Threshold Consulting: It's Your Life, Own It!

Living Your “Retirement” Dreams ... Now!

Recently, a friend reminded me of the story of the tourist and the Mexican fisherman. If you haven’t heard it, the gist is this:

A tourist with a Harvard MBA meets a fisherman who is content to sleep late, fish a little as a livelihood, play with his children, take siesta with his wife, and stroll into the village each evening to sip wine and play guitar with his amigos.

The tourist then describes a way the fisherman can grow his business, issue an IPO, and make millions. On the question of “what then,” the tourist tells the fisherman: “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

You may wonder, how does this apply to your life?

Feeling Lucky?

Having worked with a large number of people on mid-life transitions, I’ve noticed two general approaches to careers. Some people explored their options, made informed choices, planned, and then actively managed satisfying and rewarding careers. Others simply “fell into” their careers; fortunately, many of them got lucky, liked what they ended up doing, and stayed. Unfortunately, others who simply fell into place weren’t so lucky and ended up feeling trapped.

If you're at mid-life, the next big set of choices you face have a lot to do with the part of your life normally regarded as retirement. Since the nature of retirement itself is changing, there is an array of options – including new career choices! So, how will you deal with this transition?

You could take the I’m-feeling-lucky approach, and see what happens when you reach retirement age. Or you could start today exploring and testing options for how you want to spend your time and live your whole life. The point is: You can focus on your retirement readiness and make some plans to achieve more success and satisfaction in life.

Own your future. Own your life.

Contact me if you want to look at life options and work on taking a more planned approach to managing your life and your future.

Just what, exactly, is “retirement readiness,” and why should you care about it?

Use any phrase with the word “retirement” in it and you’re most likely to get another person thinking more about their number than anything else. This is natural. For what our financial institutions and our media have stressed in communicating about retirement is financial planning to build a nest egg to support the latter third of your life.

While retirement lifestyles are hinted at in stock photos of golf carts and sunsets, until recently, almost nothing substantive has been communicated about living in retirement. So, to think “retirement readiness” or “retirement planning” is to think savings and investments.

Yet, there are other kinds of investments you need to make today to enjoy a satisfying life tomorrow. In writing his book, Get A Life: You Don’t Need A Million to Retire Well, Ralph Warner set out to determine, among other things, what a middle-aged person can do to prepare for retirement. He didn’t ask financial planners; he asked retirees. 

What he found is best captured in this quote: