For A Successful Retirement Plan, Think Beyond The Bucket List

You probably have some ideas about things you want to do when you retire, and while the retirement activities that people look forward to sometimes come to fruition, the highlight reel of anyone’s retirement does not reflect reality.  The experiences that you are looking forward to last a few weeks at most, and they involve major one-time expenses.  As your retirement approaches, you should think more about how the ordinary aspects of your life, the ones you take for granted, will be when you retire.  Think more Publix, less Mammoth Cave.  This process is considerably less fun than looking at websites of places you would like to travel and pasting the links into a Word document called “Retirement Travel Destinations;” in fact, it is even less fun than listening to the incomprehensible screed from your grandchildren about how technology has advanced to where you can save your favorite aspirational web content without laptop computers, Word documents, or the copy and paste feature.  If you need more support to make realistic plans for retirement, contact a Tampa estate planning lawyer.

The Plural of “Peak Experience” Is Not “Retirement”

According to Joseph Coughlin, the average retiree spends 8,000 days in retirement.  That is more than 20 years.  You might think that you want to spend your retirement traveling, but even the most adventuresome twentysomething would long for the comforts of home after 8,000 days of peregrination, to say nothing of the fact that his or her twenties would be long gone by that time.  Besides that, only the wealthiest people can afford years’ worth of travel with the kinds of accommodation that seniors require; your septuagenarian bones scaling a ladder to the top bunk is not a pleasant thought.

Worst of all, when you put all of your peak experiences together, you get a bucket list.  WE all know what happens at the end of a bucket list, so if you plan for the highlight reel but not the day to day monotony, you get an anxiety-ridden collision course toward death, which is also what you get if you do not make any plans at all.

Finding a Tolerable Monotony on Your Budget

The first step to planning your everyday existence as a retiree is to calculate your retirement income based on your current saving behavior, not on wishful thinking.  After that, decide whether to stay in your house or sell it and move to a retirement community.  Think about activities that take time but not money, such as acting in community theater or joining a group of sons and daughters of World War II veterans as you prepare to publish your late father’s letters.

Contact David Toback About Retiring to Florida

A Central Florida probate lawyer can help you plan for the less interesting parts of retirement, based on the money you have and not the money you wish you had.  Contact David Toback in Tampa, Florida to set up a consultation.

Source:

forbes.com/sites/josephcoughlin/2024/07/31/why-your-endless-summer-retirement-dream-is-a-fantasy/