Hi everyone. I just wanted to give you a quick update on The Ideal Retirement Design Guide. It’s taken me longer than expected to get it ready, but it’s almost here. The good news is that the extra time paid off in a pretty amazing resource that is comprehensive and easy to use. It will walk you step-by-step through the process of designing the retirement you’ve always dreamed about.
I’ll give more details next week (including when it will launch, what it will cost, what is included and how it can help), but for now I just wanted to give you a quick heads up that it will soon be available, just in case you’re looking for a good Christmas or New Year’s Resolution gift for yourself.
For now, I wish you all a restful and Happy Thanksgiving (for my non-U.S. readers, tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the States, when we reflect on what we’re thankful for and eat too much turkey). Enjoy the holiday and thank-you for following along here at Intentional Retirement.
Before updating you on the book giveaway, I just wanted to say THANK YOU! You guys are fantastic. To enter the contest for the free copy of The Happiness of Pursuit, all you had to do was leave a comment or drop me an email to tell me where in the world you call home. You did that for sure (hundreds of you in fact), but you didn’t stop there. Many of you thanked me, showered me with kind words, shared inspiring stories from your own retirement, and otherwise were just all kinds of awesome. So thank you. It was great to hear from each and every one of you.
This morning I printed all your emails and comments, dropped them in a pillow case, shook it up, and picked out somebody at random. That somebody was Dennis from Pacific City, Oregon. Congrats Dennis! The book is on the way. (Note: After the drawing everything went into our secure shred/recycle bin).
If you didn’t win, I’d still encourage you to swing by your local bookstore and pick up a copy. It’s a fast read and timely as you start to think and plan for 2015.
What makes a great quest?
All this talk about having a quest might have you wondering, “What exactly qualifies as a quest?” Chris shares 5 things:
A quest has a clear goal and a specific end point
A quest presents a clear challenge.
A quest requires sacrifice of some kind.
A quest is often driven by a calling or sense of mission
A quest requires a series of small steps and incremental progress toward the goal.
Let’s look at an example. In the emails over the last few days a reader shared with me her plans to hike the 500-mile Camino de Santiago between France and Spain next year. Does that qualify as a quest?
Clear goal and specific endpoint = Walk 500 miles. Stop at the steps of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostella. Check.
Clear challenge = Did I mention it’s 500 miles? Check.
Sacrifice = Expense, time off work, weeks of walking. Check.
Often driven by calling or mission = This particular quest is often done as a spiritual pilgrimage, but many do it as a way to answer the call of adventure and excitement in their life. Check.
A series of small steps and incremental progress toward the goal = It takes about 2,000 steps to walk a mile, so 500 miles equals 1,000,000 steps. Hiking the El Camino is literally taking small steps toward your goal. Check.
How about you?
We have a few months left in 2014. As you think about 2015 and beyond, consider the list above and see if you can dream up a quest that brings meaning, excitement, and purpose to your life. As I mentioned last week, I’m doing this over the coming months as well, so touch base if you have any questions or if there’s anything I can do for you.
Have a great weekend, and remember…Life is short. Be intentional.
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:
“One cannot really come to appreciate one’s life, save by playing with it and hazarding it a little.” ~ Jack London
Just over a month ago we packed our bags and hit the road for Mini-Retirement #1. The trip was part vacation and part experiment as I tested out some of the things that I’ve been writing about here at Intentional Retirement.
Before I fill you in on how it went (spoiler alert: it involves a visit to the emergency room), let’s do a quick review of the “What?” and “Why?”
What is a mini-retirement?
A mini-retirement is when you take small chunks of your retirement (say a month or two) and spread them out during your working years. That way you can do some of the things that you’ve been putting off until “Someday” while you’re still relatively young and healthy and you’ve got your kids and/or friends around to enjoy them with you. A mini-retirement can focus on travel, hobbies, or anything else you’ve wanted to do but have been putting off until retirement. For more on the concept read this: The Case for Mini-Retirements.
Why?
Because you only have one short, precious go-around at this life. You can either spend it dreaming about “Someday” or you can decide what you really want out of life and start taking those plans very seriously.
How did things go?
When I first proposed the trip to my wife I told her it would either be a great time as a family or the biggest mistake we ever made. Thankfully, it was 100 percent the former. The weather was perfect, the people were friendly, and the scenery was absolutely amazing. We hiked places like the Cliffs of Moher and the Wales Coast Path. We frequented local pubs where live music, a cold pint, and friendly conversation with the locals were always on tap. We took guided tours through a few thousand years of history in places like Stonehenge, the Roman Baths, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, the Guinness Brewery, and the Jameson Distillery. Most of all, we spent four weeks of relaxing, memorable, focused time as a family. I could go on and on about what we saw and did, but instead I thought I’d share a few takeaways from the trip that you can use for your own life and retirement.
12 Takeaways
Have a quest. All told, we were gone 31 days, but the trip was much more than that. It was 9 months of saving, planning, anticipation, dinnertime conversations, overcoming obstacles and figuring out logistics. And once the planning was over we actually got to summon a little courage and sail away from safe harbor. We got to have interesting experiences and make memories that will last a lifetime. We got to return home different than when we left. In short, it wasn’t a vacation. It was a quest. A quest can take an ordinary month or year and turn it into something interesting, exciting and memorable. There are about 25 weeks left in 2014. What kind of quest can you dream up?
The conditions are never perfect. Had we waited for the stars to align perfectly, we never would have gone. The time never seems to be right. You could always use a little more money or a few more days at the office. But we went anyway (non-refundable airfare and accommodations are always a good motivator) and you know what? Everything worked out great. So don’t wait for the perfect time. It will never come.
If it’s going to be, it’s up to me. Write that on your bathroom mirror. It might sound a little corny, but at the end of the day, it’s not your boss, your spouse, your trainer, or that retirement blogger who are going to make things happen in your life. It’s you. Period. No one can live your life for you. The hard work of making things happen is your responsibility and the satisfaction of a life well lived is your reward.
Your health is WAY more important than you’re making it. Almost everywhere we went there were tour buses loaded with traditional retirees. Some of those people were spry and fit and able to get around, but many of them had visible health issues and were limited to exploring within a very short distance of the bus. Contrast that with the couple we saw while hiking in Wales. They looked to be in their mid-70s, but you could tell that they had worked at staying fit and healthy throughout life, which is why they could head out for an all day hike on a rugged coastline. We can’t control everything about our health, but we can control much of it. I came home from this trip with a renewed desire to be healthy so I can enjoy whatever years I have left to the full.
Solitude begins where the pavement ends. The Cliffs of Moher are absolutely stunning. They are sheer, 600-foot cliffs that abruptly delineate where Ireland ends and the Atlantic Ocean begins. The parking lot was a zoo. The visitor center too. The concrete viewing platform was pushing allowable capacity. But if you walked 50 feet (Seriously. 50 feet.) away from the pavement, you pretty much had the path to yourself. What came next was one of the most beautiful 8-mile hikes you could ever hope to take. Rolling hills. Beautiful wildflowers. Grazing sheep and horses. And mile after mile of those cliffs all to yourself. Too often people pull into the parking lot, get out for a quick look, check off the item on their bucket list, update their status on Facebook, and then move on to the next place. The more I travel, the more I realize that some of the best things are found away from the crowds and off the beaten path.
Live an extravagantly modest lifestyle. We’ve learned a few tricks for traveling on a budget over the years, but there was no getting around the fact that this trip was expensive. That’s ok though, because we’re willing to spend miserly on things that aren’t important to us so we can spend a bit more extravagantly on things that are. I like this way of thinking because it provides you with a bigger “return on investment” for the dollars that you’re spending. You can read more about it here: The benefits of an extravagantly modest lifestyle.
Most of our excuses are bogus. People are nice pretty much everywhere. They don’t hate Americans. The food won’t make you sick. You can afford it. You have the time. The excuses we tell ourselves are usually red herrings for “I’m not making it a priority and I don’t want to put in the effort.” Sorry if that’s blunt, but it’s true. If it’s not happening, it’s almost certainly your fault. You can make that truth sting less by deflecting the blame onto something else, but that won’t get you any closer to your ideal life.
Things will go wrong, but you’ll figure it out. My previous point doesn’t mean that things won’t ever go wrong. They will. I can’t think of a trip where something hasn’t gone comically wrong. I sliced my thumb open cooking a late dinner in a small town in England and had to figure out where to go to get stitches. I lost my credit card in Paris. I had my car break down in the middle of nowhere in El Salvador. Yes, things will sometimes go wrong when you travel, but that’s not a reason to stay home. You’ll figure it out and move forward. It’s all part of the adventure.
Rent houses whenever possible (they’re usually cheaper and better than hotels). Hotels are small, cramped and impersonal. Houses give you a place to spread out. They give you a place to cook meals and do laundry. They make you feel more like you’re at home. Not only that, but they put you in a neighborhood so you can get away from the touristy places and experience the restaurants and shops popular with the locals. We usually rent from either Airbnb or VRBO.
The longer you can go, the better. All vacation days are not created equally. Modern travel can be challenging. Navigating airport security and then spending the day in Peasant Class on a cramped airplane can be exhausting. If you take a seven day vacation (the typical break in the U.S.), two of those days are spent in the aforementioned airplane and two of those days are spent either a) recovering from the airplane or b) packing up to get back on the airplane. That leaves 3 actual days of vacation. 3 days is a weekend. So basically, our modern vacations are super expensive, exhausting weekends. You can remedy this by taking a two week vacation (or three or four). When you do that, the travel days are a smaller part of the whole and you can actually enjoy your time away.
Go where the dollar is strong. One reason we chose Ireland and England was because my wife wanted to be somewhere English speaking for our first experience with such a long trip. I doubt we could have made a worse choice when it came to expenses. The Euro is strong against the dollar and the Pound is even stronger. Between the conversion rate, the VAT tax, and the fact that major tourist cities are expensive to begin with, we could pretty much count on everything being 2-3 times more expensive than at home. It doesn’t take long when you’re spending $25 on a cheeseburger or $8 on a pint of Guinness before you decide that your next trip will be to somewhere like Ecuador or Vietnam.
Last, but not least: Don’t wait. “I wish we had started doing these sooner” was a common refrain toward the end of the trip. I can’t turn back the clock, but I’ll definitely make use of mini-retirements in the future. The lesson here was not to wait. Delayed gratification is overrated. Regardless of whether your goal is travel or something entirely different, get started on that now. Doing something that you’ve always wanted to do is like planting a tree. Sure, the best time to start was 20 years ago. But the next best time to start is now.
Thanks for following along with this little adventure. I hope you found something useful or encouraging for your own life. Also, thanks for being patient while I took a break from writing during the trip. I’ll get back to my normal posting schedule now that I’m back. And remember…
Life is short. Be Intentional.
Joe
P.S. If you want to see some pics from the trip, just visit my Instagram page.
What are you waiting for? Permission? Extra time? Enough money?
What’s holding you back? Fear? Laziness? Uncertainty?
I’ve struggled with all of those things at one time or another. In fact, I’m struggling with most of them right now as we get ready to head out on our first mini-retirement (update on that next week).
But here’s the thing. The time will never be “right.” The conditions will never be “perfect.” The things holding us back will never magically align and start flashing a giant green light.
The road less traveled will never be safe, risk free or totally clear. Sometimes you just need to go. To try. To step out and take a chance. If you don’t, that chance will vanish. “To wait” has a funny way of becoming “too late.”
When that happens, you’ll no longer have something trivial like money or fear holding you back. It will be something much harder to overcome, like your health or some other door that was once wide open only to slam shut.
So don’t wait. Your life and opportunities won’t go on forever. Someday it will be “too late.” That realization should cause you to live with a sense of urgency and to focus on the people, issues and goals that are important to you. Time will rush on. What will you do to make the most of it? What will you do to live a meaningful life and leave the world a better place?
“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood—it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life. It’s so easy to make it complex.”
~ Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia
Minimalism and a Meaningful Retirement
I recently sat down for a conversation with Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist to discuss how we can simplify our lives in order to better focus on what’s important. What prompted the conversation?
I have often joked that my life resembles a Rube Goldberg machine. It gets results—food on the table, work done, semi-regular exercise, etc.—but often only after a complex and convoluted series of steps.
As you can imagine, this sometimes creates no small amount of cognitive dissonance as I try to hold the contradictory ideas of living an intentional, meaningful life while constantly struggling with busyness and complication.
I’m guessing some of you are dealing with the same problem. I don’t want retirement (or life in general) to look like the equivalent of a cluttered junk drawer, so I reached out to Joshua to get his thoughts on how minimalism can help deal with the problem. He defines minimalism like this:
“Minimalism is the promotion of things I most value and the removal of everything that distracts me from it.”
So it’s not necessarily about how many shirts you have or how big your house is. It’s about defining what’s important to you and what isn’t. Then you ruthlessly cut the latter in order to create space, time and money for the former. It’s about becoming a minimalist in the things that don’t matter so you can become a maximalist in the things that do.
What are some practical ways to do that? What are the benefits? How can we simplify life, minimize stress, and focus on what we really want out of life? Answers to those questions and more are in my interview with Joshua. You can either listen to it using the player below or, if you’d prefer, I’ve attached a PDF transcript as well. [Note: If you’re reading this in an email, you may need to view the post online in order to use the media player.]
After listening, spend a few minutes thinking about ways to clear the clutter from key areas of your own life. Your possessions are an obvious place to start, but don’t forget things like your work, relationships, obligations, finances and goals.
I’ll write more about how to simplify life in retirement in future posts, but until then, you may want to check out these articles on Joshua’s blog…
One last note. We were updating our web hosting last week and a glitch caused an email titled “Hello World” to be sent unintentionally. I apologize for the annoyance.
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