An Important Retirement Exercise

This topic is especially important to those that are married or have a significant other, close friend or relative they plan to spend a lot of time with in retirement.

Most of us tend to look ahead at retirement in fairly broad terms. An example I hear a lot from people I ask what they would like to do in retiremnt is “travel”. We’d like to travel. Great…what does that mean? We may have a short bucket list of places to see but it’s not very uncommon to just roll the idea of Travel as a concept around in our heads without getting too specific.

A friend of mine responded to my question with the Travel answer. He and his wife agreed that travel was tops on their list but had never really talked specifics…then they arrived at the magic retirement date. My friend’s idea of travel as it turned out was to go hiking in the mountains in Wyoming, do some fly fishing and maybe even camping. His wife’s idea of travel was New York, Broadway, shopping and site seeing. They were both pretty crushed to find out that the word Travel meant very different things to each other.

For this and a range of other reasons I like to recommend a book for couples to read before they retire. The Couple’s Retirement Puzzle by Dorian Mintzer and Roberta Taylor. In this book the authors break down retirement into 10 different conversations. This would include topics such as where, when and how do I want to retire, how do I know when I have enough money, what if one retires ahead of the other and other though provoking considerations. Each chapter will give examples of couples that experienced conflict and how they resolved their differences…this is all good. The real value of this book, however, is found at the end of each chapter where the authors asks a small number of questions that each person in the relationship answers on their own. The two then come together and compare notes. by discovering our differences BEFORE we reach retirement we have time to find ways to resolve the differences and enter into retirement better prepared to explore our dreams in a way that removes conflict.

The quality of one’s retirement is often impacted by we work they do in advance. This is one exercise I’ve found can be really beneficial for couples. We’ll discuss other things one can do to prepare in future posts. For now, enjoy the day and the gift of life!

Cheers!

Bob Koehler