0 Why Do People Struggle in the First Year of Retirement?

Why do some people retire, hit the road running and never look back? Why do other people struggle with the transition into retirement?

You may be surprised at the answer. The more successful the individual, the more difficult the retirement shift. People who devoted their lives to work; were committed and focused tend to have a more difficult time in retirement. Work and family was all they had time. As a result, these individuals may not have developed hobbies or outside interests beyond work.

While the overworked professional or executive may be exhausted and ready for a break, the time after the honeymoon is over can be quite a startling experience. For many, retirement can be very depressing. Don't let it happen to you.

First, recognize retirement is a huge shift in lifestyle. Many baby boomers are ready to change their focus, but aren't ready to stop. You may want to slow down, but you're not ready to leave the race. If you understand retirement isn't always easy then you can forgive yourself for not getting 'right.'

Once you understand the challenge in creating a new life, then you can take your time and look at where you want to begin the process. Ultimately, you'll want to find something that brings a sense of purpose and meaning to your life. You may never replace the sense of accomplishment you had with work, but you can find satisfaction in your retirement life.

Think about what motivates you. Look at the following list and check off the areas that make you the most excited:

*Status
*Creativity or creative expression
*Specific goals and a plan
*Start a business
*Life balance
*Structure in your life
*Fun and carefree lifestyle
*Mental stimulation
*Physical challenge
*Social connections and interactions
*Adventure
*Produce income
*Activities that make a difference

These motivators may have been important to you in your work.Now you will want to reinvent yourself to use these motivators in a new way.

You will want to explore how you can translate these into retirement activities. Do you want to volunteer? Do you want to take classes? Do you want a hobby? Do you want to work?

Be willing to try different activities and not have them meet your needs. If you're willing to experiment with your life, you'll eventually find the activities you need to replace work. Enjoy the process and the journey. See where it takes you.

0 Retirement Decisions Are Almost Impossible! 4 Tips to Avoid Relocation Disasters

Studies show that our brains are wired to take the 'default' option. We have a very bad habit of taking the easy way out whenever it is open to us. When we are confronted with a variety of choices, as can so often happen these days, thinking and focusing can be exhausting, so we don't do it. It is easier to go along with the crowd.

Retirement used to mean staying with the company until you got the golden handshake for the years you had put in. In that tortoise-paced era you stayed in the same town or area your whole adult life. You had your children and grandchildren close by and maybe enjoyed a family burial plot on the hill that went back a few hundred years.

Nowadays the kids leave home, or indeed the country, for school or to improve their economic prospects. Statistics show that they rarely move back close to their parents unless disaster strikes, but they often leave again when the next alluring piece of career bait is dangled in front of them. The modern workforce moves to the crack of a different whip master than that of all previous generations.

That leaves us older fogies with a different set of head scratching confusions. The costs of staying in the old large family home, affording medical care, transport costs, real estate taxes, etc., are making it decision time for many of us. A great number of our boomer and beyond generation now consider moving, when originally they thought they would stay in the same place forever. Some are even considering the heresy of a drastic climate and lifestyle change.

You have seen those pictures all over the internet, palm trees, shady swaying flowers dripping over your patio-but is it really that easy? Does an idyllic lifestyle exist? And if it does, how do you find it without the money of a major high rolling corporate executive? And is that what you really want anyway? So many questions to answer.

If you are perching on this precipice preparing to leap off into the great unknown, what should you do first?

Well, if you are still healthy take into account the idea that you might like some new interesting adventures. But you might also wish to hold onto, or even expand, the comforts and luxuries you have worked so hard to achieve. That's perfectly reasonable. But now, how do you accomplish it?

So, first things first;

1. Research all those alluring choices you have rattling around in your head. Make lists and then investigate. The internet is free and can be amazingly helpful and thorough.

2. Make sure before you fall in love that you have first crunched the numbers realistically to figure out if you could afford to live there.

3. Go visit a variety of your options after your research.

4 Lastly, make sure there are some projects to become involved with. Sipping cocktails and having dinners with friends will wear thin after a while, and you'll want more to do.

Be prepared on these four fronts and you will have a good start on writing the next satisfying chapter of your life.

At last! a complete system that will help you figure out what YOU want. Lists, tables, questions and thoughtful articles and chapters to help you figure out which way to head in life. Is moving overseas a good idea for you? How about the other side of town? Make your next chapter the best.

0 Your New Retirement: It's All About Balance!

Consider yourself warned. No matter how much retirement pre-planning you did, you will initially lose your balance to some degree. No matter how thoroughly you're sure you've prepared for this new passage of retirement, you will find yourself temporarily teetering and tottering on this precarious high wire of new-found freedom and personal exploration.

Why? Because... unanticipated, and uncontrollable winds and weights lay in wait to sabotage your otherwise flawless, but delicate balancing act! And those 'retirement' balancing feats which you assured yourself would be a breeze, are more complicated than you had imagined. Just wait until you come head to head with those unexpected forces as you maneuver your way along that potentially wobbly balance beam called 'the new retirement!'

First, there's the Work vs. Leisure conundrum. You're an expert at the 'work' part - after all, you've been walking that fine line for decades. And it is because you were so adept at it - hailed a master balancer when it came to job-related success - that you just assumed you'd gracefully scale that leisure sequence.

Alas, not so. At first you may frantically find yourself flailing around trying to find 'meaningful work' to fill your vacant hours. You're absolutely panicky at the thought that you have freely forfeited working in an important professional position, a lucrative trade, a profitable skill, thereby also losing the not-so-modest, predictable paycheck which your chosen life's work generated.

When finally, in a saner moment, you do come to your senses to realize that there is a new, possibly richer, more enjoyable and productive life after retirement, then you're poised to fall off that balance beam again, plagued by the winds of guilt which threaten to convince you that "you should be performing meaningful work for money" or "you're wasting all this time on frivolous, trivial pursuits."

Next, you're now forced to face the ultimate Time vs. Money irony. When you were working full time, you were drawing a substantial salary, often lamenting the fact that you had no time to travel, to shop, to pursue your favorite pastime, sport or hobby - in a word, "no time to spend my hard-earned money!" Now you have an abundance of leisure - the time to engage in all the above pursuits, but... "will I run out of money in and while travelling, shopping, golfing, sailing, beading, etc?" How do I balance the 'time vs. money/money vs. time' equation? Very delicately, I'm afraid, unless you have married well, won the lottery, or are numbered among one of the latest technology entrepreneur billionaires.

Then comes the Social Vs. Private Time conundrum. You had automatically expected that the friendships you forged on the job would continue as usual. First of all, you like those people you worked with. Secondly, you want to keep tabs on all that local office/job site gossip. Thirdly, until now you never realized that this group of former colleagues comprised the nucleus of your social life.

But suddenly the paradigm has changed. You don't automatically spend time with former colleagues on a daily basis. So, to maintain those friendships you so desperately think are essential to your emotional and social well-being, you fill your calendar with lunches, drinks at the pub, shopping sprees, sports and social activities - any occasion that will keep you close to 'the gang'. Of course, you're not deluding yourself into thinking that you're still a vital, central, important cog in the organizational wheel. After all, it's a given that maintaining these connections is absolutely essential to your mental and social sanity.

Until one day soon you confront the realization that you're about to take a critical fall off that balance beam, in the form of 'what happened to all that precious private time alone that you eagerly planned to spend, far from the phone, the meetings, the e-mail - treasured time puttering in the garden, organizing your books, CD's, and videos, tracing your genealogy, repairing your fishing rods, etc. And really, aren't those luncheons becoming somewhat boring and irrelevant? Maybe, just maybe, you not only can't go back, you don't want to go back! Smartly, you land in that safety net, vowing to retrieve and to relish your 'alone time'.

Lastly, you've had to learn the balancing act of Family Time vs. My Time. When you were working, no one ever expected you to babysit the grandchildren, to drive dad to his weekly card game, to take advantage of that 9:00 a.m. Kmart Blue Light Special sale, to take the family dog to the vet! Now you're considered the family day care person, errand-doer, the fill-in. At first it seemed fun... you felt so important... and needed! After all, you're free and available; you have nothing important on your agenda; you're so approachable and capable and willing!

Whoa! Just wait a minute! Perhaps you need and want to establish some non-negotiables about your time, like --

• My time is valuable. It needs to be scheduled in advance, and only for significant, unanticipated, needs and events. 

• My time is MY time. As such, I'm free to schedule it when and how and where I want to. Since it belongs to me, I have every right to say 'yes' or 'no' on any given occasion, for any specific invite. 

• My time is discretionary. It is not available for 'free use' or open to arbitrary and capricious encumbrance by others.

So... you've been warned. You'll lose your balance. The good news - stay tuned to learn about the riches, the joys, the opportunities, the challenges which are in store for those of us who are entering this third phase of our lives. You can become an Olympics-like balancer of: work vs. leisure; time. vs money; social vs. private time; family time vs. my time. Yes, truly, the best is yet to come.