focuses on the idea of experiencing a fulfilled life, and so is more detailed in those aspects and offers general information on finances, for example, but is not focused on discussing the stock market.
The Laughing Boomer: Retire from Work—Gear Up for Living! is more or less divided into two sections. The first part of the book is more internally focused—about your values, personality, relationships, interests, and life goals and how you and these aspects of your life will evolve in retirement. The second section is more externally focused and practical and looks at your home and possessions, travel, working, volunteering, and money. The final chapter discusses decision making and putting everything together. The reference section is not done in a traditional academic manner, as references are numbered for each chapter. Many websites are noted, including a few general ones that are not referenced in the text.
Many readers will find that they are familiar with some aspects but never fully considered other topics. Many are unsure about retiring in tough economic times and question whether they are making the best decisions. Some want a fear-removal technique. Others may just want a push, a vision that will move them forward. Whatever your needs, the more you think about the questions posed here, the easier your decisions will be. The decision-making chapter is short, because if in fact you’ve thought things through thoroughly, you will probably have come to your best decisions.
In essence this book is about being happy and living a fulfilled life. It is about an attitude of possibilities. It is about setting and reaching your life goals in retirement. I hope you are looking forward to an exciting new chapter of experiencing life. It’s not that life has passed you by, but that there is so much more out there that engages you. An overarching theme for many people is just to get out in the world—to experience life fully and enjoy all that life offers with the freedom of unlimited time.
The Laughing Boomer: Retire from Work—Gear Up for Living! is about having a positive attitude regarding the variety of decisions a baby boomer facing retirement must make in order to aim for that Thirty-Year Grand Finale. Sure, it may be work, but you are probably used to that. You have the power to make your lifelong dreams a concrete reality, and now that you are or are about to be retired, you have the time. So, go for it—enjoy your newfound freedom.
Retire from work, gear up for living. Be ready for your next great adventure.
Whoosh! What’s Happening, Toto?
Retirement Transition and Change
Do any of these sound familiar to you?
• Your age suggests that you might be eligible for retirement.
• Your friends and acquaintances are retiring and moving to smaller communities.
• Your workmate keeps stating that it is two years, three months, four days, and six hours to her retirement, and you are about the same age.
• You want to stop working, at least for a while, even though you may be years away from the standard retirement age.
Perhaps the younger people at work include you in their plans and laugh at your jokes, but you are less focused on their discussions and activities; you have moved on. Or you simply don’t want to work as hard, due to a combination of lack of energy and a greater desire to focus on other things.
If you found yourself nodding your head at a few of these statements, now is the time to start or implement your retirement plans; pre-retirement planning, if you wish. Many times your major moves and transitions can take up to five years to implement, especially if real estate transactions are involved. This chapter looks at the change process and where you are in this process. Having an objective overview helps in decision making.
If you have retired recently, you may be worn out from the past several months of planning for this event. You probably had a rush of farewell parties to attend, work activities to clean up, and people to train to take over your job. You had to make serious decisions about your retirement plans in the months leading up to retirement; perhaps you attended seminars about life after work or initiated pension plan discussions. If you are about to retire, you are probably still in the midst of this whirlwind.
Wherever you are in the retirement process, you are likely to be both excited and apprehensive about the new lifestyle and experiences that await you outside your regular routine. You may be somewhat overwhelmed by all the options and decisions that face you. You may decide to work again, but when you want and doing what you want. You may want to get away for an extended vacation, or perhaps you prefer to stay home and unwind with your favorite hobbies and interests. You may relish the unstructured time by yourself or with family members and friends. Finally, you can make your choices without considering the necessity of work.
What makes retirement both challenging and exciting is that it involves going to a place most of us have not been since our childhoods: a place where there is free time and no structure, where we can do whatever we want.
As with any change, you will need to get used to retirement. Important decisions, made either independently or with your partner and family, may come with some overwhelming feelings at times. But if you embrace and manage the changes, retirement can be the best thing that has ever happened to you.
Retirement is a Phase, Not an Age
Some say that people in Western society move through three broad stages as we age.
The first stage involves going to school and university, starting careers and family, and basically beginning life’s journey. When we were younger, many people reached adulthood in a practical sense at a much younger age, but today, this stage ends at about age 30. With most fields of post-secondary and master’s education now taking four to eight years or more to complete, many young adults do not leave home to start independent lives until their mid- to late twenties. First-time weddings have also extended stage one, with people often not marrying until their late twenties to early thirties.
The second stage lasts from about ages 30 to 60. Here, people theoretically have finished experimenting and have found the right partners, the right careers, the right homes, and so on. Of course, we all know how true that theory is! Nevertheless, people in this phase are normally fully functioning adults who have assumed responsibility for their lives. This period is characterized by stability, family, career advancement, and wealth accumulation.
The third stage extends from approximately age 60 to the end of life. In theory, people in this phase have accumulated enough wealth to retire comfortably. They have had successful careers and now have the means and ends to fulfill other needs through volunteerism, travel, home and family, or spiritual growth.
I am not sure this model is entirely realistic, especially when it comes to bracketing people and their interests into neat age-based stages.
Today’s retiring people are as varied as birds in the Amazon jungle. You may be a 40-year- old police officer with twenty years’ service or a 70-year-old entrepreneur. You may be a 45-year-old new parent, a 45-year-old grandparent, or somewhere in between. If you focused on your career for the first twenty years of your adult life, and then on relationships and children, you may be reaching retirement age when your kids are still in school or just graduating. Your particular circumstances may not have allowed you to find your ideal career until you were in your forties, so you are just reaching the peak of your career in your late fifties or sixties and have no desire to retire anytime soon.
Retirement has also become a lot more fluid than the age-based model suggests. You may leave work for a while, go back to work part-time, embark on another career, dabble in this, or dabble in that. Boomers are not locked in to a particular way of life. The one common element, though, is that in your older years you will not fit your life into your work, but fit work into your life. This focus on making your personal goals your life’s focus can be exhilarating.
However, the one thing that most people facing retirement have in common is that they are undergoing one of the biggest changes in their lives. This change can be a challenge but it is also very exciting. Whenever it comes, and whatever individuals choose to do with it, retirement means significant adjustment.
What Is Different about This Change?
In some ways retirement is like any other life change. However, retirement is an entirely different sort of change. For example, retirement may mean leaving behind things you will never do again. You may have left many jobs, but never stopped working altogether. You may have gone on many vacations, but never before had the opportunity for unlimited long-term travel. You may have been married to someone for dozens of years, but never spent all your time together. This will mean your everyday living patterns will change. It means doing things differently and possibly feeling uncomfortable for a while. It also brings many unique challenges and opportunities.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for today’s boomers has to do with choice and decision making. In the past, people were limited by their geographic and economic circumstances. In our current globalized society, we can do whatever and go wherever we want.
This plethora of choice can be exhilarating or paralyzing. Where do you want to live? What do you want to do with your time? If you want to travel, where do you want to go, with whom, and for how long? Do you want to continue to work? If so, where would you like to work and how many hours a week do you envision? What kinds of hobbies or personal interests do you want to pursue?
Each person faces countless choices and decisions unique to their personal situation, but here are the most common areas of change in retirement.
Losing Your Old Identity and Growing into a New You
Have you ever been to a party where you are introduced as one of the many things you do, and that becomes your identity for the evening? Being known as a great runner or a dedicated birder or an expert clay-thrower can be fun for an evening. You might even play up the role a bit and act out of character.
Many of us operate in multiple circles where we are identified in several different ways depending upon whom we are with. It rarely bothers us to lose our work identity for a while. Yet part of the change to retirement is giving up your professional identity in a formal sense. In this respect, retirement affects your personal life profoundly. Your identity changes when you are no longer identified with an occupational title, such as an accountant, a computer programmer, an educator, or an administrator.
As you move into the world of not working, you will meet people who don’t care what you once did for a living. They won’t even ask. This may be quite an adjustment for you, especially in the early stages. You might feel a great loss of identity if you are simply known as a retired person. This can be especially true if your whole life and all your intellectual pursuits were tied to your profession, or if you were required to quit because of mandatory retirement. Going from running a large corporation or department to running after your dog might be a shock.
On the other hand, you may have just had a job to earn a living. It may not have been an important aspect of your life. You may even have hated your job and been one of those “three years, two months, six days, and four hours to retirement” types of people. In that case, what you might feel now is relief.
Most of you will be somewhere in between these two scenarios. You are probably looking forward to the next phase of your life but are also sad to say goodbye to a happy career.
Ask yourself, “Who am I?” Answer without using your work identity. You will likely find that what matters to you most has nothing to do with the job title you had. You are now free to become your true self.
Finances and Lifestyle
For many people, retirement means a reduced income due to the loss of a regular work salary. While this topic is covered in more detail in the financial chapter, your income reduction may or may not be difficult to manage. If you have a healthy pension, a paid-for house and some assets, life may go on pretty much the same as before. On the other hand, if you need to make major adjustments to make your retirement work, then you might need to research opportunities to live well within your means. You may or may not have enough money to afford the retirement lifestyle you imagine. This introduces interesting challenges and creative opportunities.
Without a regular work salary, external events tend to have more influence on your cash flow. The real estate market, stock prices, and currency exchange rates can impact your retirement income significantly. The timing of market increases and declines may not fit with your retirement plans, but if you wish to take advantage of the trends, you might need to make alternative short-term arrangements.
Family and Friendships
We make most of our decisions in conjunction with the important others around us. What effect will your retirement have on your children, grandkids, parents, siblings, and close friends? Their opinions for or against some of your decisions will influence your choices.
Your social networks might change once you leave work, and this could have positive or negative implications. If you are part of a couple, both you and your partner need to have some independent friendships and activities so you have some time apart. If one person within a couple does not have an independent network and the other does, it can affect the relationship quite significantly. This has been observed to be sometimes a greater challenge for men than women. Married women often have close friends outside of work and their relationship, while married men may not. Retired men often experience the greatest social loss.
Home and Community
Even though you have deep roots within your community and have lived in the same neighborhood for many years, you might find it advantageous to move once you retire, because of financial considerations, health, or other reasons. Former reasons to stay in your home may no longer be valid—your kids are no longer in local schools, you no longer need to consider the commute to work, your house is now too large, or you want to be finished with yard work, etc. Now you can choose your ideal living space. Do you want to continue to live in your community but in a townhouse or apartment rather than a house? Or do you want to move completely out of the area? Do you want to be in the city or the country? Does a rural, suburban, or urban area appeal to you most? Do you want to be in a townhouse, a condominium, or a detached house? Do you want to live in a different city, or even a different country? The answers to these questions are now wide open.
Emotions about Retirement
As mentioned in the previous section, retirement can mean a lot of major changes. Change can be bittersweet. Saying goodbye to a part of your life and hello to something new can cause you pain and joy at the same time. If you think of retirement as a continuum, with positive emotions and circumstances on one end and negative emotions and circumstances on the other end, where would you land?
You may be over the moon at never having to work again. You may be ecstatic about having more time for your loved ones and your favorite activities, and you might look forward to an easier pace. If you have planned well and have saved enough to afford a reasonable standard of living after work, you may have a very smooth transition.
At the other end of the scale, you may have some negative feelings about retirement. You may not be financially or emotionally secure. Perhaps you had a low-paying job or high expenses that didn’t allow you to save for retirement. An interrupted job history, such as a layoff due to corporate restructuring, may have played havoc with your plans. Maybe you had or have marital problems or poor health. Perhaps you are concerned that you will lose contact with the people you care for at work. You may have lingering doubts about long days with no plans. You might wonder how you and your partner (if you have one) will get along when you are together all day long. If any of these sound familiar to you, I hope that this book will give you ideas, options, and courage to create the retirement you want.
Jumbled feelings are normal. The emotional impact of the changes that retirement brings depends on a number of factors:
• Degree of control—If you are forced to retire—say, due to poor health, downsizing or layoffs, or your retirement comes about unexpectedly—you will likely experience more negative emotions than if you have a choice about when and how you enter this next phase in your life.
• Emotional involvement in your pre-retirement situation —Was your work just “a job,” something you cared little about, or did it provide challenging and interesting opportunities? Do you have a fabulous house, great neighbors, and deep ties within your community, or the opposite of this? The deeper your connection to your pre-retirement situation, the more difficult you may find the transition to be.
• Your experience with change—Have you stayed in the same job, home, or community for thirty or forty years, or have you lived through many changes in these things in the past? Experience with change may make retirement easier for you. If you have not experienced many changes in your life, retirement may seem harder for you.
• Gaps in your imagined retirement versus your reality—Is there a clash between what you envisioned retirement to be and what it actually is? You may have pictured yourself living a certain lifestyle, but perhaps you or your partner may not be able to do what was planned. Gaps between your vision and your reality can affect your emotions and need to be addressed.
• The volume of change you experience in retirement—Stress experts suggest that too many changes all at once can cause adaptive stress symptoms that affect your ability to cope. To mitigate this, keep established routines in some areas of your life so you have some sense of stability. Holding on to some pre-retirement routines will help you feel grounded.
Another suggestion is to transition gradually into retirement. Make small steps and establish a routine around one new retirement activity before you move on to another aspect. That way, when you actually retire, you will almost be established in your new lifestyle. For example, some people move into their retirement home a year or so before they actually retire. Although it may be a temporarily longer commute, when they finally give up work they are already comfortable in their new community.
Whatever your emotions about retirement, identifying how you feel and the source of your feelings is a good first step. One way is to set down and actually define your feelings by writing them down, so you can focus on what areas are making you anxious. Take control of as many areas as you can, but understand that some uneasiness about retirement is normal.
Managing the Change
Change and transition are often used as synonyms and indeed the general intent of the words is the same. However, when discussing retirement planning, some people prefer the word change, while others prefer transition. The end result may be the same, but the process of getting there will be different.
You are making a transition to a new phase of life “retirement” and your lifestyle will be changed as a result. And so the cycle begins. Transition has the sense of a slower pace. Transition might be seen as the process running through the change model. Transition is a course of development that results in change.
For example, when purchasing a new car close to retirement, this time it’s a planned purchase because of your current employment. You realize that next time you buy a vehicle, financing it might be different because you won’t be working. You never needed to consider this before; this simple act has new implications and nuances.
Change has been studied a great deal from a business perspective—how to improve customer service, adapt to changing economic circumstances, etc.—and several different models exist that describe predictable stages of change. Change on an individual basis is slightly different, however. While personal change also has predictable stages, many personal change models describe the surprise element of change: for example, shock, anxiety, fear, threats, and then recovery and planning for a new life. However, this does not negate the fact that change may be more difficult for some people than others.
Some studies suggest that retirees do not fit into a uniform adjustment pattern. Even so, here is a basic change model you might like to use. I haven’t gone into a great deal of detail here as the individual chapters cover this in depth. This pattern might be completed two or three times before you find your perfect way to live.
A planning for retirement
B exploring options
C.making decisions
D implementing ideas
E evaluating results
A. Planning for retirement
Retirement takes time to plan and implement. You might have thought everything through before retirement, or you may not have thought about it at all, but if you are like most people you are probably somewhere in between and looking for more ideas. That’s why you bought this book.
Ideally, you will start to make initial plans before you actually retire. For example, the timing of your retirement should be coordinated with other parts of your life. Your partner’s activities should be considered, for example; while you may be ready to give up working, he or she may not. Perhaps you have an important project on the go that you wish to complete before retiring. You may have health concerns to attend to before giving up a company-paid benefits plan. There may be financial benefits if you wait a bit longer to retire or if you retire at a certain time of year. One couple I know, for example, will not retire until their children are finished university because their children are still covered by the company health benefits plan until that time.
B. Exploring options
The stage immediately after retirement is often a time of experimentation and tentative decisions. You may have thought about many things before you retired, but you are now trying these things out to see how they feel. Perhaps you realize that some activities you thought you would love to do actually bore or irritate you. Or, instead of enjoying some people, you find your time with them tedious.
During this stage, people experiment with new ideas, adopt some, and discard others. As you process your new circumstances on a conscious and often subconscious level, patterns and directions emerge. You may come to some conclusions about moving into the next stage of change quickly or slowly.
Some people prepare for greater change ahead by clearing through the clutter of their former lives. Many boomers clean their house, for example, but in a different way. They go through their bills and old paperwork and decide what they no longer need to keep. They phone up their kids and advise them to get all their stuff out of the basement or attic. They look over their belongings and possessions with a more critical eye. They sell things they feel they will no longer need or use. Typical underlying thoughts are: “What do I want to do now that I finally have the time to do it? Do I really think I’ll be canning, baking, sewing, painting, woodworking, or repairing again? Do I even want to? Do I really need all of these things?”
These initial activities will not necessarily define how you will live your life in retirement, but they help refresh the slate. As you try various activities, pay attention to how you feel, and don’t be afraid to say no. For example, I once taught organ lessons to a woman who said she had wanted to learn this instrument her whole life. After a few months, she realized she was not getting the pleasure she had expected. Fair enough, and good for her—both for trying something new and for admitting she was not enjoying it and moving on.
This experimentation phase also requires discussion with the various people in your life. Within a relationship, each person might spend a year or more exploring hobbies and activities, and your mutual readiness to move on may not be in synch.
You may also recognize during this stage that you cannot have it all. The realities of your finances, your personality, and your relationship may mean that your retirement lifestyle will be different from what you imagined. However, you can still fashion a wonderful life. This book is about expanding options, sometimes with limited resources.
C. Making decisions
Your decision-making style comes into play here. Some people like to make big decisions first and then figure out the rest as they go. Others prefer to take things in a step-by-step fashion, slowly evolving and securing the situation underfoot before they go further. For example, they may buy a small place in a resort community while still keeping their family home. However you operate, either independently or as a team, you will eventually come to some conclusions.
D. Implementing your ideas and plans
The best-case retirement scenario is that you have a new set of activities that you enjoy, you are able to spend lots of time to maintain your health and enjoy your leisure, and you have a newfound sense of freedom from care. The worst-case scenario is that you have a big hole of forty-plus hours a week that used to be filled with work, now filled with staring at the boob tube.
E. Evaluating results and evolving again until you find your happiness
This may be an instant “knowing,” or may take a year or two, again depending on the factors mentioned before: your personality, finances and personal circumstances, health, external market conditions, and dozens of other factors. For example, your health may suddenly change, or the global economic crisis may have altered your retirement horizon. However, the long-term goal is that you reach a happy place in your retirement years.
Attitude Is Everything
Retirement is a non-linear change; that is, it doesn’t go in a straight line. It is a time of uncertainty, and we can’t control everything. We don’t necessarily have control of our health or the health of our significant others, for example, or of certain economic, political, and societal factors. We sometimes can’t know what is in front of us until we take the next step.
Attitude to change is the main factor in adapting to it successfully. Someone who looks back, stuck in nostalgia, will have a more difficult time taking that step than someone who is open to experiencing something new. When we retire, we must have some trust that good things will happen. Decide to move forward and be on your way.
The Laughing Boomer Gears Up for Living: Be Happy
Becoming a laughing boomer is about being happy. It is not about finding happiness—since it cannot be found—but about creating it. It is about identifying what brings you joy and then creating the circumstances that bring those things into your life. The source of happiness is different for everyone. For some, it may be their relationships; for others it is a cause that catapults them into action. A happy life is not a one-size-fits-all formula. It is the unique expression of your values, loves, and interests.
Happiness is not about being selfish, though. You are part of your larger world and community. You must find a way to be happy in ways that allow others in your life to do the same. There will be compromise along the way. Everyone’s values must be respected. Happiness is about perspective. It’s about finding your place in the world. It’s about being your best self and connecting with others in a meaningful way.
So ask yourself: Am I happy? What will make me happy? What can I do to have the most wonderful time of my life? Think about it. Here you are, nearing retirement or already past the threshold. If you are not, you no longer have any more excuses not to be happy. Time is moving on. You will never be younger, or healthier, or have the same amount of time ahead of you. Enjoy your change or transition into your new life.
Who and What Makes Your Heart Sing?
Values, Personality, and Relationships
Your Values and Personality: What Makes You Happy?
“What are you doing the rest of your life?” asks the old song. Good question, and one that deserves some thought. What do you want to do with your days when you retire? What will make you happy? Whom you love and what you hold dear will give meaning to your retirement.
Your uniqueness and what you value are really what matter at this point. As the previous chapter suggested, retirement can be a time of major adjustments. This chapter focuses on your values and personality so you can identify what motivates you and gives you satisfaction. It also asks you to look at your relationships with your family and friends. If you can figure out what really make you tick, you will be better able to express yourself in your retirement in ways that are meaningful to you.
So, what are you doing the rest of your life? There are many ways to answer this question. One is to reflect on the happiest times of your life and identify the factors that made these periods so enjoyable. Another method is to be mindful of your daily thought patterns. What triggers happy or unhappy thoughts?
Happiness means different things to different people. For some, happiness is having the freedom to do what they want. It’s also about experiencing new ways of looking at life and living life. The sources of your happiness may be completely different from others, but two things that all happy people share are a positive mental attitude and a strong sense of who they are. Both of these characteristics stem from understanding and being true to your values and personality.
Clarify Your Values
The word “value” comes from the French term valere, “to be worth.” Values are the intrinsic principles that you deem most worthwhile in your life. They are the motivation for your behavior, the essence of who you are. Values operate on conscious and subconscious levels; you often respond instinctively to circumstances or causes that resonate with you.
The values we hold as adults are significantly influenced by what we were exposed to during our formative years. For example, if you were bullied as a child, you might always stick up for the underdog. If your caregivers always treated you fairly and with respect, you likely now operate in the same way with others.
Values are also influenced by your innate qualities and personality. Siblings raised the same way in the same environment may end up holding quite different values. Why this is so is an interesting discussion. Suffice it to say that values are highly individualistic. Each of us has a unique value set, and it is important for you to know yours.
While some of your values will stay true your whole life, others may become less important as you grow older, and still others may be quite new. Some values might be of mild or peripheral interest, while others really get your pulse racing. Clarifying your current values will help point you in the direction of a happy retirement.
You may experience varied emotions and make powerful discoveries when examining your values. You may realize that you did not have the opportunity to express your core values during your younger years. You may have followed societal norms and ignored your own needs. Parenthood may have caused you to put aside other aspirations. The necessity of earning a living may have forced you into a structured work environment rather than the flexible, creative schedule you would have preferred. These insights may be disconcerting, but do not succumb to the temptation to regret the past. In retirement, you are now free to live your life in ways that are congruent with the values you hold today.
In the book The Truth about You, authors Arthur F. Miller and Ralph T. Mattson(1) discuss values in terms of the outcomes that motivate you and express your personality and nature. These outcomes—or rewards—drive you to act and give you satisfaction.
Miller’s and Mattson’s premise is that you will try, subconsciously or consciously, to express your values whether they are appropriate or not. For example, if you value structure and order, you will continue to act in ways that achieve those outcomes, whether they are necessary or not.
Consider the following actions and rewards. Rate each as not important, somewhat important, or highly important. Remember that this exercise is not about choosing “good” or moral values. This exercise is about understanding yourself and what gives you satisfaction.
ACTION…REWARD
Acquire, possess…This is mine
Be in charge, command…I decided
Combat, prevail…I won
Develop, build…I created this
Excel, be the best…I stood out
Exploit, achieve potential…I had a vision, made something come true
Gain response, influence behavior…I got a response
Gain recognition, attention…People know who I am
Improve, make better…I made it better
Make the team/grade…I did it
Meet needs/fulfill expectations…They are impressed with me
Make work/make effective…Now it works
Master/perfect…I mastered that
Organize/operate…I brought it into being
Overcome/persevere…They said it couldn’t be done
Pioneer/explore…I boldly went
Serve/help…I made the world a kinder place
Shape/influence…They won’t forget me
The following list of values may also be helpful as you consider your central motivations. Review the list with a discriminating eye. If you check off everything, you will not differentiate what really drives you, so be selective.
VALUE
Being of service
Challenge, excitement
Stability
Fun
Beauty
Affiliation
Empowerment
Knowledge
Moral fulfillment
Serenity, peace
Physical challenge
Belonging
Security
Variety
Competition
Status
Comfort, as in a comfortable lifestyle
The Laughing Boomer Owner’s Manual includes several more tools you can use to clarify your values. However you choose to approach it, the effort of determining what motivates you will help you be clear about your values.
Once you have clarified your values, look around for opportunities to express them in your retirement. If your top motivation is to bring something new into being, what could you do to meet that need? Would starting a new business or hobby make you happy? If you strive for mastery or perfection, what hobby would express that value? Would endless days of golf be your idea of bliss or hell? Aligning your interests with your core values in the months and years ahead will be fulfilling—and it can also be a lot of fun.
* * *
Go-Go, Go-Slow, or No-Go
Retirees can be divided into three main categories: Go-Go, Go-Slow, or No-Go. When I talk about this in retirement workshops, people identified strongly with the first set: Go-Go. The term creates a simple image that is easy to relate to. I find lots of advertising is designed for Go-Slows and No-Goes. These terms were coined by Michael Stein, with a slight variation: Slow-Go, instead of Go-Slow.
Go-Go
Go-Goes are in their fifties and sixties. They are relatively healthy, strong, well-educated, and financially independent, and they have lots of plans and projects on the go. After retirement, they may still work part-time, begin a new career, or start a business. These folks still feel young—ready to rock and roll, as it were. When growing up in the 1960s, they rebelled, had fun, and did what they wanted. Though that attitude is still prevalent among them, they might have suppressed it while they raised kids and worked to pay off the mortgage. Now they are ready to relive their youth and do the things they have always wanted to do.