Retirement As You Want It

The Challenges and Opportunities of Early Retirement

When to retire?  For some people the answer to this question is never!  For most, the range is between 50 and 70.  That’s quite a spread, and the time you choose creates different options and issues, and determines your own unique journey. 

Retirement statistics inform us that people are living longer today.  For a person retiring at 65, the average life expectancy is between 20 and 23 years.  This means I could be living half my working life in retirement. What if I live to be 90, like my mother? How would I balance my time between work and leisure?

I began working in 1964 and retired in 2007, after 43 years.  I spent the last 26 years as Finance, and later Marketing Director of Barry’s Tea, and that was the longest and most rewarding part of my career.I loved my time at Barry’s Tea, right up to the day I left.  When I said this to friends and colleagues, some of them asked me…why then did you leave your interesting career at a comparatively early age?

Because financially I could!  But my career was never just about money, and neither was my retirement.  In my mid fortiesI had the foresight to negotiate an option to retire at 60… 65 being the normal age in the Company. From that day on I was clear about when to retire and never wavered from that decision.  I sought retirement coaching, and began some detailed preparation for retirement.

At 60 I was blessed with good health, energy, a youthful outlook, and a love of learning...would I still feel that way at 65?  This thought also influenced my decision to retire early.  There was no guarantee that I would have the same options and possibilities if I waited until 65. And other life issues were becoming prominent...aging parents, the “empty nest” syndrome and a growing awareness of health issues

My ideal vision of retirement involved staying in the workforce. I wanted to pursue a second career, using my best skills and experience accumulated over decades. But I wanted more leisure time with family and friends than I had in full time employment.I was not interested in the traditional “retirement”, but I wanted to work less and at a more relaxed pace. I wanted to do something more meaningful in my retirement, and I still needed to earn some income.

Phases of Retirement

The pre retirement preparation phase was exciting, almost euphoric, as I contemplated the end of the 9-5 routine, freedom, independence and a chance to do all those thing I’d been dreaming about.  When I first retired I enjoyed the honeymoon phase, as I planned and considered possibilities.  However, within six months I experienced a period of disenchantment, including a sense of loss and loneliness.  I alternated between busyness and inertia, before finding stability and contentment with a lower level of activity.

False Starts

I had a number of false starts.  I was flattered to be invited to join two new business ventures, only to find that they weren’t what I wanted at all. With time on my hands, I was persuaded by a friend to take on an onerous role as secretary to a community service organization and soon discovered that it just ‘wasn’t me’.

If I were to do it over again, I would not have made any major commitment for the first year, and I would have settled for a more gradual transition to my next act, my coaching practice. I found it difficult selling myself and my services, a very different experience from selling ‘Ireland’s finest Tea.’

The What do you do Question

In retirement the question ‘what do you do’ is challenging!  I was reluctant to say "I’m retired" because it often evoked what I perceived as negative comments, such as, "do you have a problem filling your day," or "aren’t you lucky to have got out before the recession hit?"  While I was working for Barry's Tea, I took great pride in my career and my association with the highly respected company. When my answer was ‘I’m the Finance and Marketing Director of Barry’s Tea’, there often followed an animated conversation about the company and its products and my role in its success.

When I’m asked that question today my answer depends on who is asking the question. If I feel it is relevant I may say that I’m a Retirement Coach.  Otherwise, I may talk about my hobbies (of which I have many), my research and study, or my volunteer work and community service.

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Guest blogger, Greg Butler, retired in January 2007 from his position as Finance and Marketing Director of one of Ireland’s leading grocery brands. He now pursues his interest in writing and retirement coaching, through the medium of inspirational stories, which you can read at  www.retirement-stories.com   He tells real stories about real people, to enable retirees to understand their retirement needs, identify and achieve worthy goals, and lead a more balanced and fulfilled life.

 

 

 

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?

Second Acts Make the Third Age a Wonderful Place To Be

From investment banker to cattle rancher, from California educator to opening a school for girls in Rwanda, from realtor to starting Easy Going Kayak Tours in Florida, people are starting new adventures in their 50s and beyond. The WSJ's Encore section, written by Kristi Essick, chronicles the journey of these risk-takers as they enter this new stage of their lives.

Dale Henderson, 63, (photo to the right) and his wife bought a 15,000+ acre working cattle ranch in Arizona after he left his job in banking. "I didn't want to leave my retirement to chance, so I took stock of what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life," Henderson told journalist Essick. He wanted to make this disappearing way of life something that was vital and meaningful. This is his way of doing so.

Another Second Acts interviewee is Ann Higdon (photo below) who at 70 decided to start Improved Solutions for Urban Systems to help high-school dropouts earn diplomas and prepare for jobs. Being a dropout herself (from college), she built this visionary non-profit into a viable Dayton-area organization, working 60-hour weeks and helping 300+ kids per year.  

What do you think is possible for you in your Second Act? Contact me for a complimentary coaching call to discover what's next. If you are the 1st to contact me, you also get 25% off for the first 3 months of coaching. Karma@LifeSpringCoaching.com

Are You Super-Charging Your Plans for Your Post-Work Life?

I read and review a lot of books for this blog, for my TV show (Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age) and because I'm a life coach who likes to work with people at this decision point.

Weeks ago I caught an article by Mary Lloyd referring to her book, Super-Charged Retirement: Ditch the Rocking Chair, Trash the Remote, and Do What You Love. I was struck with her sense of humor and directness and also with the fact that she'd been a geologist and an executive in the energy industry. I thought: I need to review just one more book about this topic and it needs to be Mary Lloyd's.

I'm not disappointed. What makes this book so engaging is not that she has something entirely new to tell me, but it's her energy and honesty and she's funny!

She's always been a pioneer - a woman in 1 of those male-dominated fields - and she's constructed a vibrant and active life for herself as a single divorced woman. How did she do it? By really coming to know herself and what suits her. She hasn't succumbed to the conventional wisdom about retirement - that the goal is to move to a sunnier place and plan as much travel and recreation as possible. And the exercises in the book are strategically planned to lead the reader to knowing his or herself as well.

One of the chapters, "Managing Zucchini" hit home for me. Do you grow veggies and never seem to be able to use all of your fecund zucchini? I did for the 1st time last year, so I know exactly what she's talking about. But, why do we bother to try to use all of it?

It's a metaphor for our lives. "We never stop to assess whether we really need to be worrying about ...(fill in your own words). Purpose gets lost in the name of immediate problem solving." Lloyd writes "it becomes zucchini when it is running us instead of the reverse."  So, when you're trying to figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life, after you leave your full-time careers, don't do zucchini. Don't just do stuff because it's there or you feel obligated or you have so much time on your hands that you better fill it up - volunteering at that organization that you like, babysitting for grandchildren, traveling yet again to a far-flung destination. Do it only because it's YOU and it's calling you. It's meeting a need you have right now.

I probably like and resonate with this book because I agree with Mary Lloyd. This is the best time in my life too (as she says it is for her). I have more energy, more eagerness for new experience, more desire to learn new things, than I ever did in my 20s and 30s. Lloyd went back to skiing; I started horseback riding. I just took a Voice workshop with my husband, even though I can't carry a tune. I'm dabbling in improvisation. I started to host a TV show last year. All these things are adventures - experiences I wouldn't have had the courage to do when I was younger.

This is the energy that Mary Lloyed exudes in Super-Charged Retirement. If you want to experience some of that, read her book.                  

More Stories From Alivelihood: Mimi Katz - from College Library to Digital Photographer

Mimi Katz worked for decades in an administrative role in a liberal arts college library. There she discovered for the first time that she could learn, that she was smart. She could take courses free of charge as an employee, and as a library associate became interested in computer programming and internet related activities.

By chance, she consulted with a woman who had a wholesale jewelry business. She researched the digital camera for her, having become at ease with technology, unlike many of her generation. But, she didn’t start out that way. In fact, she was philosophically opposed to using technology, a product of her generation, who feared and avoided computers. Now Mimi teaches an "Internet for Seniors" course and is thrilled when newbies realize the potential of being globally connected.

Her serendipitous experience with researching digital cameras lit up a passion for photography and she has never swayed from that. She retired from her job and at 62 began to pursue digital photography wholeheartedly.

As a woman who felt that she didn’t fit in as a young person, she now has something in her life that has drawn her to people and to experiences that allow her to express her real self.

 Now Mimi, whom I interviewed for the TV show that I host, called “Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age,” is a passionate “encore careerist,” taking pictures of everything that interests her. Which is almost everything.

A series which I like immensely is the candid portraits of aging people who live in her community. See her website to get to links to her gallery. This photo is one of those.

A spiritual person, Mimi believes that meditation and photography are one and the same. “Everything else stands still when you capture the moment with a camera.” See the interview with Mimi Katz or see short clips of past shows.

What passions do you have hidden beneath the layers of shoulds and ought to’s? Which do you want to express as you retire from your mid-years’ career? Contact me for a complimentary coaching session to discover the authentic you waiting to be born in your later years.

Stories from "Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age" - Arthur Mark, From Educator to Actor

Arthur Mark retired from his “encore career” as a professional actor, having chosen this career after decades as an educator and educational innovator.

Arthur was my guest on “Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age,” the TV show I host in Brookline, MA.  See Arthur's plus past shows here. Go to "A" for Alivelihood.

What makes Arthur’s shift so remarkable and inspirational? He had been an esteemed educator, having directed new programs, administered a private school, and been a professor of education at a university. He started such innovative programs as the World Council for Curriculum and Instruction, as well as the Business and Industry for Arts in Education, program which drew the corporate and educational world together to bring the arts to children and families. He had contributed to his field in a big way. See his Bio at Too Young to Retire.

Yet, Arthur felt he had a yearning to do something else, a long held desire to act, a love from his college days when he majored in theater. 

What did he do ? Not content to merely join community theater productions, he moved to New York City, went through a grueling initiation and training in order to get into all the unions and guilds for actors. And he started getting jobs – in theater, in movies, in TV, in commercials. He loved it… felt proud that for a man in his 60s he was capable of not only starting a new career, but becoming successful in getting roles.

Arthur was so esteemed he was elected into the Royal Society of the Arts, under whose umbrella he brought Fellows together from all over the world. Now as an octogenarian, he has slowed down a bit, but continues to have plans. He lectures on “New  Parameters in Living, “Making the Workplace Work for You” and other topics dear to his heart.

What desires are bubbling up inside you for how you want to express yourself once you leave your mid-year's career? If you're uncertain, but hopeful, about finding that passion that will draw you into a wonderful next project for your "Third Age," please sign up for a complimentary coaching session at Life Spring Coaching.

Living Life to Its Fullest Despite an Uncertain Financial Future

Dick Wagner said: "Money is the most powerful secular force on the planet." Since the economic tsunami occurred, we need to learn how to thrive beyond money.

Elizabeth Jetton, CFP, presented at the Positive Aging Conference in December, on the topic of money and fulfillment. "The container is cracked," she announced. We grew up with the belief that capitalism = growth,  but we've since learned otherwise. How can we navigate these rough waters and still maintain our sense of wellness? We have to learn to access and nurture these Life Resources: 
 

• Human capital - the capacity to earn a living
• Social capital - friends, community, affiliations
• Emotional capital - resiliency, appreciative inquiry, integrity to self, the ability to establish experiences that involve "Flow"
• Physical capital - health, fitness, active lifestyle
• Geographic - live in or create an active, engaged community; ecological wellness
• Spiritual - nurture hope, purpose, legacy, wisdom

How does the financial crisis affect us as Boomers and older? We need to face up to some realities: the aging population is putting pressure on the infrastructure worldwide; home values might never recover; we cannot downsize to go to assisted living if we or our relative need that; health care access is deficient for many groups; investments are uncertain - we cannot control the timing of returns, so if we're ready to retire, our investments might not be ready to provide the income we need.

What can we do to compensate for these realities? To overcome them? To transform ourselves so that we make the best lives for ourselves, families, and communities?

Can we do something to change our relationship to the culture of materialism? Jetton quoted from Jacob Needleman:“The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and the outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.”

May we "recharge our purpose batteries," Jetton suggests, and focus on the following items:

1. Our abundance of powerful ideas 

2. Resiliency 

3. Practice stillness and presence

4. Live with vigor and purpose

5. Connect authentically with others 

6. Cultivate all of our 7 types of resources

What are you willing to do to change your relationship to money to live live to its fullest?

Attend the National Positive Aging Conference in Florida

Did you know that vibrant, engaged people over age 50 are gathering once again for the National Positive Aging Conference in St. Pete's, Florida, co-sponsored by the Life Planning Network, and held on December 6-9? Of the many professional conferences I've attended in 30+ years, the 1st Conference held 2 years ago was stupendous. So, I'm expecting at least as many lively, inspirational experiences now as I did then. Here's the lineup:

• Helen Dennis, nationally renowned expert on employment and retirement will give an overview of the changes that this demographic is experiencing. No longer are we "old" in the sense our parents and grandparents were - but what are we? Who are we? And what do we want to do with our 30+ more years?
• Vivacious Barbara McAfee, song-leader, will set the tone by getting the whole group singing and interacting with spontaneous and joyful music
• Inspirational Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life will talk about what calls you in the 2nd half of life, in work, creativity, community, relationship, or service.
• Dr. William Thomas of the Eden Alternative (pictured here) is a keynote speaker
• Many others will talk about spirituality, fitness, developing community, couples communication and many days of challenging topics.

Go to Eckerd College to enroll!

Do You Wonder What To Do In Your Next Act?

If you have left your mid-years' career, or intend to do so soon, and wonder what you'll do to fill your hours with challenging, delightful, meaningful things, then check out the excerpts of all my past TV shows on YouTube. You'll be delighted to find short previews of people who've left Wall Street, corporate life, advertising, teaching, social work, and many other careers and have started something entirely new.

Some are "encore careering" for pay, some as a volunteer, some part-time, some entrepreneurial. But, some qualities are central to all these people. They are excited, invested, passionate, curious, open, receptive. They are engaged in their lives.

To the left (above) is Riva Berkovitz, who discovered macro-photography in her 70s. That's me on the right. Below to the left is Amy Lampert, who left Wall Street to start her own business "demystifying" investments for women and youth. And the image on the right was painted by former businessman turned artist, Fred Mandell, whose video clip will be up on YouTube very soon. 

 

Caregiving of Older Americans Presents Opportunity for Encore Careers

Boomers are turning to elder caregiving as encore careers either by necessity as their parents become more dependent or by choice as they elect re-training in gerontology-related fields.

The Caregiving Project for Older Americans, the International Longevity Center - USA, and the Schmiedling Center for Senior Health and Education have teamed up to coordinate and disseminate information to recruit and train caregivers via community colleges all across the US.

Aside from hands-on care in elders' homes and facilities, what opportunities might arise to service the needs of this growing part of the population? A few come to my mind. Are any of these on your radar screen as you determine how you will earn income to supplement your diminished investments and savings after you leave your mid-careers?

• Developing more multi-generational communities
• Creating networks of associations to provide services to aged people who live distant from their families
• Designing of residences that allow people to age in place
• In-home services to buttress independence
• Shopping services
• Respite programs
• Financial ombuds-persons to oversee elder financial abuse
• Online and telephone support to caregivers of family members of people with Alzheimer's and dementia
• Travel companions for the elderly or disabled. Photo here from PenPalTravel for service that performs these functions.
• Nutrition consultants for people who live alone
• Exercise coaches and fitness centers for the aging population

Any other ideas that match your area of expertise? Please add to this list by Commenting below.