Retirement planning is more than just retirement income

When planning for your retirement, ensuring you have adequate income to cover your expenses is important. Although it may be easy to focus all your attention on the financial side of retirement, it is also important to ask: what does retirement really mean to you?

For some, work is not only their career but also a part of their identity. It’s a place where we can cultivate lifelong relationships that extend beyond the workplace. It’s also somewhere we can feel needed, productive, useful and experience some of our most fulfilling life accomplishments.

While many of us can imagine our future retired selves spending a beautiful day on a white sandy beach, what may be harder is dealing with the transition from our work lives after the initial honeymoon period of retirement is over. Visualizing what a gratifying day-to-day retirement will look like is not easy, but the road to envisioning and creating a successful retirement plan begins today, regardless of what career stage you’re currently in.

Steps to assist with enhancing your retirement planning:

Write down your retirement lifestyle goals and plans

If you want to start a business in retirement, research what you need to do for a seamless transition. If you plan on staying in your backyard in your hammock, write this down too so you can work toward making sure your backyard is as serene or as engaging as you need it to be. Getting your thoughts onto paper can help make retirement planning feel more real.

Embrace flexibility

Today, your ideal post-retirement plan may be establishing your own dream entrepreneurial endeavour. However, two years from now, you may prefer a life of leisure. In fact, your retirement may end up being a combination of both. Retiring is a great time to leave rigid schedules behind.

Ask questions

Even though there is no ‘one size fits all’ retirement plan, knowing what your peers are doing in retirement may provide inspiration. There is never too much you can learn from retirees as well as family, friends, peers, or neighbours planning their own retirements. Seeing how other people plan to fulfill their lives in retirement can provide inspiration for your own ideas. Retirement isn’t always smooth sailing, particularly if you haven’t prepared for it.

Examples include the immediate change in routine and the loss of social connections from work you don’t see any more, among other things. Consulting with a licensed professional can help you prepare mentally and emotionally for the transition to retirement and help you to understand your specific retirement needs.

At OPB, we offer tools and resources, such as our Advisory Services, a team of Certified Financial Planners, to assist in evaluating what you will need to ensure you reach your retirement lifestyle goals. A well-funded retirement is the first step to a successful retirement. Ensuring it’s been well planned and thought out will help you create a future that will be fulfilling and secure.