There’s a lot to plan for when it comes to retirement. Most often, it seems, we focus on the financial side of those impending golden years—and with good reason: Without a big enough nest egg from working, saving and investing, retirement stands to be challenging and uncomfortable—maybe even downright bleak.
But an equally important issue—one that’s too often not addressed, even as the office retirement party looms—is just what you plan to do with all that newfound free time.
The Vision Gap in Retirement Planning
In my experience working with high-net-worth individuals and business owners for over two decades, many people don’t have a clear vision of what they want their golden years to look like. Indeed, plenty of people don’t even really grasp what’s possible for them in retirement.
This is often true of the stereotypical hard-charging “type A” folks who seemingly devote their entire working years to accomplishing more and more. They may have maxed out their Roth IRAs and 401(k)s, but they didn’t consider what fulfilling goals they might accomplish—or even what they might do with themselves day to day—once their working life is over.
As a result, people without a healthy retirement life plan can find themselves rudderless and bored. A listless lack of structure to their days and weeks, in the absence of goals and direction, may cause depression or even contribute to dementia or other forms of cognitive decline.
Consider this sobering statistic: Research from the Institute of Economic Affairs found that retirement increases the probability of suffering from clinical depression by about 40%. Another study from Harvard showed that having purpose in life actually reduces all-cause mortality—meaning a purposeless retirement isn’t just miserable, it might be shortening your life.
The Financial Reality Check
While we’re discussing the importance of vision, let’s not ignore the financial foundation that makes any retirement vision possible. The markets have been particularly volatile lately, creating challenges for near-retirees.
On April 8th, the average investor was down 36.7% from their cycle peak. That investor needs to be up +58% just to break even. These numbers represent the difference between living a retirement where you can travel the world and a retirement where you’re on a strict budget. It’s the difference between retiring at age 60 versus working until 67.
This is why I emphasize the five keys to building wealth:
- Budgeting → so you can invest more
- Understanding what you’re investing in → diversification
- Avoiding drawdowns
- Knowing when to get back in
- Patience → compounding is your friend
Your vision and wealth strategy must work together harmoniously. If your vision includes extensive international travel, your financial plan needs more liquid assets. If you dream of starting a small business in retirement, your risk tolerance might need adjustment.
What’s Blocking Your Vision?
There may be numerous reasons why people often don’t give much deep thought to the idea of what a meaningful and significant life during retirement looks like:
Retirement seems too far off
If you have decades until you plan to retire, it may be truly challenging to envision what you want those later years to look like. You might be right in the middle of figuring out your wants, needs and preferences in your daily life today, and the idea of painting a clear picture of your distant future might seem wholly unrealistic.
You’re extremely busy in the here and now
You might be spending the bulk of your time working to build more wealth and get ahead in your profession. If you’re an entrepreneur, each day could feel like a nonstop roller coaster ride. Or you may be raising a family and tackling a seemingly endless list of responsibilities. The upshot: Your life vision might not extend beyond the end of the current fiscal year—or further than tomorrow!
You struggle to think big
It can be tough for people to imagine really bold, fulfilling futures full of possibilities. Thinking creatively and “dreaming big” to come up with a vision of an amazing life of significance don’t come easily to many of us—especially if we’re being pulled in many directions in the moment.
Indeed, research into cognition reveals that the human brain can easily experience what’s called status quo bias—which describes a preference for the current state of affairs, resulting in resistance to change. We tend to accept situations in life as fixed, so we default to operating within their existing framework. As a result, we fail to question why things are the way they are—and how things might be improved upon.
Action Steps to Create Your Retirement Vision
The good news is that there are concrete steps you can take to develop and refine a clear vision of retirement—or at least, a clearer vision than you have at the moment.
Step 1: Keep a Running List of Ideas
Don’t let the belief that retirement is too far in the future to think about in any detail stop you from generating ideas. As you live your life, look around for ideas of what your distant future could possibly look like—and make an ongoing list.
Your ideas will evolve over time, of course, with some possibilities rising up the ranks and others falling off the list entirely. The point is to essentially scan the world around you for possibilities and options that resonate. Starting that process as early as you can may enable you to generate bigger, bolder ideas over the years as you essentially train your brain to be on the lookout for meaningful life moments.
Try these exercises:
- The “Perfect Day” exercise: Describe in detail your ideal day in retirement, from when you wake up to when you go to sleep.
- The “Regret Minimization” framework: Ask yourself, “When I’m 90, looking back on my life, what would I regret not doing or trying?”
- The “Core Values” assessment: Identify the 3-5 principles that have guided your life decisions.
Step 2: Carve Out Formal “Vision Time”
Busy people are often great at scheduling time for meetings, business strategy sessions, conferences, webinars and the like. But they seem to be far poorer at creating formal, structured time and space for themselves.
If that sounds familiar, you have a tough but doable job: Carve out time each week to think about big-picture issues such as your vision for your life and the things that bring you great joy and a sense of deeper purpose. Book that time on your calendar, and consider it just as important as any other scheduled event that you wouldn’t dream of canceling.
Try to set aside the same block of time on the same day each week for this purpose to help ensure you consistently stay on track. During that time, lock up your phone and get away from your computer or other distractions so you can focus on the most important person at that moment: you.
If you’re tempted to skip this “focused time,” remember the words of Warren Buffett: “I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think.”
Step 3: Boost Your Creative Thinking Abilities
If you just can’t see what a life of significance in retirement would look like for you, enlist the help of a pro such as a reputable life coach who specializes in vision planning. These coaches often have defined processes they use to help people identify their passions and think bigger than they’re used to doing.
Another possible outlet for new ideas: retirees who once worked in similar positions as you in your company or the broader industry, with whom you may share similar life experiences.
Also, some affluent families hold facilitated family meetings every year or so at which they discuss issues such as family legacy and purpose. These meetings, which may be arranged and organized by a financial advisor, can potentially help you gather ideas from (and brainstorm with) some of the people to whom you’re closest in life.
Of course, there are plenty of ways to boost your own creative juices:
- Spending time outdoors, in nature, has been shown to enhance activity in the areas of the brain responsible for creative thinking.
- Exercise also triggers creativity.
- Having a diverse group of friends or acquaintances—ones who don’t all look, act and think as you do—may help you develop “more complex forms of thought, including the ability to think critically,” according to Johns Hopkins research.
What Does a Life of Significance Look Like?
Hopefully, your efforts help bring both a sense of what’s possible in retirement and a level of clarity about which options are most appealing. You might find that you wish to be a “collector of experiences” by engaging in lots of travel and new-to-you activities. Or you might recognize that your “retirement” would be best spent in a workplace environment, mentoring young entrepreneurs or up-and-coming leaders to pursue the type of success you enjoyed.
The “right” answer will be different for each person. That said, research shows most successful retirees define “living a life of significance” in three primary ways:
- Developing meaningful relationships with family and friends
Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development—the longest study on happiness ever conducted—concluded that “good relationships keep us happier and healthier, period.” In retirement, this means intentionally deepening family connections and friendships. - Living with integrity and being true to their values
This often manifests as ethical consumption, simplified living, or aligning daily activities with deeply held beliefs. - Helping others around them
Particularly through mentorship and knowledge-sharing. Erik Erikson, the renowned developmental psychologist, identified “generativity”—the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation—as the primary developmental task of mature adulthood.
These three pathways to significance—connection, integrity, and contribution—create what psychologists call “eudaimonic well-being”—happiness derived from purpose and meaning rather than pleasure alone.
Conclusion
You’re working hard to set yourself up financially for a comfortable retirement. But don’t overlook getting a good handle on what you want those years to look like. Doing some deep, careful thinking upfront may be just what’s needed to get you on a retirement path filled with purpose, meaning and fun.
Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, wrote that “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” Retirement shouldn’t be the absence of purpose, but rather the freedom to pursue the purposes that matter most to you.
Remember: The clearest path to a fulfilling retirement starts with a clear vision—one that honors your past achievements while opening doors to new possibilities. Financial security creates the foundation, but it’s your vision that builds the house you’ll actually live in.
If you’d like help developing your retirement vision alongside a solid financial strategy to support it, contact us for a complimentary “Vision Mapping” session.
