By Doug Wasyliw, R.S.W., P.R.P. – “The Retirement Coach”

“If you think early and thorough life planning for your 60s and beyond won’t help increase your odds of a significantly better last third of your life, try ignorance”. 
— 80 year old

Today’s busy and complicated lifestyles leave us little time to think about the next twenty to forty years. As we live through these next decades, we will probably face many things: increasing life expectancies, caring for aging parents, future health challenges, more cuts in government services, and the chance of unexpected or forced early retirement. These and other reasons make special planning and preparation for the next decades an important, if not crucial task. Despite this reality, recent studies and surveys say that most Canadians aged 45 and up do little or no specific mid-life planning. Though many expect to maintain the same or similar quality of life once in their sixties, they usually do too little to make sure this happens.

With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at just a few of the myths about life planning and preparation for those of us in our forties and fifties:

– Planning or preparation isn’t really needed for the next phases of our lives.
Stumbling through the next twenty years is not the best way to proceed in life. We now have a greatly improved understanding of how to prevent or minimize the less appealing aspects of being old or being retired. Professional retirement life educators and planners often see the quality of life differences between those who have planned and those who have not.

– Planning for retirement is for the older crowd. It won’t do us much good now.
Much research and experience with older adults all point to the importance of knowing what we can do now to plan many good decades ahead. Pre-.retirement planning is really life planning. It gives us important awareness of the necessary information, resources, abilities and skills we will need for the next decades of our lives.

– Retirement planning means financial planning.
The idea of “retirement planning” means different things to different professional groups. Leading Canadian authorities on aging and retirement define retirement planning as an on-going process, which thoroughly integrates and ensures balanced planning in many key areas of our life. Financial issues are only one of many important areas to be explored. Some of the 19 components of integrated retirement planning include relationships, work or volunteer options, use of time and legal issues.

– “I can hardly wait to retire and get away from my job”.
Life planning for our sixties and beyond is changing dramatically. As world and national economies keep changing, many of us will need to remain employed, either part-time, or occasionally in our ‘retirement’ years. As we often see around us, the traditional pattern of single career, steady employment followed by retirement is disappearing very quickly. Unless we are wealthy, in the years to come, few of us will be able to formally ‘retire’ at 65 or 60, or even 55 as our parents’ generation did. It is wise to look at alternate types of employment or areas of interest well before you are in a position of being forced to do so.

– Women don’t have any different or special planning needs. 
There are many reasons why women must plan differently than men as they age. Women often face unexpected or “off-time” retirement because of caregiving needs of aging parents or relatives. Most women marry men who are slightly older than them. Many men often want their wives to retire early to spend time with them. These and other reasons make it very important that women learn to manage and invest money wisely. Because women usually live longer, women must also be prepared for the probability of widowhood. They must build a strong network of friends, know the community resources that can provide special support when needed, and learn self-reliance in other practical areas of retirement life. Their financial planning needs can also vary as they tend to live longer.

Balanced and integrated planning for your sixties and beyond will make an important difference. As one 85 year old recently said, “Having a good old age isn’t just a gift, you have to plan for it, and work at it.”

The preceding article is provided as an introduction to, or exploration of this topic and should not in any way be construed as a replacement for proper professional advice.

Douglas John Wasyliw, RSW, PRP, CFP “The Retirement Coach”, is a retirement planning educator, retirement adjustment coach, and financial planner. He offers seminars to corporate, government and community groups. He may be contacted at (204) 897-8667 or retirement.coach@mts.net.

Article copyright 2001 by Doug Wasyliw. All rights reserved.