‘What Are You Doing After Work?’ is a book written by Dr. Alan Roadburg about retirement LIFE planning. This book, along with my time invested into the Strategic Coach program, has caused me to think about retirement differently than maybe the average person does.

Many of you know that I specialize in Retirement Income Planning. For 26 years I have helped people successfully retire, financially. However, as I approach the age of 60, I am coming to realize that perhaps I can encourage others, and myself, to develop an inspiring life purpose for our retirement years?

1. Can the next 20 to 30 years be our most meaningful and impactful period of life?
2. How do you spell retire? How about RE – TIRE? What if you were to put on a “new set of tires” for another hundred thousand miles?Dan Sullivan of ‘The Strategic Coach’ says, “If you look up the word retire in the dictionary, one of the prominent definitions is ‘to take out of use.’ When you retire, you’re taken out of use, which is a pretty sad statement. Psychologically, that idea has a profound effect on people. What does it mean to be useless? That’s reactive retirement.”
3. What are you RETIRING TO? Studies show that when you Retire From a job you really don’t enjoy, without having something exciting to Retire To, then your life will be less fulfilling.In an interview with Bob Bufford for his book ‘Finishing Well’, Dan Sullivan explains what he calls creative retirement. “At The Strategic Coach, we want you to retire from everything you dislike doing and focus your attention totally on what you love doing. We get people to make a list of everything they would no longer do if they were retired. This includes people they would no longer associate with and activities they would no longer involve themselves in. After they make their list we say, ‘Okay, now we want you to focus on everything you would continue doing, things you would like to do more of, and things you would be willing to start doing now.’”Dan Sullivan continues, “‘For the rest of your life,’ I tell them, ‘you’re going to get rid of the things on that first list, and you’re going to continually enlarge the things on the second list.’ Well, that has enormous impact on people because they realize that there’s a great deal in their life that they love doing. But one of the great tragedies – and I think it’s one of the reasons why people decline so fast after they retire – is that retirement means giving up a lot of things that they loved doing.”

I believe our 50’s, 60’s and 70’s can be some of our most productive years. We have abilities, experience, wisdom and perspective that we didn’t have when we were younger. We can bring a lot of value to a number of organizations or people, but we may need to find a new employer or association group that has the right mindset to partner with us to create a mutually beneficial working relationship.

Unless it absolutely makes bad financial sense, why “ride it out” for another 5-7 years until you can completely retire from your current job if it doesn’t provide you with much satisfaction? Think about your possibilities:

• Is it possible to job share with another person your age where you both can work 3 days per week and maybe only 9 months per year?
• Maybe there is an employer that is ideally looking for a talented person like you for a 50%-70% time commitment? You might even be surprised by how much you could be paid!
• What does your Retirement Income Plan look like if you continue working at something you really enjoy, maybe even your own business, and earn only 50%- 70% of your current salary, but you now “work” until you are 70, instead of retiring “cold-turkey” at say, 63?

You can partly retire but continue to stay engaged with work instead of stopping completely. Many find this to be a better approach towards “Re-Tirement”, as it continues to provide the things they loved while working.

‘What Are You Doing After Work?’ is a book written by Dr. Alan Roadburg about retirement LIFE planning. This book, along with my time invested into the Strategic Coach program, has caused me to think about retirement differently than maybe the average person does.

Many of you know that I specialize in Retirement Income Planning. For 26 years I have helped people successfully retire, financially. However, as I approach the age of 60, I am coming to realize that perhaps I can encourage others, and myself, to develop an inspiring life purpose for our retirement years?

1. Can the next 20 to 30 years be our most meaningful and impactful period of life?
2. How do you spell retire? How about RE – TIRE? What if you were to put on a “new set of tires” for another hundred thousand miles?Dan Sullivan of ‘The Strategic Coach’ says, “If you look up the word retire in the dictionary, one of the prominent definitions is ‘to take out of use.’ When you retire, you’re taken out of use, which is a pretty sad statement. Psychologically, that idea has a profound effect on people. What does it mean to be useless? That’s reactive retirement.”
3. What are you RETIRING TO? Studies show that when you Retire From a job you really don’t enjoy, without having something exciting to Retire To, then your life will be less fulfilling.In an interview with Bob Bufford for his book ‘Finishing Well’, Dan Sullivan explains what he calls creative retirement. “At The Strategic Coach, we want you to retire from everything you dislike doing and focus your attention totally on what you love doing. We get people to make a list of everything they would no longer do if they were retired. This includes people they would no longer associate with and activities they would no longer involve themselves in. After they make their list we say, ‘Okay, now we want you to focus on everything you would continue doing, things you would like to do more of, and things you would be willing to start doing now.’”Dan Sullivan continues, “‘For the rest of your life,’ I tell them, ‘you’re going to get rid of the things on that first list, and you’re going to continually enlarge the things on the second list.’ Well, that has enormous impact on people because they realize that there’s a great deal in their life that they love doing. But one of the great tragedies – and I think it’s one of the reasons why people decline so fast after they retire – is that retirement means giving up a lot of things that they loved doing.”

I believe our 50’s, 60’s and 70’s can be some of our most productive years. We have abilities, experience, wisdom and perspective that we didn’t have when we were younger. We can bring a lot of value to a number of organizations or people, but we may need to find a new employer or association group that has the right mindset to partner with us to create a mutually beneficial working relationship.

Unless it absolutely makes bad financial sense, why “ride it out” for another 5-7 years until you can completely retire from your current job if it doesn’t provide you with much satisfaction? Think about your possibilities:

• Is it possible to job share with another person your age where you both can work 3 days per week and maybe only 9 months per year?
• Maybe there is an employer that is ideally looking for a talented person like you for a 50%-70% time commitment? You might even be surprised by how much you could be paid!
• What does your Retirement Income Plan look like if you continue working at something you really enjoy, maybe even your own business, and earn only 50%- 70% of your current salary, but you now “work” until you are 70, instead of retiring “cold-turkey” at say, 63?

You can partly retire but continue to stay engaged with work instead of stopping completely. Many find this to be a better approach towards “Re-Tirement”, as it continues to provide the things they loved while working.