Planning for Longevity: How to avoid Retirement Hell

I never thought that I would fail at retirement and end up in Retirement Hell. But I did.

You see, I spent my entire career – almost forty years- in the banking industry. While there, I learned a lot about money and investing and, over the years, I helped thousands of clients save for their own retirement. Furthermore, my wife is a financial advisor. And yet despite all that knowledge and expertise, I still managed to fail miserably at retirement.

Looking back, I now realize that many of my beliefs about retirement were wrong because they were all linked to the financial aspects of retirement. What I know for sure now is you just don’t fall into a happy retirement because you have a lot of money. You need financial security, of course. But designing a satisfying life takes thought, time and planning on many more levels. You need to know your needs and values, and what makes you happy, and then you have to find ways to satisfy these aspirations on a regular basis. Thinking that you will figure things out when you get there doesn’t work.

Traditional retirement planning has programmed us to think it’s all about the money, but it’s not. In conventional planning, the focus is always on the number: how much money you are going to need to retire. Few financial advisors/planners talk about the other important stuff: how you are going to replace your work identity, how you are going to stay relevant and connected, and how you are going to keep mentally sharp and physically fit, among other things.

Believe it or not most retirements fail for non-financial reasons rather than financial ones. I don’t want that to happen to you so for the past year and a half I along with five of my friends have been working on a new book — Longevity Lifestyle By Design — to help people design a life they would be happy to wake up too.

Retiring from work is simple. Figuring out what you are going to do with the rest of your life is the hard part.

Our mission is to help improve the transition to retirement and help retirees to design a life that they look forward to living everyday.

We know that many people are going to struggle with the non financial challenges that can often accompany retirement. It happened to me, my colleagues and through my discussions with other retirees discovered that it also happened to many of them as well.

We don’t want this situation to happen to you.  We felt the need to write this book to help retirees avoid all the stress and anxiety we experienced trying to figure out everything on our own.

As we wanted to help as many people as possible, we also made the decision to give it away for free.

Longevity Lifestyle by Design is a practical, how-to guide for anyone facing or contemplating retirement. It will help you:

* Find new purpose and set new goals to make your second life successful and fulfilling.
* Minimize the stress and anxiety that come with leaving full-time work or career behind.
* Understand why some people fail at retirement and how you can avoid struggling with social isolation, lack of structure, and the major changes that lie ahead.

To make sure that you get the most out of the book, we are also pleased to let you know that we also have a worksheet available that has been designed specifically for you to capture your thoughts and ideas as you read the book. The worksheet will help you build your own unique retirement personality profile by identifying your strengths, along with your strongest needs and values.

The decision to retire is one of the most important choices you will ever make as it involves major change which will either positively or negatively impact the rest of your life.

Our book was written to equip you with the framework, insights and strategies on how to live your best and longest life.

After reading it you will know exactly what you need to do, what not to do, and more importantly WHY – the rest is up to you.

Click here to download your free copy and get the worksheet.

For those who would rather read it in printed form or on Kindle, you can order it in those formats through Amazon at a special low price.

Consider it our gift to you: after all, we are all in this together.

Mike Drak is a 38-year veteran of the financial services industry. He’s the author of Retirement Heaven or Hell published in 2021, as well as an earlier book, Victory Lap Retirement co-written with Jonathan Chevreau. Mike works with his wife, an investment advisor, to help clients design a fulfilling retirement. To read more blog articles from Mike, visit Booming Encore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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