Increase Your Chances to Retire Successfully

The months before retirement can be some of the most exciting in your life. Just think, no more alarm clock, battling rush hour traffic, endless and boring meetings, working with people who you don't particularly care for, and the tired term "doing more with less." Retirement is the solution to all of these problems, right? Not so fast...Retirement may be the solution to these problems but it might cause a whole new set of them. As a long-time Human Resources professional, I have seen many colleagues who retired, stayed out of the workforce for a very short time, and returned to the same or a very similar position to the one that they left. When I ask each of them WHY they came back to a position for which they had no enthusiasm or excitement, the usual answer was "When I retired, I felt lost" or "I didn't know what else to do with my time!" When I dug a little deeper, most of these folks told me that they felt so uncomfortable in retirement, they ran back to the one place that they did feel comfortable - the same or a similar job that they left. On the job, they were in a structured environment but in retirement, the structure was gone. Rarely have I seen a person who is retiring move from a totally structured to a totally unstructured environment with any degree of success. One simple planning technique can help your transition to be more successful. Before you retire, think about and write down what you can do to structure your days first few months of retirement. As yourself these or similar questions: - Are there particular jobs that you want to get done around the house? - Are there short trips that you can take to celebrate this milestone in your life? - Are there friends or family that you would like to visit? - Are there volunteering opportunities that you have always wanted to do but not had the time? Once you have identified what you want to do, estimate how long each task, visit, or job will take to complete or how many hours you want to devote to it in hours. Get out a calendar or use one on your computer to write down when each task, job or visit will be done. As you write, you will begin to build flexible structure into your schedule. Keep in mind that it is flexible because you can move it around, reduce or expand the timeframe (the benefit of retirement!). Be wary of over scheduling which can easily happen to people who are used to being very busy. Remember to also take time to congratulate yourself for reaching the retirement milestone. You have worked for a long time and had a successful life and career to this point. By doing this simple planning exercise can help you extend this success into this new phase in your life - retirement.