Is This Your Plan to Retire?: How to Thrive and Not Just Survive

By Charles Kuster

This book offers readers an eye-opening retirement readiness reality check. The main purpose of the book is to simply raise awareness that modern retirement is more difficult than most assume. The book is full of potential solutions, including strategic ideas, planning tools, and communication aids.

The book is an honest, thoughtful, and sometimes painfully personal look at what getting older means. It includes poignant accounts of struggles and successes. Retiree input from early, mid and late retirement phases are included. The author then shows how decisions made (or ignored) early in planning so often create issues for the retiree and advocates.

The book offers a number of new concepts for readers to consider. An especially powerful one is the importance of developing three harmonized plans - (1) a legal plan, (2) a financial plan and the most important of all yet often neglected - (3) a lifestyle plan.

OTHER CORE CONCEPTS DEVELOPED INCLUDE:
Why you need to own your plan and communicate clearly with family and advocates;
How to address health, financial and social obstacles;
How to manage retirement as a process and not an event;
How to harmonize the three most important elements of retirement planning;
How to select and lead your advocates;
How to capitalize on new support services and products.

Anyone in his/her early 50's and wondering where he/she is truly ready for today's retirement environment would find this book a high-value investment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780999508404

Book preview

1

Your New Retirement Environment

A place to start this book is with an honest admission: a few years ago, I saw no reason to worry about retirement preparation. My intention was to figure things out after I quit full time employment, just like my parents had done and just like most of my older friends were doing. How hard would doing nothing be, I rationalized.

Then, a couple of personal events opened my eyes and made me question my wait-and-see approach. I saw too many people living ho-hum retirements and a few retirement wrecks. Why simply survive when you can thrive? I asked myself.

I was 50-years old and my only retirement planning was saving money for retirement. Then, my employer of 20 years threw me a curve ball, following a merger. The eventual outcome was a number of us accepted early retirement packages or other incentives to quietly leave.

It’s easy to find things to do. I’m struggling with who I want to be.

Most of the older fellows who accepted the early retirement option were initially pleased to be out of the daily work grind. They bragged about their new freedom and flexibility when we met for coffee.

After a couple trips, after basements were cleaned, the best books read, perhaps a couple walleyes fried over a Canadian campfire, a few expressed retirement remorse. One retiree stunned me when he admitted he was seeing a marriage counselor.

Conversations grew more negative and two retirees announced they were job hunting. Boredom was blamed, but by then I suspected there was more to it. Guys often hesitate to talk about abstract topics like feelings, emotions, and self-esteem, if you haven’t noticed.

Eventually, one fellow broke the conversational ice by admitting, I never thought doing nothing would be this hard.

Another responded, That’s the problem! Who wants to do nothing important all day long?

A third retiree summed up his feelings this way: It’s easy to find things to do. I’m struggling with who I want to be. How do I stay relevant?

These are successful, street-smart men and their early attempts at retirement were a struggle. While reemployed as a home-based entrepreneur myself, I could still relate. Working out of my home meant I no longer had a personal secretary, an IT guy to call when my computer crapped out, a staff to feed my ego or a break room to discuss the weekend’s games. The reason I went to the coffee shop was to socialize with guys who acknowledged my past stature. Why would my outcome be any different when I eventually decided to pull the plug on work?

Concerned and with some free time as I sought contract work, I stopped by a local library. There were about three feet of books on saving and investing for retirement plus a few estate-planning books. But there was a shortage of information to explain why so many people appear to struggle with retirement and, more importantly, whether anything could be done about it.

Then, I landed a consulting contract and was again fully employed. My interest in retirement planning was tabled while my attention shifted again to earning money to retire. Several years passed.

The next mental stick banged my brain when my mother’s health took a turn for the worse, followed by her death. My parents retired in their early 60s and settled into a very common, small-town Iowa retirement. They were low-maintenance parents until my mother’s final health setback.

I should explain the final setback comment. My mother’s first setback was a cancer diagnosis in her 70s. The disease, surgery and grueling treatments diminished her physical strength. Yet, she managed to remain with my father in their small home.

My mother’s health setback illustrated how various life events – in this instance a cancer disruption – should trigger other planning decisions. Yet my mother, father, siblings and I ignored important what-if discussions. It was simply easier to ignore the inevitable and react. We all crossed our collective fingers and hoped for the best instead of discussing my parent’s evolving needs.

Why simply survive during retirement when you may be able to thrive with some basic preparation?

After mother’s death, my 85-year old father was suddenly alone, entirely devoid of purpose and in need of someone’s time and attention. There were hints his cognitive abilities had slipped, not unusual for people his age dealing with the stress of so much change.

Now, what? I thought to myself while arranging my schedule to accommodate my father’s increasing needs. Two decades prior I agreed to serve as his executor and later fill financial and medical power of attorney roles. I’m a man of my word, loved my father and had every intention of doing my best. Yet, I ignorantly agreed to the support responsibility without any idea what the commitment entailed. With my consulting business thriving, the timing was lousy.

Suddenly, the weight of caring for an elderly parent, his investments and his farm fell onto my unprepared shoulders. I had difficult choices to make, which included allocating one day a week to visit him and oversee his care.

Serving as my father’s advocate illuminated the tail end of life. So many medical, financial and legal decisions were knee-jerk reactions. But I also saw how decisions made (or ignored) decades earlier – such as buying a split-level house with lots of stairs and one small, cramped bathroom all caused downstream issues. What were they thinking? Where was I in their decision loop? Why did they not think more strategically I wondered?

It became evident my father was socially out-of-touch and lonely. Any change in his daily habits was difficult. He only wanted to be left alone to exist on a day-by-day basis. By this time I realized his lifestyle situation was getting more difficult by the month. I knew something bad was going to happen – a fall, a car accident or perhaps even financial fraud.

Eventually, all three happened. All three could have been avoided.

One day I realized just how ludicrous my parents’ entire retirement approach had been. Their outcome could have been so much better with even basic preparation.

For example, once I gained access to their financial information, it was apparent they could have afforded to spend more money to enjoy their lives, including living in a newer house where everything was on one floor. They had the money to travel, too. My father could have enjoyed a nice pickup truck instead of driving an old rust bucket. Instead, they always hesitated to spend money, saying they …might need it for retirement. Heck, they were in retirement!

One reason they hesitated to enjoy their money was ignorance of what future medical and nursing home costs might be. They had asset wealth, but their annual income – social security and farm rent - was moderate, and that’s what they paid attention to. To my knowledge, they never visited any retirement community or sought related financial information. They simply hoped to delay or avoid retirement communities altogether.

Because they were so private with their affairs, I wrongly assumed funds were tight and didn’t intervene. They were, arguably, too private with their financial and medical information.

Old age eventually caught up with them and forced major decisions. While I’m certain they fretted about what would happen when one or the other died, they did nothing to minimize the impact of the inevitable. Their health luck eventually ran out. It always does.

Even business and financial decisions like how my father wanted his farm managed were never discussed. His farm was his pride and joy. I assumed he was properly managing things, based on the fact he checked his farmland weekly. Yet, his only tangible business direction to me was saying he figured I would buy the farm to …keep it in the family. My spouse and I had already mapped out our own retirement financial plans, and buying the family farm was not included.

Eventually, it became necessary for my father to move into an assisted living community. To stay busy as he napped, I started interviewing other residents and their families about retirement-related experiences. Trends, issues, ideas, obstacles and opportunities were compiled. I paid special attention to ideas and strategies and mistakes made.

One day I decided to figure out if I could organize my parents’ entire retirement timeframe into logical phases, noting causes and effects.

For perspective, my parents’ early retirement timeline stage was comfortable but would be bore most people. They were also unprepared socially for the transition into retirement.

Then came the mid-phase that included my mother’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. While difficult, my mother’s failing health kept my task-oriented father busy and they kept their independence. My mother’s failing health should have triggered planning efforts to address my father’s needs after her death, but again we all hesitated to ask the hard questions.

The last third of their retirement years focused on simple survival. They really struggled during this phase, which is common. My mother was basically housebound and my father would venture out only for an hour at a time. Both were socially starved. They were also slipping physically, in part due to poor dietary habits and lack of exercise in my mother’s case.

End of life decisions was never discussed.

As I reflected on the various timeline events, obstacles and decisions, I saw how a number of strategic decisions could have improved my father’s comfort and satisfaction, especially during his sunset years. Such preparation would have reduced my workload and emotional strain, too.

The Changing Retirement Environment

Those two separate personal experiences altered my retirement mindset.

The first was (1) watching about half my coworkers struggle with their abrupt transitions into early retirement life following a corporate merger. My friends knew what they were retiring from, but had little sense of what they were retiring into.

It also appeared that decisions to retire were often made without serious consideration of alternative work options. It because apparent that retirement was far more challenging than I realized.

The second mind-altering event was (2) helping my father through the last phase of his retirement. This perspective drove home that retirement is a long process and decisions made earlier (or ignored) have a habit of impacting quality of life later on.

The basic reason people neglect retirement planning, I concluded, is they don’t see the need, don’t know how to develop such a plan or both.

All of this got me contemplating exactly what living longer and more active lives actually means. Modern retirees have options to consider that prior generations did not. Details matter – a lot.

The Bottom Line

There is no denying that today’s retirement environment is much different than what our parents and grandparents experienced. This chapter illustrated some of those changes and how they impact outcomes in real-life scenarios.  We’re going to dig deeper into them.

I also shared some personal information regarding some friends and my parents for context. Such real-life perspective is insightful as you set personal priorities, options, limitations and such.

As you read along, think about what exactly would make your retirement a success. What would make you happy during early, mid and late phases of retirement?

In the next chapter, let’s dig deeper into some trends and explore what they may mean in a planning context.

Chapter 2

Why Living Longer Means Better Planning

Knowing there is an opportunity and knowing how to capitalize on it are separate insights. Hopefully, you now agree there is untapped retirement planning opportunity. Next, let’s contemplate how to turn insights into actions.

Most of my business life was spent in strategic communications and business development. This work involved consulting with company leaders to dissect and analyze their businesses to identify, refine and communicate important messages. The biggest challenge was always convincing big egos to patiently participate in the input process. They often assumed other leaders already shared their views through osmosis, I