Beyond Retirement

Something that Carol mentioned in the interview last week was about the Law of Attraction. This is something that I never used to put a lot of stock in – the idea that “what you think about, you bring about”. It was a bit too “woo-woo” for me originally. Of course, I’ve seen the movie The Secret, and read a lot about the idea. And depending on who you follow, there are between 3 and 7 sub-laws to the law of attraction.

The general idea behind the law of attraction is that it helps you manifest your desires and use those desires to your advantage. Basically, it means that our thoughts, feelings and beliefs play a big part in what happens in our lives. And by being aware of this, we can influence our thoughts and attract what we want.

Broken down simply, the Law of Attraction says that “Like Attracts Like”... meaning that what you’re concentrating on is what you tend to see and experience. It doesn’t matter if what you’re concentrating on is good or bad, it just tends to show up more forcefully in your life. For example, when you’re having a bad day at work, you might slam a drawer shut...and catch your finger in it. Then you get angry because that hurt and you jerk your hand free and accidentally knock over your coffee mug and cover yourself in coffee. You don’t have time to clean up before your meeting, resulting in your being uncomfortable doing a presentation and not doing as good a job as you would generally. You know you’ve messed it up and you go home feeling frustrated, recounting to yourself all the things that have “gone wrong” for you today. As you pull into the driveway, your child’s tricycle is in the way so you can’t park properly. You grab the trike and toss it aside, bending the handlebars. Now your child is crying and your spouse is upset with you for getting angry at what seems like a minor situation. Your conclusion? “Nothing ever goes right in my life!”

        You’re probably wondering what this has to do with life beyond retirement... bear with me. I think I can pull it all together in a little bit.

        Another idea stemming from the Law of Attraction is that “Nature Abhors a Vacuum”. This is most easily demonstrated by the phenomenon I’ll call “the clean flat surface” – I’m sure you’re familiar with it, although it’s a very elusive state. It doesn’t matter where it is in your house, as soon as you clean off some flat surface, “stuff” finds its way to it and the surface is once again cluttered with debris. It could be today’s mail – for those of you who still get snail mail, or maybe car keys and a wallet, but most often it tends to be just junk – things that don’t really have a home elsewhere (and probably belong in the garbage, but you can’t bring yourself to throw them out yet). I know personally I’ve given up on trying to keep the flat surfaces in our home empty. It’s just not worth the effort!

        The final piece of the pie that is the Law of Attraction is the concept that the Present is Always Perfect. This one is harder to grasp, for some people. The basic premise is that if you focus on how to make your “present” better, it will improve. And to draw all three of these concepts together, this is the one to start with. As you focus on improving one thing in your current situation, you start to see similar improvements in other aspects of your day (Like Attracts Like) and as the improvements start to clear out the negative parts, there is room for more good (Nature Abhors a Vacuum) and finally these improvements meld together to make your situation better (Present is Always Perfect).

        So, let’s look at this from the retirement and beyond point of view. You’re done with the 9-5 world and you’re wondering what’s going to come

In July 2012, Carol founded WoW – World of Women – in the greater Montreal, Quebec, area, to help women work towards a better and stronger future both for themselves. WOW has expanded through Quebec and Ontario since then, now including Ottawa, Toronto, Kingston, Rive-Sud and Gatineau, and early in 2021 to Western Canada.

Carol understands the difficulties, as well as the pleasures, of running a business and is eager to share her experiences with other women. She believes in commerce, philanthropy and helping other women find their own path to success. By providing women with the right tools and information, Carol is certain they will find success through informed decisions about their future endeavours.

WoW – World of Women encourages new business owners or those thinking of starting a business to reach out to the WoW community to connect with other likeminded women. By working together, we can make a tremendous difference in the success of any business.

Carol can be reached on Facebook at WOW World of Women Social Network

Please check out the WoW website for more information:

 http://wow-world-of-women.com/product/wow-ambassador-canada/

Hi everyone, and welcome to episode 137 of Beyond Retirement. Thanks for taking the time to hang out with me today! If you recall, I spoke with Eric Brotman last week and he talked about how life can be compared to an undergraduate program, with activities to be carried out in your freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years of life in preparation for retirement. And he calls it graduation, not retirement, for a very good reason. If you haven’t listened to Eric’s interview yet, I recommend that you go back and listen to it now, then return to listen to this show. I know – I say that every week. But it’s true! I think my short little unpacking episodes, chatting about the ideas of the interviewee from the week before, hold way more value for you if you’ve listened to the episode that it’s based on before hearing me babble about what I thought of the topic. But it’s entirely up to you, of course – you’re the listener and the way you listen is all about you.

        So, as I mentioned, Eric says we shouldn’t be “retiring”, but rather “graduating” after we finish off all the prerequisite activities as we go through our life. One reason he gives for not using the term RETIRE is that the British English definition of “to retire” means to go to bed... and that’s hardly what we’re going to be doing when we finish working, right?! At least, by this point in the podcast, you should have developed the basic understanding that I’m a huge proponent of going out and doing something, rather than just sitting back with your feet up through the next 20-30 years. Of course, if sitting back with your feet up is what you WANT to do, then that’s perfectly okay. After all, it’s YOUR life – you’ve done what needs to be done for the number of years you needed to do it, and now it’s time to do what you WANT to do and I’m certainly not going to try to tell you what you want.

        First of all, I want to quickly review how Eric described the four stages leading up to what he calls graduation. He talked about the Freshman years, where you’re just getting started. That’s when there’s usually some debt and you’re focused on cashflow, maybe trying to figure out how to get a job that has some employee benefits, that sort of thing. Then come the Sophomore years, where you’re starting to settle down a bit, maybe getting married and having a family, looking for a house. Finances are important here, of course, as they are throughout your lifetime, but you’re still getting started. In your Junior years, you’ve hit your peak earning time, you’re paying taxes at probably the highest rate you’ll see, you’ve got little spare time for other things, life is busy and you’re starting to think about what comes next. Then your Senior years come along. You’re thinking about estate planning, whether you’re going to get any government or work pensions, when they might start, what you need to do to get them activated, and most important, you’re thinking about what comes next. This is the stage of life when you start to think about what your purpose is...is there some sort of legacy that you can leave for your family, or for others?

        I find it really interesting that this is a topic that comes up a lot in my conversations with my guests, and with people in general when we talk about our future. It’s almost like we hit the point where we realize that we’re not going to be here forever and suddenly we feel the need to be remembered. Or maybe it’s not even the need to be remembered, so much as the desire to do something that we feel is beneficial to people coming after us. We want to leave a legacy – something that will make the world – or at least some small part of it – a better place. It’s something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. I don’t mean that I’m spending hours pondering how I

Eric believes completely in the idea that retirement isn't the end of the road. He's so adamant about this that he's written a book that treats retirement planning and execution like the years of university. There are certain activities that delineate the Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior years...and when you've done all those activities (and the associated extra credit activities!) you can rest assured that you've done what it takes to be prepared for the next stage of life.

In his words, retirement "age" doesn't exist. Age is just a number that's arbitrarily assigned to each phase of our life. He believes that retirement is the absence of the NEED to work, rather than the absence of work itself. If you truly enjoy what you're doing and are still able to do it, why on earth would you stop? On the other hand, if you're financially independent, regardless of your age, you can be "retired" if you want to be.

Please check out his FREE resources:

www.lowtaxbook.com - for tax reduction strategies

www.whatisfp.com - what is the financial planning process

Eric can be reached at the following links:

www.bfgfa.com - BFG Financial Advisors

www.brotmanmedia.com - for books, podcasts, and blogs

www.financialplanningforall.com - to schedule consultations

As I say each week, if you haven’t listened to last week’s interview, stop here and go back to listen now. I was talking with Radon Stancil, a financial planner who focuses on preparing people for retirement.

Radon believes that financial planning needs to be both financial and intellectual, so his firm, Peace of Mind Wealth Management, focuses on 3 key concepts – your financial needs, your legacy and your lifestyle – because they all play a role in how your retirement works out for you.

I think Radon and his team have the right idea. Their goal is to help you make the plan and get into the right mindset to be retired. And that’s what this show is all about, isn’t it!

It’s important to pick something that you want to do in retirement. I’ve talked about this before. It needs to be something that you really enjoy, so you look forward to doing it. It’s a passion project, ultimately, so it doesn’t matter if it makes money or not.

It can truly be anything, as Radon suggests, like baking or scuba diving. You just have to find something to look forward to.

The other big point that Radon makes is that there are stages to retirement and you have to plan for each of them, so you know how much money you’ll need to have set aside.

For example, the first year or so after retirement will probably be quite busy as you run around making sure all the proper arrangements have been made and things are all in place.

Then the next 2-4 years are the “fun” years, where you might have grandchildren to spend time with, maybe you’re going to be travelling, that sort of thing. Basically, you’re doing all the things that you thought retirement would allow you to do.

Then along about year 5 and continuing on from there, things start to settle down a bit. You’ve got the hang of it – this retirement thing is a piece of cake, a walk in the park (maybe quite literally). Maybe you’ll start getting involved in your community or in a local charity, or maybe you’ll decide it’s time to offer to share some of your wisdom and experience with others, setting up a consultant practice or something like that.

One of the most important things, in my opinion, that Radon mentioned is the exercise of writing down the IDEAS you have for your future. Not the full-blown plans, but the general concepts of what your future is going to look like. You know me – any chance I get, I’m telling you to “make a list”!

By writing down the ideas you have about what you’ll do in retirement, you give your brain something to focus on. It’s not going to be anything concrete, but the plan is to get things started.

Because each of us has different ideas about what lies beyond retirement, I’m not going to make any suggestions here – I don’t want to mess up your plans by throwing in other thoughts that aren’t really yours.

Just remember – at the start, write down all the things you think of. Don’t censor the list when you’re starting to come up with ideas and activities. You can always scratch something off the list later, when the plan starts to come together. For now it’s just brainstorming. And this is a list that you should probably keep with you because you never know when something in your daily life will trigger the feeling that you’d like to pursue that thing further...so you add it to the list. It’s like a dream board or vision board for your future life.

I’m going to call it a day here and sign off with a reminder to be sure to tune in next Sunday for my interview with Eric Brotman. He’s going to share his own point of view on retirement and preparation for it. Now go start that activity list!