You’ve put in the time in your job or career. Now you’re close to retirement, whether it’s a few months or a few years away, you’re beginning to realize you’re about to achieve the long-awaited goal of freedom in your daily life.
As exciting as this important milestone of retirement appears, it can feel daunting.
Many of the clients MPPL Financial works with who are close to retirement often ask themselves – and us – the same set of questions:
- Will my savings sustain me for the rest of my life?
- Can I take that dream vacation, or buy a second home?
- How will I spend my time?
- Will I be bored?
- Where will I find purpose and meaning in my life?
- How will it work when my spouse and I are together 24/7?
The shift from working to retirement can seem exciting. It’s something we build up to as a monumental experience. Yet, as you can see from the questions our clients often ask, the reality is far from that.
If you’re a few years, or a few months, away from retirement, we encourage you to take charge today of one of the most important phases in your life. We believe, with a combination of dreaming and planning, you can have an extraordinary retirement that exceeds your expectations.
First Steps to Creating a Dream Retirement
To help you get started with creating an extraordinary retirement, we encourage you to get started with the following steps.
- Assess where you stand financially. This exercise always starts with you taking an honest look at your annual budget and cash flow needs for daily living as well as unforeseen expenses or outflows. This exercise also entails documenting your overall wealth picture by making a list of all of your savings and investment accounts, along with any other income producing assets such as real estate or a side hustle. A certified financial planner can help you with this exercise. At MPPL Financial, we are here to help.
- Determine what’s important to you. This activity goes hand in hand with assessing where you stand financially. It entails introspection to clarify and articulate your overall priorities in life along. Consider what’s important to you across areas such as where you want to live, how you like to spend your time, the role of travel and exploration in retirement. If you have a spouse or partner, finding alignment with this special person in your life is an added twist and important consideration for creating an extraordinary retirement. Exploration is a great way to clarify what’s important to you. Do some research. Try things out. Embrace this stage of the game and play full out. A coach can also be a tremendous help so you can focus on what matters most.
- Dare yourself to dream. Here’s where planning for retirement is a lot of fun and can be full of positive surprises for many. Whether you want to doodle on a piece of paper, or create some notes using a tablet, jot down where you want to live and what your life would look like. If you struggle in this area and just don’t know where to start our professional coaches can help you in the process.
Pulling it all together: Creating an Extraordinary Retirement
We believe there are Seven Key Elements of Retirement Success that are important for making this next chapter of your life one of the very best. We encourage you to read more about what they are so you don’t end up with tunnel vision and miss out on the joy and fulfillment retirement can offer.
We also believe there are few people who can make things go well without proper planning at this stage of the game. The people who leave life in retirement to chance, can end up in a situation full of havoc.
The ideal team for planning an extraordinary retirement includes experienced life coaches that can help you figure out what’s important to you and how to paint a picture of an ideal retirement that includes alignment with your spouse or partner. It also includes a financial planner to help you figure out where you stand, determine what you can afford, and how to invest wisely to live out your dream retirement.
At MPPL Financial, we’ve partnered with Metamorphosis Coaching and Consulting to offer a highlyconsultative program, called Dream.Plan.Retire that helps those embarking on retirement to:
- Dare to dream about possibilities you never imagined for your retirement.
- Purposely plan so you have a clear picture of what’s financially possible and feasible for fulfilling your aspirations.
- Live with intentionality, by following a detailed step-by-step 360-degree personalized roadmap for a vision of your life in retirement.
If you like the idea of exploring and creating, though are not sure how to get started, or if you are seeking alignment with your partner during this next phase of your lives, our Dream.Plan.Retire progam could be a great fit for you.
You can learn more about our program by clicking here.
Investment Advisory Services offered through Midwest Professional Planners, Ltd. (“MPPL”), 2610 Stewart Ave., Ste. 100, Wausau, WI 54401, 1-800-236-6775, an SEC-registered investment advisor. Certain representatives of MPPL are also registered representatives of, and offer securities products involving commission or transaction-based fees through APW Capital, Inc., 100 Enterprise Drive, Suite 504, Rockaway, NJ 07866, 1-800-637-3211. Member FINRA/SIPC/MSRB. MPPL is independent of APW Capital, Inc. Registration with the SEC or State Regulatory Authority does not imply a certain level of skill or expertise.