Nonfinancial Retirement Planning Seminar
Apr. 28th, 2006 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebMy company invited someone to speak to staff about nonfinancial retirement planning. She was working with old people and became fascinated with the fact that some people retired well and some didn't. She said there are three keys to retiring well:
1) Stay active.
2) Stay connected.
3) Reach beyond yourself.
Those are actually three of the six areas I decided I need to focus on to be happy:
1) physical
2) social
3) achievement
4) intellectual
5) creative
6) helping others
She described what happens after you retire.
First you have a honeymoon period. You sleep in, do whatever you want, hang with your significant others all the time. But then you start to grieve for your old job. This is because there are certain things you can get from a job that you might not realize until you don't have them:
1) structure
2) purpose
3) status
4) social interaction
5) challenge
So you need to figure out other ways to get these things. This reminded me of what I've read about people adjusting to become stay-at-home parents, except that they still have plenty of challenge and they miss social interactions with grown-ups.
She mentioned that if you stay in the grieving stage for more than two months, you might need to see a professional to help you through.
One odd thing was that even though she used the word "Planning" in the title of her seminar, she made it sound like you can't really plan for it. She talked about one lady who enjoyed quilting in her spare time. She knew that after she retired, she would be able to quilt as much as she wanted. She knew she would be making and selling quilts.
In fact she lost interest in quilting almost immediately. What she ended up doing is setting up a program at a theatre where disadvantaged youths would get to perform plays that addressed controversial issues of concern to them such as teenaged pregnancy.
The lesson is supposed to be that you can't know what you want to do until you have some quiet time to be able to really pay attention to yourself after you have been doing what other people want or what you've needed to do to survive.
I don't want to have to wait until after I retire to figure out what I want to do. I feel like that lady probably enjoyed quilting as an antidote to a stressful job, and once that job was gone, she didn't need the antidote. On the other hand, I have to know there is some truth to the idea because even though I knew the career I wanted when I was five years old, I didn't have it quite right until age 43, after having started working.
Link of the day: Blanton Art Museum Extremely Grand Opening - I'm not really into art museums, but I want to go to this grand opening. Of course like all openings, there are special plans, such as munchies. But this place is going wonderfully wacky. For one thing, the celebration lasts twenty-four hours. Check out some of my favorites:
Glover Gill - Enjoy the tango styles of this legendary Austin performer. Dancing is encouraged!
Iron-on t-shirts - Use images from the museum's collection to create a one-of-a-kind t-shirt
Improv for insomniacs - Art is funny--and the Austin Improv Collective will show you how in this tour of the Blanton's collection
Random acts of brilliance - Experience impromptu appearances by artists, musicians and performers througout the Museum
Blanton CSI - Use your sleuthing skills to discover what work of art committed a murder in the Blanton's galleries.
Yoga - Focus on art that explores color and shape while engaging in some simple but relaxing body movements
Aren't these guys the coolest? (If you are or will be in Austin this weekend, it's Saturday night through Sunday night.)
1) Stay active.
2) Stay connected.
3) Reach beyond yourself.
Those are actually three of the six areas I decided I need to focus on to be happy:
1) physical
2) social
3) achievement
4) intellectual
5) creative
6) helping others
She described what happens after you retire.
First you have a honeymoon period. You sleep in, do whatever you want, hang with your significant others all the time. But then you start to grieve for your old job. This is because there are certain things you can get from a job that you might not realize until you don't have them:
1) structure
2) purpose
3) status
4) social interaction
5) challenge
So you need to figure out other ways to get these things. This reminded me of what I've read about people adjusting to become stay-at-home parents, except that they still have plenty of challenge and they miss social interactions with grown-ups.
She mentioned that if you stay in the grieving stage for more than two months, you might need to see a professional to help you through.
One odd thing was that even though she used the word "Planning" in the title of her seminar, she made it sound like you can't really plan for it. She talked about one lady who enjoyed quilting in her spare time. She knew that after she retired, she would be able to quilt as much as she wanted. She knew she would be making and selling quilts.
In fact she lost interest in quilting almost immediately. What she ended up doing is setting up a program at a theatre where disadvantaged youths would get to perform plays that addressed controversial issues of concern to them such as teenaged pregnancy.
The lesson is supposed to be that you can't know what you want to do until you have some quiet time to be able to really pay attention to yourself after you have been doing what other people want or what you've needed to do to survive.
I don't want to have to wait until after I retire to figure out what I want to do. I feel like that lady probably enjoyed quilting as an antidote to a stressful job, and once that job was gone, she didn't need the antidote. On the other hand, I have to know there is some truth to the idea because even though I knew the career I wanted when I was five years old, I didn't have it quite right until age 43, after having started working.
Link of the day: Blanton Art Museum Extremely Grand Opening - I'm not really into art museums, but I want to go to this grand opening. Of course like all openings, there are special plans, such as munchies. But this place is going wonderfully wacky. For one thing, the celebration lasts twenty-four hours. Check out some of my favorites:
Glover Gill - Enjoy the tango styles of this legendary Austin performer. Dancing is encouraged!
Iron-on t-shirts - Use images from the museum's collection to create a one-of-a-kind t-shirt
Improv for insomniacs - Art is funny--and the Austin Improv Collective will show you how in this tour of the Blanton's collection
Random acts of brilliance - Experience impromptu appearances by artists, musicians and performers througout the Museum
Blanton CSI - Use your sleuthing skills to discover what work of art committed a murder in the Blanton's galleries.
Yoga - Focus on art that explores color and shape while engaging in some simple but relaxing body movements
Aren't these guys the coolest? (If you are or will be in Austin this weekend, it's Saturday night through Sunday night.)