When it comes to thinking about planning for a future retirement, of course it is important to give serious consideration to your finances. After all, without sufficient financial means a comfortable lifestyle that meets expectations is not possible.
That’s why we spend a lot of time thinking about working with people looking at their income and capital needs at different periods of retirement so that they have sufficient income and capital to meets their needs, along with a reasonable margin to account for changes or unexpected events that aren’t built into the forecasts.
But …. That is only half of the thinking when it comes to retirement planning.
The other half is what you could broadly categorise as ‘lifestyle’. Essentially what I mean by that is how are you going to live your life once you no longer have working restricting what you might do.
Firstly, you should start by thinking in broader terms what that might look like overall. This is really just to get you thinking about the topic and focus your mind.
Then you can start to think about more specific things such as:
• When you would like this to happen in an ideal world as well as a realistic world given your circumstances – some people are desperate to retire asap whereas others are happy to continue working to give them meaning and purpose for a further period of time.
• How you would like to commence this transition of lifestyle – would you like it to be phased for a hard stop of working straight into retirement? Are there any triggers that will help you make the decision on timing?
• Where will you live and spend most of your time – as appealing as travelling and holidays might be, they can potentially be tiring and draining meaning most people do not want to be away all of the time.
• What will you do with your time – think about how a regular week might look and what your regular routine might be like.
• What ‘bucket list’ items would you like to achieve/accomplish – Having clarity on these and factoring them in from both a timing and cost perspective.
I always find writing things down helps to clarify my thinking, as well as then leaving it for a period to review and refine your thoughts more clearly. If you would like to have a format which is structured to help with this thinking then please get in contact.
Once you have given that real thought and got more clarity, it can make the organisation and planning in relation to your finances much easier.
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