I’ve been doing a lot of retirement-related research recently and, honestly, it was bringing me down. All this talk about longevity risk and sequence-of-returns risk, so much concern about outliving your money. It’s necessary, I suppose, but it’s also kind of scary. And it was starting to feel like retirement is just one big financial puzzle.
Then, right on cue, I got a call from my long-time friend and mentor, Dick Towner. He’s 87 years old and going as strong as ever. When he “retired” from a full-time job leading a national stewardship ministry, he and his wife took over management of a Christian retreat center. Last time I went for a visit, two summers ago, I pulled onto the property and found Dick working on a building project. He was moving sand around with a shovel as it poured from the back of a dump truck.
Dick and his wife are both in their element. Dick loves the outdoors, working with his hands, and caring for God’s creation. They both love ministering to people. Not surprisingly, a constant stream of friends and other visitors make their way to the beautiful but somewhat remote property.
Talking with Dick lifted my spirits considerably. He’s living his later years in a way that I greatly admire.
Beyond the spreadsheet
There are countless books and blogs about retirement, many of which are very helpful. It takes a lot to properly prepare for retirement. There are financial factors, to be sure — but there’s so much else as well. Health care, housing, social connections, and figuring out what you’ll actually do in retirement. So by all means, read and learn. But also keep in mind that there’s only so much you can learn from a book.
Ironically enough, that’s the main point made in a wonderful book on making decisions about your future. In “Stumbling on Happiness,” Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert presents a humorous, Shakespeare-laden survey of the many ways that our attempts at planning for the future are so often flawed. To a great degree, the problem is that we just have a very hard time imagining the future.
At the end, he gives some remarkably simple and helpful advice. If you want to figure out how to make decisions that will lead to the best possible future, talk with people who have made the very decisions you’re wrestling with. See how things worked out for them and what they would have done differently.
That’s good advice for anyone preparing for retirement. Think about people you know who are happily retired. People who have peace about their finances and are living a life that they find meaningful. One of the most interesting questions you could ask is how their faith guided their retirement-related decisions.
Planning and probing
As you may know, retirement as we tend to think about it is a relatively new phenomenon. And yet, it's likely that we will all retire from full-time paid work some day. As you prepare, certainly avail yourself of planning tools such as MoneyGuide. Run the numbers. Consider what you’ll do about health care and where you’ll live. Think about the social circles you’ll want to be a part of. And of course, bathe all of that in prayer.
But talk with some retirees as well. Find a retirement role model or two. Someone who’s thriving in retirement. Find out what they did to get there and what they would have done differently if they had the chance.
If you’re retired, how did your faith inform your retirement-related decisions? What advice would you offer to those who are planning for retirement? And what, if anything, would you have done differently?
