There’s a song by the Spice Girls called Wanabee and the line in the lyrics that stands out is “tell me what you want, what you really, really want“

And that’s exactly what we want to cover in this article based on our personal experience and the clients we’ve worked with over the years who we’ve helped define Living The Retirement Lifestyle for them.

There are many things to consider as you approach retirement. It’s good to start by reviewing your finances to ensure your future income will allow you to enjoy the lifestyle you want.

Let’s look at what does someone approaching retirement want?

The top things we’ve ascertained are

Lifestyle

Freedom

Money

We have our own which are PEACE, FREEDOM & FINANCIAL SECURITY

Retiring is a huge life event and many aspects to consider. Like most people of any age, you probably think retirement is nirvana (a place of perfect peace and happiness, like heaven), you think it’s going to be fantastic because after all that’s what you worked for the last 40 years.

It was the same for us but we had a big wake up call in 2008 when all the retirement planning we had done went west

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We’d invested our hard earned savings into a property portfolio which would provide our retirement income

Like many professionals, we didn’t have a company pension or a 401K (for our USA cousins) so we had to do the best we could with what we had

So now we know what we want for our retirement we have to plan for it

Talking Retirement Planning

Finances

A vital consideration in retirement planning obviously involves some financial plannng as we discussed above and organising your money so you can work out what you’ll have to live on. It can be a real shock to realise that you don’t have enough money to have the lifestyle you anticipated.

We highly recommend financial advice from a professional in this regard as it will save you a lot of heartache the earlier you do this.

Lifestyle

Writing down your aims may help you focus on what you really want to achieve – like a ‘to do’ list. Work out what you can afford to do and schedule time to make it happen, so you experience a sense of accomplishment, as you would have done at work.

The lifestyle planning may include for instance where you’re going to live, whether you want to upsize, downsize, move to a different country, move to the beach… any multitude of things

Keeping your brain active is also very important and numerous studies have shown that learning in later years can help people stay independent, so use your free time to continue to challenge yourself mentally, whether it’s learning an instrument or a language or getting a qualification… perhaps even starting a business!

And then of course there’s keeping fit and healthy. We should all aim to do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, so build up to this if you haven’t made exercise a normal part of your life previously. Why not sign up for a charity event to give you a goal to work towards?

Travel more

We had to make special mention of this because it has come up so often in conversations with our clients. If you’ve always dreamt of going on an around-the-world cruise, a wine-tasting trip through Italy, or even taking a challenge like walking the Himalayas, now you can finally make those long-held plans a reality, depending on your health and budget limitations.

If longer trips aren’t practical, mini breaks may be a good alternative – or even days out to places you’ve never visited before.

Challenges

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, both health-wise and in general, and doing something different can be a refreshing change. Some people have found that simple changes, such a joining an exercise class or a language class they haven’t done before gives them a new zest for life.

Retirement can bring testing times such as loneliness and changes to relationships, self-esteem and health, but how you deal with these can make all the difference.

Whatever your situation, retirement can also offer the potential for positive change – whether that’s volunteering for a charity, resolving to eat healthily or becoming more active.

The most successful retirement transitions are people who see it as a growth opportunity, where things they’ve always wanted to do become possible (sometimes through necessity even) and treat it like a new beginning.

If you’ve not read it, we have a book published on Amazon Retire Inspire where along with 23 friends and entrepreneurs from different backgrounds, business and careers, we give our thoughts on retirement in the 21st Century and some of the things we’re doing to make it the best time of our lives

Retiring is the biggest social trend on the planet!

If you are thinking about retirement this is a must-read. In 2016, the first of the Baby Boomers started to turn 70. This has triggered the largest social phenomena on the planet – retirement. This year and for the next 20 years EVERY day will be a world record for people retiring!

If you’ve not read our story, you can find out what we did to create the perfect retirement lifestyle – something we never thought in a million years we would be doing. Funny how life turns out isn’t it 🙂

Thanks for reading “What Does Someone Approaching Retirement Want?” and hope we’ve given you some ideas and thoughts on what someone approaching retirement wants