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  Ideas for a great retirement

When Do You Need to Learn Bridge? Planning for the Fourth Quarter

1/29/2018

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When my friend, Elaine, was soon going to turn 90, she gave me all her books on bridge as a gift. I was in my early 50’s at the time. When I told her that I almost never play cards, she talked at length about the importance of planning now for later.
PictureElaine's 91st Birthday
Elaine has broken barriers and led a fascinating life, from running a modeling school to helping in the development of the original IBM office computers. She is sharp and passionate and on top of world events. She performed as a tap dancer until relatively recently. And she has made countless friends playing bridge.

While all of her volunteer and leisure activities have kept her moving and interested later in life, she  needed to give many of them up as her body changed. Bridge faithfully carried her through the later years and gave her a way to socialize, keep dates on the calendar, and keep her mentally sharp.

I still have not taken up bridge, but Elaine's urging got me thinking about how I want to plan and live my third chapter. It's fabulous how our generation pursues passions for broad, active pursuits like skiing, walking the El Camino de Santiago in Spain or a beach in the tropics, playing soccer, going to the gym, or golfing on all the great courses. What comes after that?


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Three Ways to Invest in Your Retirement: It's Not About the Finances

1/18/2018

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How are you investing in your life? In our culture, we give attention to investing our money to prepare for retirement. You may sit down with your investment planner one or more times per year to strategize about your investments and get a map of your financial situation. But do you sit down with someone to intentionally look at the life you have saved or are saving your money to live?

Let's take a look at three levels of where you are investing your time and energy and priority for a meaningful next chapter in your life. What matters for what's next?
Material Goods
The first level of where we invest time, money and energy is getting the 'things and stuff' that we want for our life at this stage. Maybe it's a different or second home, a new RV, a vehicle, or different furniture. Maybe it's finally adding that bathroom we've always wanted, or buying a new sewing machine or equipping a shop for our hobbies.

 "Our needs are progressive; our satisfaction with things
goes down with time as we get used to having them."

Things and stuff will bring joy for a time. Our possessions are ultimately separate from us. Kumar and Gilovich's research shows that our satisfaction with possessions goes down with time as we get used to having them. Our needs are progressive and we will move on to other 'things'.  I remember realizing some years back that as I acquired more things, it required more of my time to manage it all and I was less free to just go and do. If we are investing in things, buying possessions that enable experiences may be the better investment.
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Experiences
Experiences have a different trajectory. They bring us joy in the moment, provided we are present in the moment to take them in. Satisfaction with an experience actually goes up over time because the experience becomes a story that we can tell over and over, in our own minds or to others. Even an experience that didn't go well can become a great story. Maybe even more so!

Knowing where our passions lie (I can help you with identifying those), gives us a great start on knowing what kinds of experiences we want to invest in. And sometimes, completely getting out of our element makes for a page-turning experience.

Experiences nearly always link us to other people or nature, whether shared at the time or through the telling of it later. The more an experience links us, the more our satisfaction goes up.


Research shows that the anticipation of an experience brings out more happiness and excitement than waiting for a 'thing' to arrive, which can sometimes bring impatience and frustration.


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