How Do You Want Retirement to Be?

One of the things that I was really excited about when I started this business back in 2008 is I was looking for some kind of retirement focused help and there wasn’t anything really.

Like, “How do I want my life to be when I’m 65 and older?” and there was nobody out there.

When I realized that I thought, Oh my God, there’s this huge untapped potential of people who are retiring with wisdom and experience and what a waste to have them sit in front of the TV and drink two cocktails tonight.

It just made me sad.

And I thought, Oh goodness, I have to do something. It’s not here. It’s not available.

I’m going to create it.

And so that’s exactly why I started this business because I didn’t want to end up that way. And I didn’t want the people that I love and know to end up that way.

But there was no model for it. There was training for it.

There was nothing.

I started at a rough time in 2008. Most people were hanging on by their fingertips to their jobs.

I would go to a dinner party or a cocktail party and people would say, “what are you doing?” And I would talk about The 3rd Act and people would turn around and walk the other way because nobody wanted to talk about retirement.

It just was not a subject that was a positive one for people at that time.

Times have changed.

Starting Retirement Planning

For younger people, I think the idea of working for the rest of your life as a drudgery doesn’t have to be that.

All of the people that I know who are retired and in their fifties, sixties and seventies want to continue to work.

It’s not that they must, it’s that they want to.

It gives them joy.

It makes them happy to work.

You have to put in your dues when you’re younger, but you’re not always putting in your dues for the rest of your life. You’re not always having to work like that.

So just to give you a little hope on the horizon.

It’s not really an age, it’s a state of mind.

It’s much better to plan before retirement and then just kind of adjust your plan as you move through retirement.

Most people start in their late fifties, early sixties,

but again, it’s not really an age, it’s a state of mind that you’ll notice that you go to work and you look around and you go,

“You know, I don’t really want to be doing this anymore. There’s gotta be more to life than this.”

And you think, and then you find yourself thinking back,

“Gosh, you know, I’m 60. I might have another 30 years or 20 good ones. What do I want to do with this precious time?”

It’s when your mind starts shifting perspective. That’s the time to begin to plan for your non-financial retirement lifestyle plan. And hopefully you’ve been planning for your retirement all along since your employment that you’ve been putting money away. So that’s really important.

But the part about designing a lifestyle plan that might come a little bit later, like in your late fifties, early sixties.

Patricia

Patricia

The 3rd Act was founded and is led by Patricia Cavanaugh — a seasoned psychotherapist and licensed coach who has helped hundreds of retirees find their path and purpose in this phase of life.

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