Your Investments: Funding your retirement and finding meaning - opinion

I have become friendly with one of the evacuees from Kiryat Shmona, who is now renting an apartment in my neighborhood. I see him most days, and more than once, I assumed he was walking aimlessly in the neighborhood, just trying to pass the time. 

Once, I saw him very slowly strolling up a major street, and another time, I saw him just staring at something on a path to the entrance of a random apartment building. I felt so bad for him. His whole life and occupation were in the North and now for nearly five months, he has had nothing to do to fill up his time. 

Earlier this week we were speaking, and I decided to ask him how he has been filling up his days since the evacuation. He told me he had never been happier. It turns out that his hobby is botany, and he also loves editing on Wikipedia. He walks around the neighborhood, spotting unusual plants, photographs them, confirms their identity, and then goes in and updates all sorts of information on the plants’ Wikipedia page.

While he was telling me and a friend about his hobby, he noticed something growing out of the wall – I assumed it was a weed – but it was a “Katlav Yehuda” plant – and he proceeded to give us a mini 10-minute lecture about it.

As we parted ways, I started telling my friend about how I deal with retirees and how difficult the transition from work to retirement can be, if no thought was given about how to fill up the newfound free time. 

He told me about his father-in-law, who worked his whole life. A week into retirement his wife had had enough of him being around the house – he was driving her crazy. She told him to go to the Marina in Herzliya, walk around, and not come back for at least fou hours! 

He did what he was told, and came upon an older Russian man who was fishing. He proceeded to ask him all about the bait he was using, and what type of fish he was trying to catch – he wouldn’t leave the fisherman alone. At one point, he started suggesting that he use another type of bait and try to catch different fish. The man started getting angry with him – after all, he just wanted to fish – and proceeded to chase my friend’s father-in-law away, yelling at him in Russian until he got the message and didn’t come back.

There is no shortage of information on how to fund and pay for your retirement – heck, I write about it almost every week! What is lacking in the whole retirement dialogue is how to retire. How can people retire and find meaning or purpose in their retirement?

No more punching a clock

Most people look forward to the day they no longer have to show up for work. After working hard for decades, retirement has been well-earned. While as a financial adviser, it’s often my job to help individuals fund their retirement, I have found more and more that the job entails getting them to start planning and thinking about how they want to spend their time when they no longer need to punch a clock. 

You better think long and hard – before you retire – about how you plan to fill up 24 hours a day (besides sleeping), 365 days a year, for what could easily be 20-30 years!

Darrow Kirkpatrick, who operates the very popular caniretireyet.com website, talks about finding purpose in retirement. He writes, “There has been relief at having a more relaxed schedule. But some anxiety, too. Am I ‘wasting’ my life? The answer has been to reconsider my purpose.”

Mom, I’m bored!

More than once I have quoted Joanne Kaufman who wrote in The New York Times about people who take early retirement. She describes a man who retired at 42 years old:

“For the first few months after Jon Helmuth retired three years ago, he slept late, acquired a tan, and showered at odd times. Some days he didn’t bother to shower at all. After that pleasantly aimless interval, Mr. Helmuth, a divorced father of four who is now 45, began organizing his five-bedroom house in the woods of Vandalia, Michigan, a village near the Indiana border. But once he alphabetized the spice rack and finished making an easy chair out of castoff designer jeans, ‘I started running out of things to do,’ he said.”

Plan

Get a head start. Start planning for retirement a few years in advance. How to fill up the day in a meaningful way is very important. Speak to other retirees to understand how they transitioned from decades of going to work to this new chapter in their lives. 

As I have written previously, I use the phrase “new chapter in life” on purpose. I have found that those who have succeeded in this transition looked at retirement not as the beginning of the end, but rather as a new chapter in their life. I have found that this attitudinal approach is crucial in creating optimism that helps give meaning and purpose to this stage of life.

The information contained in this article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. or its affiliates.

Aaron Katsman is the author of the book Retirement GPS: How to Navigate Your Way to A Secure Financial Future with Global Investing (McGraw-Hill), is a licensed financial professional both in the United States and Israel, and helps people who open investment accounts in the US. Securities are offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. (www.prginc.net). Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, FSI. For more information, call (02) 624-0995 visit www.aaronkatsman.com, or email aaron@lighthousecapital.co.il.