by Joe Hearn | Jan 22, 2015 | Lifestyle Design, Pursuits, Retirement
Success in just about anything can be boiled down to two things: 1) Knowing what works and 2) Doing what works. At Intentional Retirement I try to balance my writing between those two things. Sometimes I write about what it takes to have a secure, meaningful retirement. Sometimes I put those things into practice and then write about my experience.
Not surprisingly, I plan on doing more of that in 2015, but with a small twist. During the week I’ll continue to write about the nuts and bolts of a great retirement, but each Saturday I’ll write what I call a “Bucket List” post. It will be a short story about something fun or interesting that I’ve done (or am in the process of doing) from my Bucket List. I’ll include a “How To” with each article in case some of you want to try it out. I’ll post them on Saturday to give you a little weekend inspiration and also so you can feel free to pass over it or save it for later if you’ve had a busy week.
To make it fun, I thought I’d do a little giveaway with some of the posts. And by little, I mean I’ll be giving stuff away all year and it will include small things like books and big things like plane tickets. I’ll post more on the prizes and rules below.
I hope you follow along and enjoy the articles, but more than that I hope you’ll use them as inspiration for your own adventures. We’re not designed to just sit around and think about life or endlessly make plans for “Someday.” We’re designed to live life. The only way to make that happen—to make 2015 different and better than any other year—is to make plans and execute them. Knowing what works. Doing what works.
Bucket List Giveaway Rules
How do I enter? There are two primary ways to enter. First, you can follow one or more of the Intentional Retirement Social Media sites. For example, like us on Facebook and you’ll get one entry. Follow our Pinterest page and get another entry. Ditto for Twitter and Instagram. If you already follow us on one of those then you’re already entered in the giveaway (see how easy that was).
Second, you can tell your friends about the site and encourage them to sign up for our Free Retirement Toolkit. If someone you refer signs up for the Toolkit, I’ll give each of you 5 entries in the giveaway (note: if you’re already signed up then you’ve already got 5 entries). For example, get 10 of your friends to sign up and you get 50 entries and they each get 5. The only catch is that I need to know who to give credit to, so you just need to let me know. There are two easy ways to do that. You can CC (or BCC) joe@intentionalretirement.com on the email when you tell your friends about the site. Then if any of the people in that email sign up, I’ll give you the credit. You can also just have your friend respond to the “Welcome” email they get after signing up to let me know who referred them. Bottom line, just let me know who to credit.
Can I enter more than once? Yep. Every time you do the things described above you’ll get an additional entry (or entries). And no, you can’t “like-unlike-relike” or “subscribe-unsubscribe-resubscribe” to get multiple entries. All of the entries will be cataloged in a spreadsheet and maintained throughout the year. Winners will be randomly drawn from that spreadsheet, so the more entries you have, the greater your odds of winning something.
What are the prizes? The grand prize is $1,000 plane ticket on your airline of choice, anywhere you want to go. This will come in the form of a gift card on that airline, so you can use it for multiple tickets if you prefer. I’ll give that away on New Year’s Eve of 2015 so you can ring in the New Year by going somewhere awesome. Throughout the rest of the year I’ll be giving away books that I’m reading, books or guides that I’ve written, gear associated with certain Bucket List items and things I pick up on my travels.
Legal mumbo jumbo. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary. See the official rules over here.
Five-second summary: Follow along throughout the year. Get your friends to do the same. Win cool stuff. Repeat.
As always, thanks for following along. I’m excited for 2015 and I hope you are too. Touch base if there’s ever anything I can do to help.
~ Joe
Photo by Ben Carr. Used under Creative Commons License.
by Joe Hearn | Jan 7, 2015 | Health
Some of you know that my wife is from Alaska. Her dad (pictured above) was a fighter pilot in the Air Force and Alaska was the final posting. Until my in-law’s recent move to Washington, we would visit the 49th state almost every year. It is a beautiful place and I highly recommend it, but it can be a very harsh place too.
Alaska often presents you with unusual situations that don’t come up in the Lower 48. For example, when playing golf and your ball rolls against a freshly killed moose (unfortunately this is a true story), does the rule book say that you should a) Dislodge your ball and take a drop, b) Take a one stroke penalty and hit again from the fairway or c) Pick up your ball and slowly back away to the next hole because you can hear the moose murdering bear huffing angrily just beyond the tree line? If you said C, you should start making your summer vacation plans now.
I share my connection to Alaska by way of explaining how I came across a book that I read over the holidays. On Thanksgiving our post-meal conversation somehow meandered to the topic of the Alaska bush and my father-in-law told me about a book called One Man’s Wilderness. It is the story of Richard Proenneke who, at age 51, decided he had had enough of “electricity” and “indoor plumbing” and moved out to the bush. Using a few hand tools, a sharp mind and a strong back, he built himself an amazing little cabin, doing everything from felling the trees to carving the door hinges out of tree stumps. (!?!) While building the cabin, he had to grow/shoot/catch his food, cut his own firewood, and generally be a backwoods superstar. He lived that lifestyle from age 51 until he decided it was to time to return to civilization at 86.
His retirement was almost certainly more physical than yours and mine will be (hallelujah!), but something he said really struck me. He talked about how he needed some money to pay the material cost of his time in the bush (he’d have a pilot periodically fly in certain supplies), but more than the monetary price, he learned that the things he wanted to do had a physical price tag. From his journal:
“After a supper of navy beans, I sat on my threshold and gazed off toward the volcanic mountains…I thought of the sights I had seen. The price was physical toll. Money does little good back here. It could not buy the fit feeling that surged through my arms and shoulders. It could not buy the feeling of accomplishment. I had been my own tour guide and my power had been my transportation. This great big country was my playground, and I could afford the price it demanded.”
I’ll concede that you probably won’t need to hand carve your own cooking utensils in retirement or build a food cache to keep the neighborhood grizzly out of your supplies, but I’ll bet the things you want to do have a physical price tag in addition to their monetary price tag. And if you’re like most people, you’re saving so you can afford the monetary price of your retirement dreams, but that won’t matter if you can’t afford the physical price tag.
Yes, you might be able to afford the golf membership, the fancy garden tools or the trip to Spain to hike the Camino de Santiago, but if you can’t afford the physical price that those things demand then they are just as out of reach as they are to a person with no savings.
So as we start the New Year, think about your health and how important that is to everything you want to do in life. What can you do now to start making deposits into your “health” account so it will be adequate to see you through retirement?
And if you want to read Proenneke’s story (which I highly recommend) you can pick up a copy on Amazon over here: One Man’s Wilderness.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | Jan 1, 2015 | Lifestyle Design
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~Annie Dillard
How was your 2014? If you’re like most, there was some good and some bad; some things fondly remembered and some best forgotten. Whatever kind of year you had, there is always something exciting about the possibility and promise of January 1st.
As I’ve written before, each year I spend a few days reflecting on the previous 12 months and planning for the coming year. Going through this exercise helps me to reflect on past successes, fix problems, set priorities and generally be more intentional during the year ahead. I usually use a simple, three step process: 1) Do a quick annual review (i.e. what went well and what didn’t go well), 2) Set specific goals, 3) Outline strategy and tactics.
The last few months of 2014 were so busy for me that I find myself working through this process today as my family and I relax around the house. I’m assuming some of you might be in the same boat, so I thought I’d post several links to past articles at Intentional Retirement that you might find helpful as you think about and plan for 2015. Thanks for following along and stay tuned for some fun new things at the site in the year ahead.
From the Archives:
