When Work Becomes Optional

Stan Corey

Description

Why retire? If you're at this stage in your life, you've probably asked yourself this question. Many of today's retirees have no intention of stopping and are seeking to live the rest of their lives with purpose and adventure. For them, this stage is not just a shift in living but a shift in thinking as well.

In When Work Becomes Optional, Stan Corey shows you how to take control of your life and physical and emotional wellness, maintain financial independence, and pursue your passions during throughout your retirement years.

There is an old saying, "If it is going to be, it is up to me!" Retirement is a new awakening and a new opportunity to live the life you have always envisioned. In When Work Becomes Optional, Stan provides you the essential tools to live your one best retirement life.

Sujets

• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 09 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456631598
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

© 2018 Stanley B. Corey
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or repro­duced in any manner without written per­mis­sion, except in the case of short quo­ta­tions used for crit­ical art­icles or review.
This book is a work of fic­tion. Names, char­ac­ters, busi­nesses, organ­iz­a­tions, places, events, and incid­ents either are a product of the author’s ima­gin­a­tion or are used fic­ti­tiously. Any resemb­lance to actual per­sons, living or dead, as well as events or loc­ales, is entirely coin­cid­ental.
Although the author and pub­lisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and com­plete­ness of the inform­a­tion con­tained in this book, we assume no respons­ib­ility for errors, inac­curacies, omis­sions, or incon­sist­en­cies herein.
Any brands, products, com­panies, and trade­marks that appear in this book are stated for illus­trative pur­poses only. Their men­tion in no way expresses explicit or implied endorse­ment or approval of the con­tent in this book.
ISBN-13: 978-0-692-14752-8 (paper­back)
Lib­rary of Con­gress Con­trol Number: 2018907582
PRINTED IN THE USA
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To my many cli­ents who have entrusted me with their fin­an­cial lives and well­ness and allowed me to be a part of their family life story.
TABLE OF CON­TENTS
Pre­face
Part One: Set­ting the Stage
1. Crystal Ball
2. What Type of Retire­ment Do You Want?
3. Eval­u­ating Your Retire­ment Read­i­ness
Part Two: Top 5 Retire­ment Con­cerns
4. Main­taining Health and Health­care Options
5. Expect­a­tions and Fin­an­cial Well­ness
6. Aging
7. Social Security and Retire­ment Plans
8. Estate Plan­ning and Elder Law
Part Three: The 5 Stages of Retire­ment
9. Trans­itioning
10. Go-Go Years
11. Slow-Go Years
12. No-Go Years
13. The Exit
Appendix A: Real Retire­ment Plan Check­list
Appendix B: Executor Duties and Respons­ib­il­ities
Appendix C: IRS Life Expect­ancy Table
Appendix D: The Retire­ment Expect­a­tions Exer­cise
Acknow­ledge­ments
About the Author



I N 1964, BOB DYLAN wrote the song, “The Times They Are a-Changin’.” As he sang those famous words, I wonder if he had any idea how much they would come to rep­resent an entire gen­er­a­tion of Amer­icans. No doubt, those born in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s have improved the world through cham­pi­oning civil and women’s rights, the tech­no­lo­gical revolu­tion, the redefin­i­tion of family and the work­place, and rock and roll. And their ability to shift paradigms con­tinues as they influ­ence what it means to retire.
Mer­riam-Web­ster defines retire­ment as “the state of being retired, with­drawal from one’s pos­i­tion or occu­pa­tion or from active working life.” With all due respect to the famous dic­tionary pub­lisher, one glaring problem I find with this defin­i­tion is that retire­ment, in fact, no longer exists!
Working with cli­ents as a fin­an­cial advisor has shown me that the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of retirees is not fol­lowing the path of their par­ents. Even the “r-word” (retire­ment) is prob­lem­atic for many of them because it con­jures up images of sit­ting in a rocking chair and staring out the window to the world beyond one’s living room. Truth be told, retire­ment today bears little resemb­lance to with­drawal from active working life. Many of today’s retirees have no inten­tion of stop­ping and are seeking to live the rest of their lives with pur­pose and adven­ture. For them, this stage is not just a shift in living but a shift in thinking as well.
Based on these reasons, I offer a more rel­evant defin­i­tion of retire­ment:
Retire­ment is when work becomes optional.
Making work optional may signal an end to one type of work: no more showing up to the office Monday through Friday and no more man­datory com­mutes and work travel. But, more mean­ingful to today’s retirees, it sig­nals a bright begin­ning: freedom to define work on your own terms and according to your own wishes. Who wouldn’t be thrilled to embark on that kind of amazing journey?
For these fin­an­cially savvy and motiv­ated indi­viduals, making work optional is less about asset accu­mu­la­tion and more about devel­oping “emo­tional wealth,” which is how to enhance our lives by doing good, fol­lowing our own paths, con­tinuing to learn, seeking new chal­lenges, and exploring new oppor­tun­ities to improve our own lives as well as the lives of those around us.
While making work optional is full of oppor­tunity, like any major trans­ition, this stage can be anxiety indu­cing as well. It can be a time to con­tinue the work you’ve been per­forming, but pos­sibly at a reduced pace. Or it can be a dif­fi­cult period of let­ting go, as you release your hold on an iden­tity that has been linked to the work­place your entire adult life. Or you may find your­self working into your sev­en­ties and beyond, per­haps because you’re afraid of run­ning out of money or maybe because you have a pas­sion for what you’ve been doing and want to con­tinue.
Whatever your cir­cum­stances, making work optional is less about a spe­cific age and more about taking con­trol of your life and phys­ical and emo­tional well­ness, main­taining fin­an­cial inde­pend­ence, and pur­suing your pas­sions.

Why retire? If you’re at this stage in your life, you’ve prob­ably asked your­self this ques­tion. For many, they have no choice because their work requires them to retire by a spe­cific age. This is the case for those working in law enforce­ment, in cer­tain gov­ern­ment agen­cies, as air­line pilots, and in other occu­pa­tions where the risk of having an older employee may endanger the people they are intended to serve.
For others, how­ever, reaching normal retire­ment age sixty-five or deciding to retire earlier no longer has the same meaning it did a gen­er­a­tion ago. Many of us feel we can con­tinue to con­tribute, if not in our cur­rent occu­pa­tion then in another role we find to be sat­is­fying from a per­sonal and an emo­tional stand­point.
Many pro­fes­sionals from doc­tors, law­yers, and pro­fessors to fin­an­cial advisors and cor­porate exec­ut­ives have built their lives around working in their field of choice and cannot dream of doing any­thing else. That is why we are seeing so many more people con­tinue their careers well into their sev­en­ties and even eighties. For many others, reaching a time when work becomes optional means having the freedom to try some­thing new and dif­ferent and fol­lowing their pas­sions without worry about the amount of income it gen­er­ates. This can also be a time of stress if, in fact, you do need to con­tinue working, as finding new work in your six­ties can be chal­len­ging.
A key to a suc­cessful retire­ment is finding a new pas­sion in your life. There is an old saying, “If it is going to be, it is up to me!” Retire­ment is a new awakening and a new oppor­tunity to live the life you have always envi­sioned. So take charge and go for it!



“ S TAN, CAN’T YOU JUST peek into your crystal ball so you can answer my ques­tions with 100 per­cent cer­tainty?”
During my nearly forty-year career providing fin­an­cial guid­ance and advisory ser­vices to indi­viduals, couples, multi-gen­er­a­tional fam­ilies, and small busi­nesses, I’ve heard vari­ations on this ques­tion from my cli­ents count­less times. This is par­tic­u­larly the case when my cli­ents are embarking on their “making work optional years,” which is a time when people typ­ic­ally seek more security and pre­dict­ab­ility. For many, this often marks one of the biggest and scar­iest trans­itions they will ever exper­i­ence in their life­times.
I’ve worked with cli­ents who rep­resent a wide range of exper­i­ences. Some have lived well into their nineties; others have passed away shortly after retire­ment; some have suffered the death of a spouse, sib­ling, child, or even a grand­child; some have divorced early in their careers or postretire­ment; others have enjoyed retire­ment with the love of their life until the very end.
I’ve had the priv­ilege of helping people trans­ition from their working careers to retire­ment, manage their fin­an­cial lives throughout, and pass down their legacy to the next gen­er­a­tion. In regard to legacy, it isn’t always only about leaving money behind. Often it com­prises passing on a person’s core prin­ciples and values.
Working closely with my cli­ents, some­times over dec­ades, has given me deep insight into how people define this stage in their lives. Over the years, my cli­ents have provided diverse defin­i­tions of retire­ment. The fol­lowing is a sampling of what they‘ve shared with me.
Retire­ment is: rewiring your life. having a plan and staying active. the moment in life you can finally make YOU the pri­ority. building a sacred place to do some­thing for your soul! It’s time to reflect and give back to your com­munity and the world. It’s about con­necting your soul to whatever higher being you believe in. not having to drag your butt out of bed at zero-dark-thirty! lib­er­a­tion from work and the oppor­tunity to create and exper­i­ence as many great moments as pos­sible. a time to think and create new memories. when you have all day to do some­thing and it takes all day to do it! not your end game. when you can pursue your pas­sion on your own terms. time to take on new chal­lenges, have new exper­i­ences, and enjoy family and friends. spending the rest of your life with those you love.
Do any of these res­onate with you?
Based on these responses, retire­ment can be summed up as an emo­tion­ally charged period, and for good reason. No doubt, retire­ment is often asso­ci­ated with: doubts related to determ­ining when o