……checking it at least twice!!! When I blegged for topics last week, dear friend Robin said I needed to share of list of all the steps necessary to upgrade to Life 2.0. Now Robin is the same age of daughter #1 and probably light years away from taking this step but thought I’d go ahead and start on the list. When I started this blog 16 months ago, that’s what I had in mind – until I realized that many of my peers just might happen to read it and I wasn’t ready to announce my plans yet.
Now I’m at 5+ weeks to D-Day (Done Day) so it’s no longer a secret. So – here are a few of my hints – rest assured that as soon as I finish this post, I’ll think of more so here’s the disclaimer that the following information is not intended to be a complete and final offering!
1. Assess you financial situation – no sense in even thinking about Life 2.0 if you have any/much debt and haven’t looked at your cash flow after regular paychecks. Meet with your financial planner, your CPA, benefits specialist at work – all those people who can provide insight into your future finances. Make a retirement budget (be generous with expenses and skimp on the income) and then see how that matches with what you are guaranteed to get – pension, social security, rental income, investments, etc. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Check it again and then for good measure, throw in another $1000 of monthly expenses!
2. Health Insurance – unless you are 63.5 (I’m not!) or your employer offers great retirement healthcare benefits (mine doesn’t!) you need to get approved for health insurance before you get off the employer gravy train. Look at your medical history, think about any meds you take, how much you normally spend in a year for healthcare and then apply. I was fortunate to get a high-deductible personal policy with good first $ wellness benefits and our total healthcare premium outlay is not going up that much. Here’s where it helps to have good genes.
3. Be mentally ready – I’ve had people tell me they can’t even think about retirement because they have no idea what they would do all day. Our dilemna is we can’t figure out how we’re going to get everything done after I leave the work world. Have a passion and be ready to pursue it whether it’s reading, knitting, traveling, re-decorating your home, volunteering, playing with grandkids – notice I didn’t include preparing home-cooked meals for Burl or golf in that list!
4. Retire because you WANT to – not because you think it’s the thing to do or because your spouse or kids want you to do it. Make it YOUR decision and think it through – trust me, it’s a lot harder to do than it seems!
That’s all my free advice for today – if you’re even still reading!
