Can you remember when you decided that you wanted to work until the age of 65 or 70 and then suddenly stop to go play golf or do a bit of traveling? Or was that the retirement path you inherited because that’s what pretty much everyone does?
Retirement is changing. It no longer has to be the same old thing it has been. You can choose to make your retirement and your life what you want it to be.
So here’s a whole new way to retire…
As I grew up I never really thought about retirement. I just accepted that I was supposed to work until a certain age and then do nothing when I became “old” because that’s what my grandparents and seemingly everyone else did.
I never made the conscious decision to take that path – society had chosen it for me.
Sound familiar?
I think it’s about time that we begin to look at retirement differently. Now, I’m not saying that we all just stop working today. But I think there are viable alternatives to the traditional retirement that still include responsible saving, a good plan, and financial protection for our families.
I believe everyone is different, so we shouldn’t have just 1 way to retirement. You should be able to find the retirement strategy that suits you, and not just by way of how you invest in the stock market…
So here’s a whole new kind of retirement to think about:
Instead of working for 40 or 50 straight years before hitting retirement, why not take several mini retirements along the way?
A brand new type of retirement idea is to spread it out over the course of your life.
Maybe you take a year off to travel through Europe when you’re 30. Then a few years later you take a 4-month mini retirement to have a prolonged visit with relatives. Then you decide you want to take 6 months in Maine to try to write that book you’ve always wanted to write. When you’re 50 you decide it’s time to take an Alaskan cruise and then a Greek cruise back to back. And a few years later you take another mini retirement to travel through Asia.
By the time you get to the traditional retirement age, you’ve already done a vast majority of things you’d want to do in retirement. And then it just continues…
And this also solves another problem with traditional retirement. Many people finally reach the goal they’ve been chasing all their lives and save up enough to retire, so they do. But when they’re actually retired, they realize that they’re bored all the time, they feel like something’s missing because they no longer get to experience the social interactions in the workplace, and they realize that they feel unfulfilled and like they are no longer making a contribution.
Why go through that? Because that’s the societal norm?
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather take my retirements when I want or need to, and continue living life the way I want…
