Keen On Retirement

Last week the Keen Wealth leadership team took a trip to Chicago for the Charles Schwab IMPACT® Conference. One of the biggest gatherings in the financial services industry, it is designed to educate attendees on new technologies, trends, and navigating hot-button issues. There were dozens of sessions, hundreds of vendors, and vast opportunities to learn.

Many newly retired couples find themselves spending more of their days together than they have in decades. With the kids out of the house and the old workday routines gone, retired couples need to find new ways to fill their time and fulfill themselves emotionally. Like most important issues that arise in a relationship, solving for a successful transition into retirement depends on quality communication. With that in mind, here are some questions you and your spouse can ask each other to open up a dialogue that will help you ease into your golden years:

2017 just hasn’t gotten any easier, has it? After 10 months of natural disasters, internet hacks, political tumult, and celebrity scandal, I know I’m not the only one looking forward to the start of the holiday season for some much-needed light at the end of the tunnel.

My clients at Keen Wealth are typically smart and prudent people who have been very good at what they do in their careers. In particular, the engineering community that we serve, consists of many of these accomplished professionals that have walked through our doors looking to delegate the task of managing their hard-earned money – capital that will hopefully carry them through their retirement. In my experience, the most successful of those folks are the ones that acknowledge that “they know what they don’t know,” and seek help.

I believe that your retirement equation breaks down into three parts: things that you have total control over (such as how much you save and where you put those savings and investments); things you have some control over (how long you work); and things that you have no control over (short-term market returns, government policy).

Well, recently I came across an excellent article on this subject from the good folks at Age Wave, a company that studies how an aging population affects society. Their research and analyses have been very valuable to advisors like myself as we help the large “baby boomer” generation ease out of the workforce and into retirement. This study breaks down how to prepare emotionally for retirement into five stages: Imagination, Anticipation, Liberation, Reorientation, and Reconciliation. I highly recommend reading the entire article, but today I thought I’d give a brief overview of these five stages and how they relate to your retirement plan.