Retirement Planning, Simplified.
Below, I’m going to invite you to help me make this even better.
This project is about giving you a framework for confidently making your own decisions about retirement, and you'll gain a new perspective on what life after full-time work can look like.Objectives of this project
Simplify
Planning for retirement doesn't have to be complicated, difficult or confusing.
Empower
You can confidently take control over decisions that will have a big impact on your future happiness.
Inform
You don’t have to be an expert on retirement – instead, become an informed consumer.
What is life after full-time work?
It’s often called “retirement,” but that label itself deserves to be retired. It’s so negative!
- It’s far from the end of life. It’s the start of a new life. Everything else is a prologue to the stage of life after full-time work. It’s our freedom, our time of enjoyment, our time of greatest happiness.
- Most people’s instinctive reaction to thinking about it is something like: “It’s so complicated! Too many choices. I’ve no idea what to do about it. I wouldn’t even know where to start.” I’m going to give you a framework in which to make your own decisions, a context that will put things in perspective and give you a feeling of control.
To change these misconceptions, I’m writing a book called Freedom, Time, Happiness: how to get to and enjoy life after full-time work (previously known as retirement).
I’m living that life myself. It’s not just personal experience, but also lots of research that I have gathered together and divided into small pieces. I’ve written several lessons from that wisdom, each on one small aspect of life after full-time work, so that you can focus on one issue at a time and not be overwhelmed.
To provide the framework, my lessons are about four aspects of that life:
- Happiness and psychology (because that’s the goal and how to get there)
- Investment (because that’s what powers our vehicle)
- Longevity (because we should have an idea of how long that life will be)
- Finance (putting it all together)
The blogs that I’ll post are mostly excerpts from my manuscript. Think of this as a guided tour of the land of freedom, time and happiness. Think of it as familiar territory but different from the land in which we spend our working lives. This is about how to get there and how to enjoy living there. I’ll be your tour guide.
And that’s it. I hope it all helps you.
If you like, you can help me too. Here’s how.
I’ve tried out this framework and the lessons with friends, and they find them very helpful. My publisher thinks the research, the organization and the lessons are great. But he wants more stories. “People relate to stories. They’ll understand the lessons much better if they’re related to stories.” And he also wants your honest reaction to my thoughts. “Put it on a website. You’ll find out what people like or dislike, what they understand or don’t understand. And I guarantee you’ll end up rewriting it. We could publish it now, but it’ll be much better after.”
That’s where you come in.
I’m inviting you to critique and comment on what I post on this website. As my publisher suggests:
- Tell me what you like or dislike.
- Is a particular post pitched at the right level, or too elementary or too deep?
- Tell me what topics you’d really like to read about.
- And add anecdotes: about you, your family, friends, parents, whoever.
Your input will make this tour much more helpful once we’re done.
Thanks for your input!
The Topics of the Tour
General
About the tour and the website
Topic 1
About happiness and the psychology of life after work