Worried About Retirement? Try Changing Your Perspective

Flipping your perspective enables you to see things in a new and different way.  This fresh approach can change your attitude and help spark creative ways of approaching a problem — even a problem like how to retire or feeling worried about retirement.

Your attitude toward anything in life is all based on perspective.  If you are worried about retirement, maybe you just need to change your approach. Albert Einstein is credited with a saying that shows how a flipped perspective can change how you think:

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Many people are frustrated and worried about retirement.  Looking at it from a different vantage point can change and dramatically improve your feelings about and even how you prepare for your future.

Here are 9 ways to flip your perspective on retirement:

1. Time Not Money

The currency our society values most is money.  In a paper published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers found that 64% of the 4,415 people surveyed valued money more than time.

However, the researchers also discovered that the people who chose time were – on average – statistically happier and more satisfied with life than the people who chose money, even controlling for existing levels of available time and money.

Another study found that people who were extremely worried about retirement finances found themselves to be much happier once they retired – largely because they had greater control over their time.  In fact, the ability to control your own time is how many people are now defining retirement.

You may be less worried about retirement if you focus a little less on money and more on how to spend your time. 

There is good reason that a gold watch is the symbol of retirement. Time is golden.

2. Should 75 or Even 85 Be the “New 65?”

If you were a contestant on the television game show, “The Family Feud” and the question was, “At what age are you supposed to retire?” the vast majority of survey respondents would say: 65 – or younger.

However, retiring in your sixties is a relatively new phenomenon. For most of our history, people either worked until they died or until they physically could not labor any longer.  And, nowadays people live very long lives – well into their 80s and beyond.  Never mind the fact that age 65 today is a healthier and more robust age than it was just 10 or 20 years ago.  Lifespans are expanding and older people are doing more than ever before – just look at some of these amazing accomplishments by people in their 80s and 90s.

Maybe 75 or even 85 should be the “new 65!”

After all, it would certainly be a lot easier to fund retirement if it did not last quite so long!  Use the NewRetirement Planner, a comprehensive retirement planning calculator, to see what happens if you delay or move up your retirement date.  You might also find a longevity calculator useful.  Here are the 12 best longevity calculators available online.

3. Maybe You Should Have Retired in Your 40s or Before

On the flip side of the “85 is the new 65” flipped perspective, there are lots of people practicing something called “extreme retirement” or Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE).  They are retiring in their 30s or 40s.

These people decide that they value financial freedom more than  they want to spend money.  While working – often in two jobs – they live extremely frugally and save as much money as possible.  When they retire, they continue to watch their pennies, but they are free from work at a very young age.  Many continue to earn money doing things they enjoy, but they don’t feel the stress of having to earn money today to pay for things tomorrow.

Other people enjoy a few years of a retired lifestyle in the prime of their youth – before they even start working.  Think of all the kids who took a gap year or signed up for the Peace Corps.

Are you past all that? In mid life people take sabbaticals – essentially a mini temporary retirement.

4. Is Your Current Lifestyle Right for Retirement?

Most financial advisors make the assumption that we need to maintain our lifelong spending habits when we retire.  While this IS true for most of us, many people redefine themselves in retirement and can dramatically reduce spending.

We don’t need to keep the status quo when we retire.

What you need to spend to be comfortable while working and raising children might be very different from what you need to spend when you are retired.  And, if you retire somewhere less expensive than where you live now, then how much you need to have saved could be a very different number.

Can you change your perspective on what you need to spend to be happy in retirement?  Use the NewRetirement Planner to see what happens to your finances if you reduce spending.  It is easy to get started and once you have set up the basics of your retirement plan, you can add details, make changes and instantly see the impact on your future.

5. Retirement is Not the End, It is a New Beginning

Baby boomers are embracing the idea that retirement is a new start – a time to try new things and live the life they want.

Second careers are exploding in popularity and retirees today are adopting new hobbies, seeking volunteer opportunities and much more.

In fact, you may actually have many new beginnings in retirement.

Retirement is not just one phase.  Most of us will actually have quite a few different transitions after we stop working.

6. Don’t Set a Date — Transition into Retirement

Once upon a time, long long ago…  we set a date and planned a big party for retirement. You went to work one day and then never again.

These days more and more of us have a different perspective on retirement date.  Retirees today transition into retirement either by going part time for a few years or we find a retirement job.

7. Spend Money, Don’t Save It

You have spent your whole life working and saving money — paying down your mortgage and putting some away for retirement.

Retirement IS the time to spend it.  This is a HUGE perspective shift and something that people find problematic.

Some of the most popular articles on the NewRetirement definitely suggest that many people are far more comfortable with saving not of spending:

Flipping your own perspective on strongly held beliefs about money, retirement, or life in general – can be an incredibly valuable and transformative experience. While it may initially seem counterintuitive or even uncomfortable, challenging your own convictions and considering alternative viewpoints opens up a world of opportunities for growth, understanding, and personal development.

• Start by figuring out what you believe in when it comes to money. You may not be aware or conscious of these beliefs.
• Next consider alternate ways of thinking. How might changing your approach improve or hurt your financial future?

9. Don’t Live Month to Month: Plan for a Lifetime!

Sure, all of us should have had a detailed financial plan our whole lives.  However, most of us got by living month to month or year to year and that was mostly fine while we were working and earning money.

In retirement we must learn to get by for a very long period of time with lots of unknowns on a relatively fixed set of resources.  This is why having a new perspective on financial planning is so critically important.  A personalized and comprehensive retirement plan is necessary at this stage of your life.

The NewRetirement Retirement Planner makes it easy to create and maintain your financial future.  Forbes Magazine calls this tool “a new approach to retirement planning” and it was named a best retirement calculator by the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) and CanIRetireYet.