by Joe Hearn | Apr 3, 2015 | Happiness, Lifestyle Design, Retirement
In 8 Habits of Successful Retirees I talked about what actions, habits and behaviors make for a great retirement. But sometimes being successful at something is as much about avoiding the bad as it is about doing the good. With that in mind, here are 5 behaviors that will ruin your retirement.
Poor time management. Legendary basketball coach John Wooden once said “I keep track of minutes like a banker keeps track of money.” He wasn’t just referring to games either. His practices were scheduled down to the minute too. His reasoning was simple. He had 5 two-hour practices each week over the course of a 21 week season to coach his players. That is 210 hours or 12,600 minutes of practice. That time is easy to waste if you’re not very, very intentional. The same is true for your retirement. You will have a very limited time in retirement, even under the best of circumstances. If you’re not careful, it’s easy to waste days, months or even years (See also: The surprising truth about how retirees spend their day). Keep an eye on the clock and be very intentional with your time.
Waiting for permission. Too many of us sit around in life waiting for someone to tell us it’s ok to do something. Call it the inertia of permission. It can kill your retirement. Chances are good that you don’t need anyone’s permission to do what you want in retirement. You’re a responsible adult. You live in a free country. You (hopefully) have financial independence. As long as what you do doesn’t break the law or hurt someone else, just do it. Don’t wait around for someone to give you a green light. You don’t need it. Give yourself permission and get going.
Assuming. We make lots of assumptions. We assume that we won’t develop crippling arthritis in our feet. That we won’t have a heart attack walking to the front door. That we won’t be diagnosed with a life changing illness like cancer or diabetes. That we won’t get divorced. That a friend or loved one won’t die. That we won’t lose our job. Those are all things that haven happened to clients of mine over the last year and when they happened, they wiped out dozens of opportunities from each person’s “To-do” list. If you assume that the opportunities available to you today will also be available to you tomorrow, a year from now or ten years from now, then you’ll tend to put things off. One of the most valuable insights I’ve gained from working with hundreds of retired clients over the years is that these “unexpected” things happen to everyone. Don’t assume that you’ll always have time. Live your life like your opportunities have an expiration date, because they do.
Confusing “Past” you with “Future” you. Retirement should be a time in your life when you do the things that you’ve always dreamed of. For you that might be travel, leisure, adventure, volunteering or learning a new skill or hobby. When given the opportunity to actually do those things, however, people will often talk themselves out of it. They say something like, “I’ve never been one to…” or “That’s not me.” Well guess what. That might not have been you when you were working 60 hours a week and raising 3 kids, but your circumstances have changed. You need to get rid of limiting beliefs and redefine how you see yourself. Maybe you ARE the guy who becomes an expat to Ecuador. Maybe you ARE the lady who takes up skydiving. Maybe you ARE the couple that sells everything and starts a B&B in Oregon. Past you does not equal future you.
Not leveraging the first half against the second half. I have a friend who works at IBM. Early in his career he changed positions within the company as often as possible so that he could get a broad set of skills and experiences. His goal was to take that varied set of skills and experiences from the first half of his career and leverage them into a successful management position during the second half of his career.
We should all be doing something similar in life. By the time you reach retirement you’ll have about sixty years of hard won knowledge, skills, wisdom, insights and experiences. Use those things as leverage to define, shape and create a successful retirement. You know what works and what doesn’t. You know what makes you happy and what doesn’t. You know who matters to you and who doesn’t. Put that knowledge to good use.
Have a great weekend!
~ Joe
Photo by Nick Kelly.
by Joe Hearn | Mar 5, 2015 | Happiness, Health, Lifestyle Design
We put a lot of emphasis on saving enough money for retirement, and rightly so. Money is important, but as I’ve said time and again, retirement is more than a math problem. One negative side effect of our obsession with our “number” is that we forget (or never decided) what we wanted all that money for in the first place. With that in mind, here are 5 things that are more important than (or at least just as important as) money to a happy, fulfilling retirement.
1. Health. Emerson once said, “The first wealth is health.” You don’t need to be a millionaire to enjoy a nice walk on a beautiful day. Conversely, you can have millions, but if you’re constantly in pain or physically unable to do even simple things like walk up stairs or pick up your grandkids, then the options available to you during retirement will be small indeed.
2. Curiosity. Thomas Hobbes once said, “Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” Lust is an emotion or feeling of intense desire. Curiosity, therefore, is a lust to know “Why?” and “How?” It’s an intense desire to learn, explore and discover. It’s a passion to do and be. It’s an appetite for experiences and an interesting life. Money can’t buy that.
3. A willingness to act (a.k.a. Be intentional). Donald Miller once said, “If you happen to be sitting in the theater of your mind, watching through the camera lenses of your eyes and the story you’re watching isn’t very interesting, there’s something you can do about it. You can edit it. You can change it.” You are not a passenger on the plane of your life. You’re the pilot. Some initiative and a willingness to be proactive can often go a lot further than a few extra bucks in your bank account.
4. Relationships. David Rockefeller once said, “I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making one’s life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really empty and sad and material things cease to be important.” I can’t add much to that.
5. Time. Carl Sandberg once said, “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent.” Carnegie had more money than you. Kennedy had more power than you. Clark Gable (or Grace Kelly) was better looking than you. Elvis was more popular than you. Shackleton had a more adventurous life than you. Would you trade places with any of them? No, because they ran out of the one commodity that makes any of those things worthwhile: Time. Time is your most important asset, but you have less of it now than when you started reading this article. It is your only asset that never grows. Use it wisely.
~ Joe
Photo by Nick Kelly
by Joe Hearn | Jan 24, 2015 | Happiness, Retirement
Greetings from the Vee Bar ranch in Wyoming. The family and I came here for a long weekend to do a little skiing at the Snowy Range and to check Wyoming off our list of states visited. We’re trying to get our daughter to all 50 before she graduates from high school. The Cowboy State is number 21.
I’ll write more about that in a future post, but today I wanted to write about something a little different: how to find purpose in retirement. One of the most popular posts I’ve written at IR is 15 Practical Ways to Live a Purposeful Life. One of the most popular books in recent memory is The Purpose Driven Life. Neurologist, psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said that the striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans.
In other words, we’re hard wired to want purpose and meaning. That need doesn’t somehow vanish when you enter retirement. If anything, I’ve noticed that it gets stronger. When I talk to clients that have been retired for awhile, the desire to find purpose and to leave some sort of legacy that outlasts them is important.
I’m starting this series of Saturday bucket list posts and I want them to be fun and encouraging, but with this first one I thought I’d just point out that your list doesn’t need to consist entirely of bungee jumping and exotic travel. As Shakespeare once said: “Leisure is a beautiful garment for a day, but a horrible choice for permanent attire.”
Don’t get me wrong. You should absolutely do fun and interesting things. Splurge on yourself. Be a little selfish. Those things are great, but don’t forget to add items to your list like giving, serving and volunteering as well. Maybe that means doing something like my retired friend Dan who spent three months volunteering on Mercy Ships in the Congo. Maybe that’s building houses for Habitat for Humanity like my client Bill. Maybe it means volunteering in your church or running for town council. Whatever it is, be thinking of ways to use your time, treasure and talents during retirement that will have a positive impact on others and will bring meaning and purpose to you. Visit our Pinterest page for more ideas on volunteering during retirement.
Since this series will cover things on my list, I picked an item that matches up with the ideas above. Over the years my wife and I have given to an organization called charity: water that brings clean water to communities in need around the world. The wells have huge health ramifications and also free people to use their time more productively than walking miles every day just to get enough water for drinking, cooking and bathing. In 2015 I’ll take revenue from the store at IR and fund one of those wells in the name of you, my much appreciated readers. I’ll update you later in the year on progress toward the goal. In the meantime, be thinking about what you can add to your own bucket list that would be fun but would also help you fulfill your purpose in life.
Have a great weekend.
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Oct 29, 2014 | Happiness, Health, Retirement
One of the benefits of my job is that I get to see a large group of people all making decisions about the same thing: Retirement. Over the years, that has given me a large data set of decisions and their consequences. Some of those decisions are minor, while others have consequences that ripple out for decades. Some of those decisions pay off big, while others tend to blow up—often in spectacular, catastrophic, almost comical fashion.
Below are 7 decisions—big and small—that will impact your happiness, fulfillment and options during retirement. They are decisions you will never regret.
The decision to decide. Recently a palliative nurse recorded the regrets of her dying patients and compiled them in a book called “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.” The number one regret was “Not living the life I wanted.” To avoid this regret, you need to (Surprise!) decide what kind of life you want to live. But don’t stop there. Once you decide what you really want out of life, you need to start taking those plans very seriously. Imagine the satisfaction you could have if you arrived at the end of your days knowing that you did everything you possibly could to live the life that you wanted. For some practical ideas on how to do this, read Part 3 of the Intentional Retirement Manifesto A Brief Guide to Retirement Bliss.
The decision to “cut the branch.” A month or so ago I brought in an expert to help me trim and prune the trees in our yard. Most of the work went pretty quickly until we got to a large tree in our back yard. He informed me it had a branch that shouldn’t be there, but it had been allowed to grow for so long that cutting it now would make the tree look a bit silly for a few years. As I pondered what to do I asked him “When that little branch started growing ten years ago, should I have cut it then?” He said yes. Then I asked him “Ten years from now, will I look back on today and wish I had cut the branch?” Yes again. So I fired up the chain saw (it was a big branch) and started cutting.
No doubt each of us can listen to that story and use the branch as a metaphor for something in our own life. What is it for you? A job? A relationship? An unhealthy habit? Whatever it is, maybe now is the time to cut the branch.
The decision to do less. If you’re like most people, your default setting is for more. More commitments, more work, more stuff, more relationships, more money, more sporting events for your kids, more television, more house, more projects. More, more, more. The funny thing about “more” is that it can be incredibly diluting. If you have 30 projects at work, for example, you’ll probably have less impact than if you were allowed to focus on 3. This is the paradox of more. The more you try to do, the less you end up doing. If you want to do more, figure out a way to do less. Cut the unimportant (especially in retirement) so you can free up space, time and money to focus on the things that really matter to you. Less > More.
The decision to improve your marriage. Middle age is a risky time for your marriage. Hardly a year goes by that at least one of my clients doesn’t call it quits in that phase. This year was particularly bad. Divorce is never fun, but it’s even less so when you’re on the doorstep to retirement. Your assets get divided in half. Your kids will likely take sides. Your friends will certainly take sides. The dreams you had for “Someday” are off the table. How much better would it be to enter retirement in a happy, fulfilling marriage—plans, family and finances in tact—ready to enjoy the next phase? Yes, that takes work. Especially if the problems have been allowed to fester over the years. But take a long, hard look at the consequences before deciding that divorce is a better option.
The decision to bury the hatchet. A client called me earlier this year and told me that her ex-husband had just stopped by. They had been through a messy divorce due to infidelity about 20 years previously and hadn’t spoken since. Needless to say she was a bit surprised to find him on her doorstep with tears in his eyes. He wasn’t there to try to fix things. They had both moved on and married other people. He simply wanted to apologize and ask for forgiveness. My client later found out that when her ex left her house he went to her parent’s house and several other people in the family and did the same thing. It’s tough to go through life without hurting someone or being hurt by someone—usually our kids, friends, spouse or extended family. Carrying that baggage around can cause bitterness, resentment, and regret. Why live with that pain year after year until one of you eventually takes it to the grave? If it was your fault, acknowledge as much, apologize and ask for their forgiveness. If it was their fault, have grace and move on.
The decision to bet some chips. Have you ever seen the movie Rounders? It’s a movie about a poker player, starring Matt Damon. I was watching it on Netflix the other night and a quote stuck with me. Talking about poker Damon said “You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle. But you can’t win much either.” It’s easy to play life too conservatively. God knows I’m guilty of this more often than I’d like to admit. Too often we go through life unwilling to take a chance and bet some chips. This can feel safe in the short run, but like Damon said, it never results in much of a payoff. Is there something that you’ve always wanted to do, but been afraid to take the risk? The clock is ticking. Maybe it’s time to bet some chips. Win or lose, you’ll at least have the satisfaction of having tried.
The decision to get healthy. Most of my clients are in the 50-75 age range. They seem healthier than most, but here’s an abbreviated list of health problems that they have dealt with so far this year: prostate cancer, breast cancer, diabetes, hernia, heart attack (survived), kidney stones, dementia, severe back pain, glaucoma, TIA stroke, broken wrist (due to osteoporosis), arthritis, lung cancer and depression. Those are just my clients, just in the last 10 months. Health problems are a fact of life as we age. Obviously we can’t prevent all illness, but doing everything you can to be healthy can improve your odds of a long, active retirement.
~ Joe
by Joe Hearn | Sep 19, 2014 | Happiness, Pursuits
A few weeks ago I received an advance copy of Chris Guillebeau’s new book The Happiness of Pursuit (catchy title, no?). For those who don’t know Chris, he has a hugely popular blog and is a New York Times bestselling author, but he is probably best known for his goal (recently completed) of visiting every country in the world.
In the book Chris talks about the importance of finding quests that bring purpose and excitement to your life. He offers his quest to visit every country as an example, then weaves dozens more examples throughout the book where ordinary people turned a big idea and a willingness to act into a new adventure.
Get a free copy of the book
I’ve really enjoyed reading through the book and have been using it to outline a fun new quest for 2015 (more on that later this year). If you’re interested in living an intentional, meaningful life, I’d encourage you to check it out as well. In fact, I’m going to give you a free copy. Well, one of you anyway. My copy of the book is dog-eared and marked up, so I picked up another one to give away.
How to enter the giveaway? There are thousands of people all around the world who subscribe to the weekly updates at Intentional Retirement. In just the last few weeks we’ve had people sign up from as far away as North Pole Alaska, Norbury United Kingdom, and Quarry Bay Hong Kong.
I love hearing from those readers (that’s you!), so to enter the contest just go to Intentional Retirement and leave a short comment at the end of this post saying hi and the city you call home. If you’d prefer, you can also email me at joe@intentionalretirement.com. That’s it. “Hi Joe! I’m reading this article in <insert city>.” I’ll pick one of you at random from the comments/emails and follow up with you to get you your free book.
Have a great weekend!
Joe
by Joe Hearn | Sep 11, 2014 | Happiness, Lifestyle Design, Pursuits
If you’ve had a chance to read A Brief Guide to Retirement Bliss, you know how important I think it is to decide what you really want out of life and to take those plans really seriously. If you don’t decide, then three things will likely happen:
- Other people will decide for you
- You’ll say “yes” to things that don’t get you any closer to the life you want
- You will default to the uninspiring and unproductive
If your days are designed by those three things, then each day will find you further and further from the life (and eventual retirement) that you want.
Which leads me to that important question I mentioned earlier. Before adding something to your to-do list or saying “yes” to another commitment, ask yourself:
“Will this get me closer to what I really want out of life?”
If the answer is “No” then don’t do it. What’s the point of busying yourself with a bunch of tasks that don’t get you any closer to a purposeful, satisfying life?
A little lifestyle experiment
With that in mind, I’d like to propose a little lifestyle experiment. There are 16 weeks left in 2014. What can you do in that time to rework and reshape your schedule so that 2015 and beyond is spent focused on things that actually get you closer to what you want your life to be about? What commitments can you wind down? What goals can you set? How can you better align your time with your priorities? Here are a few articles that might help:
Good luck!
Joe
Photo by Nick Kelly.
