Note: This article is part of Morningstar's September 2015 The road to retirement special report.
Planning for retirement, saving for retirement and investing for retirement are consuming topics for most working people. But what happens when you've finally reached your "number," or at least a number that you feel you have to live with, and you jump off of the commuter bus for that long-anticipated retirement?
Everyone has their own experience, of course, and mine is perhaps not representative in many details. But finding your new normal for daily, weekly and annual activity planning is a matter that we all have to face.
For myself, as a retired financial economist with a specialty in advising retirement plans both on investment policy issues and on matters of the soundness of their actuarial policies, I have found it useful to continue to stay involved. I'm a gadfly perhaps; not a bad role for a retired guy.
I continue to write and publish a lot about investment policy and on pension actuarial policies, hoping to create positive--and needed--changes in the retirement and investment industries. In addition to academic articles, this has included writing a detailed book revising pension actuarial science from an economically sensible perspective (Pension Finance: Putting the Risks and Costs of Defined Benefit Plans Back Under Your Control; CFA Institute Research Foundation and John Wiley, 2012). I lecture regularly, speaking at conferences and with large defined benefit pension plan sponsors both in the United States and internationally. And I attend the occasional conference of financial economists, simply as an attendee to exchange ideas with like-minded colleagues.
These activities have given me a bit of a soft landing, retaining some amount of professional involvement. And since it is for the most part volunteer work, I can do--or not do--as much or as little for as few or as many as I wish. Now that's having it both ways--a professional life, without the professional demands! And I can freely advocate for change where it is needed, urging financial practitioners to up their game and to do the "right thing" with no need to pause to think of commercial conflicts (I was lucky in my professional life to work for a firm where little such pausing was required; a relatively unusual experience I suspect.)
I've also done many of the things that I always wished I had time to do. Since I was a young man working on commercial fishing boats, I've wanted to explore the beautiful Inside Passage, the coastal island waterway running from Tacoma, Washington to a point north of Juneau, Alaska, and to do so on my own boat on my own schedule. And I've wanted to live in the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound in Washington State. Box checked.
I've wanted to spend more time improving my piloting skills, and flying small airplanes. Box checked.
And I've wanted to get back to reading more books. I was a bookworm as a youth, but there hasn't been time for many books as a busy professional. Box checked, again.
And of course like many others I've wanted to travel more--not that I didn't travel heavily for work during most of my career in finance: I used to joke that I knew what conference rooms looked like in tall buildings in every major city around the world, but that I had no idea what the rest of all those countries looked like! Well, I'm making very good progress on checking many of this set of country and regional boxes, visiting and taking time to smell some roses in the process. With no conference rooms involved!
There's been more time for exercise, and more time for social activities. All good! More boxes checked.
I still give regular thought to whether I might want to get involved with any second sort-of-career. Maybe working for a charitable effort, or starting a money management firm using many of the ideas I have about how to improve individual investment strategies. Perhaps teaching, or getting involved in some specialty education efforts (there's a wonderful high school focused on aviation sciences near my Seattle home, for example). So far, I haven't pulled the trigger on any of these ideas, but who knows, I may at some point do so.
We're living longer, and we need to have purpose when we wake up the morning; that's universal, I think. It always seems to me that those who retire and then go sit on the sofa to watch TV for the rest of their retirement have a remaining lifespan that leaves the sofa showing little wear and tear. For myself, I make sure that television and other sedentary activities are a very small part of my life.
I think that many aspiring retirees may not have reached the "number" that they would have liked to have had. But let me say that the quality of life isn't based on what we spend; rather, it is based on what we do and how we do it. Regardless of your retirement income level, there are activities and lifestyles to fit the budget and to give a fulfilling life during what will hopefully be a long and healthy retirement.
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