There are many models for moving from a full time career to what we call “retirement.” The model for the past century when many had pensions and careers that lasted nearly all their lives was one of stopping work one day and then sailing, fishing, traveling and playing golf and tennis the rest of one’s life. The transition from fulltime work in one’s occupation to doing other things and eventually not doing paid work at all is now different for most people as work has changed and fewer workers each year have jobs with a defined monthly pension payment at retirement.
Finding one’s path from fulltime work to something else might mean going from work to a life of leisure, but this is unlikely to be a model for the future for most people. There will be many different transitions from people’s careers and many of them will involve different paid work, volunteer work, or perhaps even decreasing involvement in one’s primary occupation over several years.
As today’s workers begin their transitions away from their primary jobs, they will be forced to deal with both personal and financial issues. Personal issues such as, who am I if I am not a salesman, or lawyer, or nurse? What will I do when I don’t have to go to work each day? For the majority who will have no defined benefit pension payment, there are big questions such as, have we saved enough, will our money last our lifetimes, and how do we stop investing for our future and positions our resources to pay us income for 25 years or more?
The financial terrain for this time in one’s life can also have its own stressors such as, in a time when certificates of deposit earn less than 1%, what alternatives are available to us to create enough income to live off of? Our “Retirement Tool Box” will present a series of blogs on the financial tools available to those who are no longer growing their retirement resources but spending them.
For comments or questions on the blog above, contact brandon.smith@lpl.com