Sound wisdom to help retirees live a healthy, financially secure, and fulfilling long life.
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Pre-retirees and retirees have always faced several serious retirement planning challenges. On the one hand, it’s great that many people are living much longer lives than their ancestors. On the other hand, it’s not easy to be financially secure, physically healthy, and emotionally fulfilled for 25 to 30 years in retirement. And the current pandemic only makes living well in retirement more difficult.
Fortunately, we can learn from people who’ve been retired for many years and are flourishing in this stage of their lives. So I asked two successful retirees to share the characteristics they’ve cultivated that have helped them. Both have been retired from their career jobs for several years.
The Poet
Dinah Berland had a long career as a book editor, retiring in 2014 as senior editor for a major art museum. During her working years, she also became a widely published poet and now conducts poetry workshops while continuing to write. Her prizewinning chapbook, Fugue for a New Life, was published in 2020, and another is forthcoming in 2021.
Dinah’s first suggestion about personal characteristics to cultivate is flexibility. She elaborates, “Even the most beautifully constructed plan will probably need to be revised at some point, so that’s where a willingness to consider alternatives can be of real value.”
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Second tip: a sense of proportion in the face of loss, particularly “small” losses that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. If you live long enough, you are likely to face bigger losses—personal as well as financial. At times, even a widespread catastrophe may occur, as the pandemic of 2020 certainly reminds us, and then, as Dinah puts it, “we can suddenly see our lives in broader perspective.”
That’s where her third characteristic comes in: resourcefulness. She shares this wisdom: “To be truly resourceful, I need to have a clear sense of what my values are, what makes me deeply happy, and what allows me to feel grateful no matter what. Then it becomes easy to recognize the resources I need and be able to find them.”
This is a great point! I’ve written extensively about the fact that most retirees won’t have the same spendable income in retirement that they did in their working years. As a result, most retirees will need to focus their spending on what’s “just enough” to meet their basic living needs and what truly makes them happy.
The Actuary
Anna Rappaport had a long career as an actuary who worked with retirement plans. She now volunteers on research efforts that focus on the many challenges that result from long retirements; she also accepts paid consulting and speaking assignments. She’s quite passionate about the challenges that women face in retirement.
Like Dinah, Anna believes that it’s helpful to be flexible but also that it’s important to stay healthy and active within our limitations. And 2020 has certainly taught us to be flexible in order to live within the limitations delivered by the pandemic.
Her second tip is gratitude—to focus on the good in our lives and be thankful for our blessings. Gratitude for what we have is also a good way to develop Dinah’s suggestion to have a sense of proportion.
Anna’s third tip: “Have passions and a portfolio of different activities, so that if we become limited or some are not available, we have others to turn to.” For example, in addition to Anna’s volunteer work, she’s also an artist and is very involved with her extended family.
FYI: Both Dinah and Anna exemplify Anna’s third tip—they’re very active with a broad portfolio of passions and activities. Both are still working in some way, although not with the same intensity as during their career years. And both spent the necessary time in their 50s and 60s to plan for their retirement—they definitely didn’t “wing it.”
Given the retirement planning challenges we faced before the pandemic and the added challenges the pandemic has generated, we need all the help we can get. Thank you to Dinah and Anna for your sound advice!