The importance of planning your purpose in retirement

“OK, you want to retire at 55. What are you going to do? You’re retired now; what are you going to do?”

A lot of people don’t have an answer for that. All they see is, “I want to retire at 55.” It’s all rainbows and happiness and puppy dog tails. But they have no idea what they want to do with themselves. Time after time you’ll see people retire, and then sometimes divorce happens. They feel like they don’t have a purpose anymore. Some people might have been a CEO of their company, and they’ve had a purpose for the last 25 years. They were the boss and everybody looked up to them for this specific reason, for their knowledge, for whatever. They don’t have that anymore. And they’ve got to be prepared for it.

I tell people that we’ve seen people where they’ve retired and within five years they’re dead, because they had no purpose and they couldn’t find anything to fill their time with that gave them meaning. They just sat around and did nothing and basically rotted away. You’ve got to plan for it, you’ve got to have the mindset of, “Yes, I need to save for my retirement, I need to plan for it. But also what am I going to do when I am retired?” Are you going to volunteer? Some people might have a hobby farm. There’s plenty to do on a hobby farm. So they’ve got that sorted out. For other people, that blows their minds because they really haven’t thought about it. All they thought about was, “I see all these guys retiring; I want to retire too.” But they have no idea what it looks like.

Travis D. Manning, CLU, CFP, is a 10-year MDRT member from Caledonia, Ontario, Canada. Hear more in the November episode of the MDRT Podcast:

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