Plan For A Boring Retirement, And You Will Never Be Stressed

Our culture idealizes youth so much that most people dread the thought of retirement.  Calling it the Great Resignation only helps when you are young enough that if you nope out of the workforce today, you will still be young enough and healthy enough that you have many long years of income-earning potential ahead of you when you inevitably see the error of your ways.  The idea that the money you have now is all that you will ever have is downright scary, unless you are mature enough that you have made peace with it.  Financial planners who tell you that you need $1 million to fund your retirement are doing so as a prelude to a sales pitch in which they promise to grow your investment to that amount, for a hefty price.  If you know how much you can expect your retirement income to be, you have avoided the first mistake of retirement planning.  For help avoiding the second mistake of retirement planning, contact an Orlando estate planning lawyer.

Retirement Is Not a Bucket List

The second big mistake of retirement planning is to see retirement as a series of events and to plan for it as such.  There is no harm in having lots of fun activities on the agenda for your first year of retirement; this is an effective way to motivate yourself to tackle the more tedious parts of preparing for life as a retiree.  It’s easier to motivate yourself to fund a revocable trust if you are looking forward to a summer road trip where you visit your old high school friends in different states and a winter cruise to the Caribbean islands.  It’s fine to have a bucket list, but retirement is not a bucket list.  If you spend retirement crossing peak experiences off of your list, eventually the only item remaining on the agenda will be to kick the bucket.

Envisioning a New Normal

According to Joseph Coughlin of Forbes, the fun stuff you have planned for retirement, the travel and the home renovations, will take you enough days to fill three years, but your retirement can last decades.  Do you really want to spend 17 years just twiddling your thumbs and thinking about how little time you have left on Earth?  Retirement planning should be about planning for a new normal.

Plan for the uneventful days.  Perhaps you and your spouse can downsize to one car when you no longer have to commute to work.  Imagine Wednesday afternoons when you drop your spouse off at choir practice, go shopping at Publix, and then pick your spouse up when practice ends.  Think about non-financial ways to help your children now that you have more free time.

Contact Gierach and Gierach About the Boring Parts of Retiring in Florida

An estate planning lawyer can help you daydream about retirement in Florida and then get around to the practical aspects.  Contact Gierach and Gierach, P.A. in Orlando, Florida to discuss your case.

Source:

forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2024/07/31/why-your-endless-summer-retirement-dream-is-a-fantasy/