Forgot to Plan for Retirement and Now It's Here?That is not what I am looking for. I am 59 now. I have outlived both my parents, and all my grandparents. I am a father of small children, and self-employed, I am a husband, and I am 59, and I can feel it. And even though I have husbandly and parental duties, just like any father of an eight and three year old, I know I am also ready to move into a transition which reflects my age. In the past we have called that transition retirement. When I think of how my father approached retirement, I remember that at an early age, he was telling me that my job was to take care of him. That memory is strong for me, and I understand now that the reason for that strong memory is the emotion that my father brought to his message. He was serious and I took the message seriously. As a boy, I heard the fear in his message, perhaps of being dependent on someone or somebody that does not care. As an adult, I hear that caring for family is our most important duty. So what is it that I am going to do with this internal process about aging and retirement and elderhood and fatherhood and energy and money and parenting and husbanding and spirituality and death and legacy? That is what I am hoping to explore here. I know that in the two years or so prior to today, I have gone through an internal struggle about some rule I learned along time ago about my value after 60 years of age. I had to work hard to manage my thinking and feelings in a constructive way, because this rule said that I had reached a point in life where I no longer could be of value because I could no longer produce strong activity. Implicit in that internal discussion was the sense that life was over, and it was time to die. The thought/script left me bitter and resentful. And yet my life was/is filled with challenge, professionally, and personally. I love every aspect of my business, and attend to it daily, my children are growing and thriving, my wife likes being close to me, and I enjoy having her close. We have just bought a new house, in a subdivision one street from a soybean field, private, beautiful. Yesterday, we bought and planted trees, some transplanted from our old house. My workouts are strong, my study of Chi Gong is amazing. When I am leading a group in my practice, I am in Flow as Czikzentmihalyi (sp?) would say.
How could I be struggling with an internal script which said, "You are too old to be worth anything"? RETIREMENT CHAMPIONS As I thought about how to prepare for retirement, it slowly dawned on me that there are several people in my wife's family who are doing this transition very well, and I am willing to bet that there are many others living very powerfully who have looked beyond the marketing to Baby Boomers. (Believe that Boomers are not a target market? Read "Turning Silver Into Gold"). KAREN MARTINEZ My mother-in-law buys small homes in surrounding communities and guts them and rebuilds them and sells them. Lots of the tear down and tear out work, and rebuilding she does for herself. And that is between nursing gigs. Karen has four grown children, and innumerable grand children, and drives a small pick-up truck. She recently complemented me on the storage shelves I built in the basement of our new house. What a neat way to challenge yourself, to buy a house, create a vision of what it might look like, and then build it. You know that the vision always encounters problems, usually from prior remodels. She handles those problems without sledge hammering them. RUeBEN and MARY BARNHART Ruben retired from his Quaker Oats position several years ago, and he and Mary moved back to their small town roots , to be close to family. Mary is my wife's aunt. They have a beautiful town house just perfect for grand kids, and family gatherings. Little did they know that their lives would become complicated by a serious illness to Mary, cancer, and its treatment. Not once did I hear them complain, nor did it seem that their involvement with family changed. By the way, the treatment appears to be completely successful. I see courage personified. DONALD and GAIL DIRKSEN Don is my wife's father, Gail her step-mother. Don retired from his position at 65, I believe, and has kept busy doing carpentry jobs for mostly us. He did a wonderful job remodeling our kitchen in our old house, and did a number of beautiful jobs for us, replacing floor boards for example, as we prepared to sell it. He did water heaters, and new wiring for an air conditioner, for example, and they attend innumerable grand child related activities. Don and Gail have a wonderful Koy pond in their huge back yard, around which the family gathers several times a year. Gail underwent serious surgery for a heart condition several years ago, and Don had a bout with bursitis in his hip not long ago, and he creaks, like I do, when he finishes a job on the floor, for example, and has to stand up again. But that did not stop him from helping us move in 90 degree heat. OTHER RETIREMENT CHAMPIONS? I am going to look for more of you, to celebrate your success and panache. (Click on the Retirement Champions button in the NavBar and add your own Champion). MY INTERNAL STRUGGLE I think that my internal discussion was really brought to consciousness a year and a half or so ago when I saw the Rolling Stones at halftime of the Superbowl, and while they rocked, it was easy to see that they were my age, and I do not rock 'n roll like I used to, and those anthems that were popular in my high school and undergrad days were now 40 years old. (I remember watching the first Superbowl in '67). Somehow forty years old for a Rock 'n Roll tune was "old". And "old" meant weary. Thirty year old Rock "n Roll anthems were not old. LATE LIFE PARENTING I am the Dad for a nine year old boy and a three year old girl, and parenting is something I take seriously. I am concerned for how my son sees me, since I look different than the parents of his friends. (My daughter is not yet worried about how Dad looks). He is worried that I will die to soon. And he was surprised this summer when I could sprint up and down the basketball court and resurrect a facsimile of some youthful moves. He copied me. He asked me the other day about how I got so strong, and he has seen me work hard on my strength and health. I constantly watch him for growth and trouble and development. Can parenting at this stage of my life be called meaningful? I would say yes. BOOKS AS RESOURCE I have come across a couple of interesting books recently, and one, titled, "What Color is Your Parachute? For Retirement," by Richard N. Bolles and John E. Nelson, really gave me pause for thought. Bolles and Nelson suggest that your best retirement/transition can be customized, planned, created, and involves mostly an inward journey. They suggest that a model of retirement well-being involves the interplay of three things, each of which has its own components. Those three things are Happiness, Prosperity, and Health. Happiness is built on the foundation or psychology and sociology. Prosperity is at the intersection of finance and geography. (See the Bookwise link for information about income from an innovative bibliophile company). Health is supported by biology and medicine. Bolles and Nelson want to know if I am interested in creating a retirement, or just accepting the one that shows up. If I decide to create my own retirement, they suggest that I do some exploring inward, and that planning for the financial part of retirement, while essential, is just part of the retirement picture. Nurturing my health to so that I have a long retirement health span to match my longer retirement live span will be necessary. Next, I will need to ask myself questions about retirement happiness. What is it that makes me Happy? I do not want to leave my happiness to chance, they say. Design a retirement that is meaningful and fulfilling? In other words, what do I want to retire to? Retirement in the past has been about leaving something. Now I want to prepare for prosperity, health, and happiness, and create RETIREMENT WELL BEING. So let us begin without further ado. DISCOVER YOUR RETIREMENT STRENGTHS From Bolles and Nelson, who say it very well, "When people dream about creating a happy retirement and when marketers engineer their images of what happy retirement looks like, they tend to focus on carefree fun and enjoyment. (We can call that pleasure, but pleasure is transitory and usually demands more pleasure). But scientific inquiry into lasting happiness has identified three critical factors that the fun-and-enjoyment approach overlooks, pleasant activities, engaging activities, and meaningful activities. PLEASURE This level of retirement happiness is based on your INTERESTS, and involves leisure and relaxation, like a hobby, travel, spectator events, socializing. They are low involvement, and brought a counterbalance to your work when you were still working. Whether they will bring a rich happiness to your retirement remains to be seen. Can they fill decades or retirement? ENGAGEMENT Can "engagement" be indentified? Bolles and Nelson say yes, by identifying your strengths, those talents and abilities that you excell in and get great satisfaction from using. MEANING Bolles and Nelson say that meaning, while hard to pin down, requires the use of my abilities in service to something larger than myself, and that larger something comes from my belief system. WHAT IF I DO NOT WANT TO RETIRE OR CANNOT RETIRE? ARE THERE OPTIONS FOR BUILDING SUPPLEMENTAL RETIREMENT INCOME OR RETIREMENT BUSINESSES? WHAT ABOUT ONLINE? I am doing just that. While my counseling practice is going to provide income for a long time, I am building a number of online options, including this website. Click on the link at the bottom of this page, and look over your SBI (Site Build It) options. Or check out the Bookwise link in the Navigation Bar. If you are a reader, Bookwise is for you.
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