Ignore Retirement Advice — Find your own path

There’s endless advice available to people who are retired or about to retire.  Newspapers, magazines, talk shows, financial advisors, personal coaches, family, friends, books and blogs — including postworksavvy — offer counsel.  There is advice on where to live, how to live, how to spend your money (or keep it), and how to spend your time.  Some of it is helpful.  Most of it is repetitive.  Often the advice is, simply put, overwhelming and confusing.

Learn to ignore

Sanity comes from ignoring much of the advice — especially the dire predictions of financial doom or health calamity.

Nobody can calculate what you’ll need or want in your life.  Your life is unique. You will make yourself crazy trying to understand and take advice that is not right for you.

You need to decide what will work for you and get on with living.

You are your own best advisor

You have spent years learning to understand yourself.   Retirement calls on you to make choices based on what you want based on your inner hopes and dreams.  You have finally reached a stage in life where you have freedom to make choices that were not available during child rearing or career-building years.

Now it’s time to find your own path.

This can take courage.  You may find yourself taking risks and forging new directions for your life — directions that mean a departure from all you have done in the past.

You may want to move across the country to live near to the ocean or to live near to extended family.  You may move to get away from extended family.  You may move to a smaller place to cash in on urban real estate values and to have a more manageable home to care for. You may start a new career or start a business.  You may go back to the classroom to finish a degree you never completed or study something that you always wanted to learn about.  You may decide to climb a mountain, or run a marathon.  You may decide that now is the time to travel to places in the world that you have always wanted to see.

Or you may be happy just to goof off within your four walls amusing yourself at home, enjoying your neighbourhood, and puttering in your garden.

Listen to yourself

Learn to ignore the pundits.  Learn to listen to that small silent voice inside that tells you what you need and what you want.  Explore options that you desire. And then follow your own path.

Thanks for reading this post.  If you like my blog, tell others about it, email it to others and consider becoming a subscriber to receive regular posts.  The photo is courtesy of Crismatos Busy