About 15 months ago, we set off from Chicago on our initial journey into this next life-phase. R was fully retired and I was planning to live a mid-life gap year of fun and adventure. This journey included relocating to the Western part of the U.S., buying a little cottage in Bend, OR., and lots of planned travel varying in levels of adventure.
We've been living in our Bend house now for six and a half months so I'm over due for my six month check in -- to see how retired life is working for me, since I consider these six and a half months my initial retirement. As email-luck would have it, my friends at Vanguard recently sent me the article 5 Things to Think About on Your Journey to Retirement. Perfect, I thought, I'm in the mood to think and analyze. More than half the article focused on planning basics -- when to start saving, figuring out your savings needs, calculating retirement expenses. Important stuff but not the focus of my six month evaluation. The last section grew more interesting with questions like What's your vision for the (retirement) future? Now we are talking, I thought -- let's start exploring how we want to live our lives. My interest built as I anticipated that the article's last section would help me assess and clarify how my own journey was moving along.
The final section opened with You're living life as a retiree -- finally! Is there anything about your lifestyle that hasn't met your expectations?
Great question, I thought as I read on. I'm ready to think about this.
"About five years after you retire, consider asking yourself whether or not retirement is what you thought it would be...."
Wait! What the f...? Five years? Wait five years to ask this question? Are they nuts?
Suddenly, my friends at Vanguard were not such good friends. Or at least not bright friends. They seemed to be ignoring one of the enormous realities of life -- that unforeseen events happen that can quickly change one's plans -- while at the same time suggesting that one diddle away a fair amount of precious time before evaluating how life is going. From my perspective, this is a big problem.
Let me explain.
As a psychotherapist, I'm a believer in development and developmental phases (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, etc.) in that life can be roughly and flexibly broken into stages, with attending tasks or events associated with each phase. This idea applies to retirement. Michael Stein, CFP, is often attributed with (though others may have espoused this) the idea that for most people living in retirement follows three separate age related stages -- The Go-Go Years, The Slow-Go Years, and The No-Go Years. The related ages for each stage are somewhat loosely configured as
Go-Go Years --ages 55 (or 60 or 65) to mid-70s. These are presumably one's most active and healthy years, when one has lots of get up and go.
Slow-Go Years -- roughly mid- 70s to 85 when for many dashing through retirement
seems less appealing and health and general aging cause them to slow down.
The No-Go Years -- 85 to ........ when retirees just don't go much. These are more the
rocking chair on the porch years. Ok I know what some of you are thinking -- you've heard
stories of people in their 90s running marathons or cycling in the Senior Tour de France, or climbing the Himalayas but those folks are likely exceptions. I've also heard people anticipate their own life expectancies in retirement based on their parents. Some describe how long a parent, an aunt or uncle lived rather than how well they lived in retirement. Quality of life. My own father died at age 84 but I don't think anyone, including him, thought his last six to eight years were his best and most active.
Others never live to see retirement. My mother died at age 55 well before she could retire. I've known plenty of others who died in their mid to late 50s or early 60s never knowing retirement's pleasures. To my way of thinking, arriving at the Go-Go Years is a privilege, probably a gift and one not to waste.
Let's go back to Vanguard's idea that after five years in retirement one evaluate how retirement is progressing. Let's say Ms. Susie B., an attorney, retired at age 65 and following Vanguard's model decided at age 70 to assess her retirement satisfaction. I'm no numbers genius, but seems to me that would give her only five more of the precious Go-Go Years to adjust her course and more fully live her retirement vision. That's not much time, especially after a lifetime of work.
My advice, which is not about finances, is to spend the five years prior to retiring coming to know yourself, figuring out what you want from this phase, and creating your vision of how you want to spend those precious Go-Go Years, knowing that your ideas, wants, needs will probably change and evolve once you live in that phase. And then six months or so into retirement living (not five years!), evaluate your progress so you can adjust if needed to make the most of the
active, healthy, Go-Go Years. And periodically, keep assessing your life. You never get
back any of this time. Don't waste it.
Next post -- Assessing My Initial Go-Go Years.
Hiking on Orcas Island, WA
