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Dr. Catherine Anne Walsh: Offering a safe, caring place to develop a new perspective on your life and your future.
Mental Health
It should't be a scary term... but maybe it is. What do we really mean
by it?
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What Next?
Next Phase of Life Retirement Counseling
You can feel the changes in your life happening – the future beckons to you. This is where the next story line in your life begins...
Balancing the various demands your work, relationships, home and various obligations in your life has taken real skill. Achieving peak performance in your life has meant that you have developed real emotional well-being and “sea legs” to weather the inevitable storms of life. Shouldn’t you put as much time and thought into this next potentially exciting phase of your life as you did into your career, into satisfying your customers, into your home and into raising your family?
Talking with me provides a safe forum to explore possibilities and decide your path. Let’s face it: People in the United States are living far longer than their parents, but are also working significantly longer hours during their work lives. This means little time available to plan for the next stage in life. If we do not take the time to really plan this next step, we short-change ourselves. The big question is this:
How are we going to continue to engage the world when we stop or reposition our current work life?
Sure, you may be one of the small percentage of adults who have begun financial planning: life insurance, long-term health care, 401(k)s, IRAs, etc. but what about life?? You tell yourself you will get around to this, but you know that real success is not something you “get around to;” it is planned. Remember hearing about that longitudinal study of Harvard alumni some years back? Well, one piece of that study looked at how many of these alumni were achieving their goals. 83% had no goals; 14% had goals but they were not written down. Still, these 14% were out-earning the 83% - earning three times as much. Now, here’s the really interesting piece: those 3% that not only had goals, but had a written plan on how to achieve those goals were earning ten times what the 83% group were earning. What is true here about earnings is true about planning for the future: being better organized, investing more time into planning will translate into a richer experience.
Many experts in the financial world agree: Meaning, more than money, is important for a happy retirement. Sure, the “number” is important, but more important is what you are going to do with that money you have earned/saved/invested for these final exciting chapters of life. You know that you want an active retirement, and may phase into full retirement over a period of time. Having a plan for this “next phase” and how to be flexible and stay “in the game” of life takes work. The more clearly you plan these stages of life, the easier it is to gauge how much money you will really need to finance this venture.