You Don’t Need to Climb Everest to Have a Fulfilling Retirement

On this episode of The Long View, author and retirement coach Larry Jacobson breaks down how people can plan for the nonfinancial aspects to retirement, what to expect during life transitions, and more lessons on retirement planning from his book, Your Ideal Retirement Workbook, A Step-by-Step Guide to Retiring With Purpose and Fulfillment.

Here are a few highlights from Jacobson’s conversation with Morningstar’s Christine Benz and Amy Arnott.

You Don’t Need to Climb Everest to Have a Fulfilling Retirement

Christine Benz: So, I felt like a lot of the book got me thinking about doing really big things in retirement. But what about people who maybe do have somewhat more modest goals? So, you reference the idea of making every soccer game for your grandkids or something like that. Do you think that thinking big can be kind of stymieing for some people, that they think they need to climb Everest or sail around the world in order for their retirement to be a success? Can you make it a little smaller scale and still be happy?

Larry Jacobson: Absolutely, you can make it smaller scale. Whatever your dream, whether it’s to sail around the world or open a corner coffee shop, that dream is just as valid as mine was of sailing around the world. And it’s more valid because it’s yours, it’s not the other person’s. I say, think big, because we’re always told, or we’ve been told that through our lives don’t be a daydreamer, be practical. And I want to encourage people to not think like that. If there’s a remote idea of moving to Italy to write the book in Tuscany, I want people to think that, hey, they can do that. They really can do that. And so, don’t think small. But if your dreams are to open a little corner coffee shop or to go to your grandkids’ soccer games or be their coach or something, that is a perfectly valid dream as long as something that you’re doing is giving you long-lasting purpose and fulfillment. We forget that at work, we have purpose and fulfillment. We have the idea and the feeling that we’re part of something larger than ourselves. And that’s what I want people to strive for in their retirement.

Where People Get Stuck in the 3 Stages of Life Transitions

Amy Arnott: Do you ever run into people who aren’t really sure what they want to do in retirement and is there any value in taking more of an experimental approach where you might try a few different things to see what you like?

Jacobson: Absolutely. Most people don’t know what they want to do, and that’s a big reason why clients come to me is, they’re going to say, I’m ready to retire, or usually clients come to me about a year after they’ve retired. And then they’re like, “Geez, I thought there’d be more, I thought it’d be more fun. I thought there’d be more to it. But I’m ending up just fixing the dishwasher and mowing the lawn.” And it’s easy to take up your time in retirement doing things like that. But just the idea of your transition to finding something that you want to do requires experimentation for a lot of people.

So, I subscribed to the philosophy of William Bridges, a great guy who wrote a book called Transitions. And he basically says that transitions come in three stages. And the first stage of a transition is an end. It’s the end of something. It’s not the beginning. It’s the end. So, you graduate, or you get married or divorced or a move or someone dies or something like that. That’s the end. And that’s what begins the transition. And then the middle stage is the exploration of new things and things that you maybe aren’t sure what you want to do. I think, again, I was lucky in that I knew that I wanted to go sailing, but most people don’t have that.

And then after you’ve experimented around for a lot of different things comes the last stage, which is the new beginning. And that’s when Julie Andrews comes running over the hillside singing the hills are alive and everything is beautiful, and the birds are chirping, and the grass is green and everything. But it’s important to remember though that each of these stages is not a parking lot. What I caution people about is that you get into stage two and experimentation and it’s great. It’s funny. Try tennis. You don’t like tennis. You try pickleball. You don’t like that. Then you try traveling to castles in Europe. OK, that was fun. Now let’s try something else. But we’re still looking for that purpose and fulfillment. That’s something that makes you feel part of something larger than yourself.

How Fear Can Stop People From Finding Fulfilling Goals for Retirement

Arnott: And in thinking about those three phases, it seems like in the first stage where something is ending, I’m imagining people might get stuck at that stage, if they’re sad about the end of a career or kids leaving the house or things like that.

Jacobson: You are exactly right. They do get stuck there and that’s why I try to urge people into the second stage as quickly as possible. But I do caution people saying this is not a parking lot. You’re not staying here forever. So, choose something. Do it. If you don’t like it, that’s OK. Fear plays a big role in retirement. And one of the fears that people have is that they’ll choose the wrong thing, that they’ll go down the wrong road, that they might not like what they’ve chosen. Well, that’s OK. You can stop and you can do something else. And you do it until you find something that you do like or where you do get that feeling of purpose and fulfillment that you’re part of something larger than yourself.