Retire When Enough is Enough

Yesterday I received an email from a reader that is 259 days away from retirement and is getting a little nervous about pulling the trigger.  Which makes me think this is a good time to introduce a book I’ve been reading by Alan Spector and Keith Lawrence, “Your Retirement Quest-10 Secrets for Creating and Living a Fulfilling Retirement.”  This is a great book for anyone getting ready for retirement.  It’s not a quick read—it requires active participation from the reader in order to mold a retirement that’s specific to you.

But in terms of the decision about whether you are actually ready to pull the trigger, Your Retirement Quest has some great guidance.  If you can answer, “yes” to the following questions, you’re ready: 

• Do you have enough?
• Will you have enough to do?
• Have you had enough?

I am one of those people that has an unusually easy time making most decisions.  So I didn’t consciously consider these questions at the time I retired.  But looking back, the answer was a resounding “yes” to all of them.  Which is probably why the decision was one of the easy ones for me.

Once you decide to retire, that’s not the end of making decisions.  You get to decide as you go along how you want your retirement to look.  As the book points out, you’ve got to keep renewing your plans:

“The recipe is to assess your situation, establish your plan, implement it, renew it-then reassess your situation and repeat.”

Your retirement could last decades.  You’ll want to keep it evolving over the years to stay fulfilled.  If you do decide enough is enough, and that you want to craft your plan for retired life, you’ll do well to keep in mind Spector and Lawrence’s other advice, “A plan is only something from which to deviate.”

(Stay tuned, the authors have generously agreed to host a giveaway of a copy of the book.  Details to follow in a future post.)

 

Related  Posts:

            How Do You Fantasize About Your Future When You’re Living in It?

            What is Retirement Anyway?

            What Age to Retire – That Was Not Our Choice to Make

This is a post from Retirement:  A Full-Time Job

 

Comments

[deegee]

I think the first of those 3 questions is a bit of an oversimplification of deciding when one can retire.

For me, I knew for years I had had enough of working and had enough to do if I were to retire. What I needed to determine was if I could generate enough income to cover my budgeted expenses for the next 15 years, or alternatively, could I keep my budgeted expenses low enough so that my generated income could cover them.

Big pieces of my revenue and expense puzzle fell into place at different times in 2007 and 2008 (mainly 2008) but once the last one did, I heard a big bell go off inside my head. I knew I was ready to retire, so all I had to do was pick a resignation date.

[Bill Birnbaum]

Hi, Syd...

I think that the second and third questions are meaningful... but the first is, for many would-be retirees, problematic. Many folks use "I don't have enough" as an excuse to postpone retirement. They either don't have a sense of "enough" or they, for whatever reason, jump at an excuse not to retire. Bill

[Retired Syd]

@Bill: You're probably right that people are overly fearful about not having enough--I blame the media for that. But the truth is, if someone is using that one as an excuse, the real answer to question #3 is probably not yes either.

It's funny, though, from my experience with the blog, I hear much more aprehension about question #2 than about #1--whooda thunk?