The New Rules of Retirement

Chapter 15Keys to a Successful Retirement

People often tell me that they failed at retirement the first time. And the second. And the third.

These aren't people with serious financial problems. They didn't cut short retirement because they needed the money. Instead, they devoted their retirement planning time and resources to the financial aspects. They neglected the other elements of retirement planning, and those often are the more important parts.

Most retirement planning focuses on the financial side of retirement, which we also can call the hard side of retirement planning. Finances certainly are important to a happy and successful retirement. Yet, they aren't the end of the story or even the most important contributors to retirement success.

The most difficult parts of retirement planning usually are what can be called the soft side of planning. You need to decide how to spend all that time you used to spend working. You need activities that fulfill you and give you a sense of purpose. There's a lot of time to fill, and the amount of time only grows as people live longer and are retired longer. The biggest nonfinancial mistake people make in their retirement planning is neglecting the soft side of planning, and it is the source of many unsuccessful retirements.

The problem is so widespread that in recent years many professional advisors adopted an approach that sometimes is called life planning. Instead of diving directly into a client's finances, the advisor instead gets ...