Retirement Plan:Stop listening to others.

Creating a retirement legacy is your job

For the best retirement life it is time to clear you head of everything you have learned up to now and stop listening to ‘experts’.  It is time for you to take charge of your retirement lifestyle and begin to think about your retirement legacy. Don’t adopt somebody else’s retirement plan.

I’ve always been respectful. I was the kid who followed instructions, colored within the lines and honored authority. My rebellions were timid and controlled. I thought that this was the way to be and what would earn me respect. It’s what my parents encouraged. It’s what I heard from school. Even though it sometimes seemed that I was the only one, I stuck to my guns and told myself that sooner or later I’d get my reward and the guys that did it their own way would get their comeuppance. It’s the life path I chose.

Time for a new retirement path.

At this point, I can’t say that the life path I chose was wrong but neither can I say that it was right. I think we all choose how respectful and submissive we need to be. I was probably too much much Dudley Do Right for my own good but that’s all water under the bridge now. Now that I’m officially old, retirement is a whole new environment.

The first 25 years of my life are about growth. Each year brought more opportunities and abilities. The possibilities are endless.  The problem was keeping this all under control and focus.

In your last 25 years, you deal with limits and decline. That is why you need to create your own retirement plan. You can’t control anything. You can only manage. Your life experience and the ability to continue to learn is the only way you can manage the physical decline. The lesson of deference and respect loses any meaning when you become the old guy. There isn’t anybody left to respect or emulate and the lessons from youth lose meaning. And you discover that the lesson about honoring your elders seems to have gotten lost on later generations. Oh well!

So stop listening to retirement advice.

That is why, my approach to retirement is to stop listening to the advice of anyone else and create my own retirement plan. I especially won’t listen to youngsters who just don’t know what they don’t know about getting old. When you begin to recognize that aging is something more than some wrinkles and gray hair, it makes you get serious. You can see the goal post ahead and you have to accept that you can’t leave the track. There is no option to the inevitable.  All you can do is manage what you have in the time remaining and keep going as long as you can and build your retirement legacy.

What that means is forgetting anything you think you know about life and whatever respectful and subservient life philosophy you used to get this far.  Now you must  get selfish and obsessive. Nobody else knows what is important for you. Nobody else knows what your unfulfilled dreams are. Nobody else can know what retirement plan will satisfy your desire to create a retirement legacy.  Nobody else can decide how to focus your mental and physical strength to make the rest of your life something that you will not regret on your deathbed.

 It is all up to you.

You have done your duty. You’ve raised your kids, shown respect to your parents, paid your dues to society. Now it is time to create your retirement legacy. No body can tell you what that should be. There isn’t anybody to listen to but your heart. So shut out the buzz all around that only confuses and focus on yourself. It isn’t selfish. It is the best gift you can leave when you die.

Do you have a retirement plan?

Do you know what your retirement legacy will be? Are you cure that this retirement plan will give you the best retirement lifestyle?