Balance the Material & the Spiritual for a Fulfilling Retirement

The current economic turmoil can be seen as a wake-up call, wrote gerontologist Ken Dychtwald in the Huffington Post (8/30). In “New Retirement Rules: Caught Between the Dow and the Tao,” Dychtwald challenges us to change our mindset about how to live life after retirement. 

Instead of accumulating more and more toys, more travel holidays, or golf lessons, create a better balance between the material and the spiritual, between work and play, between spending on luxuries and giving to others.

Research on well-being in the later years suggests these “rules,” Dychtwald wrote:

1. Most cannot afford the 25+ years of non-employment that our longevity allows us to have, so consider an “encore career,” part or full-time, with less responsibility if you like, with more meaning and purpose. Being a productive member of your community fosters a sense of belonging, which can be sorely missing after retiring.

2. Create nourishing relationships. Health and well-being is enhanced by interconnections with people, by more intimacy with family, friends both old and new, clients, by creating new community and enriching existing community.

3. Keep learning, growing, and stretching. The risk of not doing so, Dychtwald says, is “psycho-sclerosis,” or hardening of the attitudes. Challenge yourself in mind and body, in emotions and in your soul.

4. Live within your means, rather than accumulating debt and worry about paying for what you’ve bought or what the Dow is doing.

5. Live with purpose. After a life of acquisitions of THINGS, open your mind to giving back, to sharing what you know, to helping others, to mentoring younger people. Live a legacy, rather than focusing on leaving a monetary legacy.

What balance have you created between giving yourself immediate pleasure and more long-term gratification in retirement?

Comments

[Inheritance Advisers]

Thanks for the post. 25 years of non work would lead to terminal boredom. Your list of sensislbe things that anyone approaching or in retirement should consider.

[Karma]

Your comment, coming from an investment advisor, is welcome. So often people who earn their living by estate planning focus too much on how to save money for the client, rather than on a holistic model, including how the client can use his/ her money to make the world a better place. This latter is more likely to make the person feel more full and satisfied as she faces the last decades of life.

[Andews Hayes]

These aspects are vital in having a splendid stay in a retirement home. Continuing to live with purpose is a great tip. People sometimes forget that retirement isn't the end of the line. In fact, this chapter in our lives is an indication that something good is yet to unfold.