Retirement Planning, It Takes More Than Money!

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Retirement Planning - It Takes More Than Money!

While it was refreshing to read articles on retirement planning, Monday's under the heading "Sands in pension warning" that a leading hotel executive Robert Sands, had said "employers should do more to make employees aware of savings and investments" and that "workers need to save more to escape the poverty trap when they retire"- Finance alone does not automatically guarantee a good retirement.

Yet most of what passes for retirement preparation is financial planning.

Yes, your financial picture is certainly important, so much so, that the viability of your financial resources will undoubtedly determine what kind of retirement lifestyle you will have.

However, the challenges and questions that retirees will face are more complex and unfortunately, many of the most successful members of this generation will enter retirement without an adequate retirement plan in place.

In fact, they may not even have considered the necessity of having such a plan before their retirement.

Today, the real questions for those looking to retirement go beyond the traditional concerns of retirement planning as financial planning:

Will my money last through my retirement?
Will I have enough to live on?
Will I be able to afford...?
Instead, with the expected increase in life expectancy, those questions are more reflective:
How will I spend my time?
What would I really like to do?
How will I maintain my physical, spiritual and mental well-being?
What will I do about my social well-being?
How will I react to not having a job?
What will I do to keep me a productive and important part of society?
Where will I live?

Therefore, your retirement planning must bring focus and clarity to these pre-retirement questions because your Retirement will not only be a life changing transition but one of the most important periods in your adult life.

It’s that time of life that you are looking forward to after raising your children and hopefully achieving your careers goal. It will also be one of the longest periods in your lives, where you can expect to spend as much as 30 years. Therefore it deserves nothing less than your most careful and well-planned consideration.

When you plan, you have the power and ability to chart your own course. When you plan, you take full responsibility for achieving your goals and dreams. When you plan, you have the power and time to learn and implement new strategies for dealing with your changing needs and circumstances.

Finally, it is critical to plan beyond money because no matter what you may think or believe your retirement will be different from that of any other generation before you.

So, a complete retirement plan consist in equal measure of a retirement lifestyle plan -- the what, when, where, and how of living in your retirement years and a financial plan that outlines how you will support and sustain the choices you have made.

"You give up your power when you give up responsibility. The more responsibility you take over your life, the richer your life becomes." - Glenn

Retirement Planning - It Takes More Than Money!