How to Approach Retirement Lifestyle Planning.

Senior Living or Outrageous Retirement Lifestyle?

Ready for the beach?

It’s all up to you.

So your are ready to live the senior lifestyle? You’ve studied your financials and got your money where it needs to be. They gave you a retirement party at work and today you start your retired lifetyle. It didn’t seem real over the weekend but here it is Monday morning. You don’t set the alarm but you end up awake anyway so you get up to face your new life.  As you sip your coffee, it dawns on you that you don’t know what to do.

Now what?

Welcome to Senior Living.

You are suffering from a lack of retirement lifestyle planning. You never asked yourself what retirement lifestyle you wanted to have and never learned what you needed to do to make it happen. Even sadder, you may never have realized just how outrageous your options are because you got stuck in thinking just like everybody eles. You think that your retirement is nothing more than your present lifestyle without the job. It can be exactly that- if you love everything about your current lifestyle. But when you retire you have an incredible opportunity to make substantial changes in where you live, how you spend your time and who you associate with. If you don’t consider all these options then you limit your retirement possibilities. You need lifestyle design.

What is Lifestyle Design

If you are like me, Lifestyle Design makes you think  four-hour workweek, the title of Tim Ferriss‘ book which introduced the term to the world.  The point is not the four-hour workweek – or the 100 hour work week for that matter.  The point is that you design your lifestyle and then determine what is necessary to make that lifestyle happen. Maybe you want some work in your retirement lifestyle but maybe not. The point of lifestyle design is what you want to do in those other hours- the ones where you aren’t working.

What about those other hours?

It’s those other hours in your retirement lifestyle that make the difference. Do you want to spend them beach combing in a tropical paradise, exploring new places, learning new skills or building lasting relationships with your grand kids? Lifestyle design lets you focus on what is important for you and drop all the anchors that keep you mired in mediocrity. Do you need your big house or is it important as a focus of your family? Pare away the nonessential that waste your time and money and dare to be different.

Lifestyle is multi-dimensional

This is what makes Lifestyle Design complicated. It is not a simple one dimensional decision. It is designing your ideal life. There ought to be a class for that in high school but instead we just made ad hoc decisions with the limited knowledge and resources we had. And that is why many of us are in the financial mess we are today. First we didn’t decide what kind of life we want. Then we didn’t plan the activities , education and commitments that would produce that lifestyle. And so we drifted into the ‘hope for’ life of being an employee and trusting in the financial and business integrity of our employers. We let someone else take charge.

Is it too late?

It’s never too late for lifestyle design. The earlier you start, the easier it can be to make your perfect lifestyle happen but you can do it anytime. It just takes honesty about what is important for you and a willingness to risk disapproval from people trapped in convention. Start by thinking outside the box about your dream retirement and then start taking steps to make it happen.