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In this video, Jamison Smith, a wealth advisor at EWA, discusses the importance of planning how to spend your time in retirement. Many successful professionals find their work integral to their identity, and the idea of retirement can be challenging. Jamison recommends considering how you would fill your time if you had more free hours, even if you weren’t financially dependent on work. This may involve volunteering, part-time work, or activities that bring fulfillment and mental stimulation, as abrupt retirement transitions can lead to unhappiness. Planning your retirement lifestyle is essential for a fulfilling retirement.
Hi, I’m Jamison Smith, a wealth advisor here at EWA. And this is another video in our series, which is Ten Tips for Retirees or anybody getting ready to enter retirement. This tip is to think about how you’re going to spend your time once you actually are retired.
So what we have found is a lot of successful professionals spend their entire their career, almost their entire life, working really hard. A lot of times, clients we work with, they love what they’re doing, they’re successful in their careers.
And when we ask them if they would ever actually retire, a lot of times they say no, because their work is part of their identity. So when clients tell us they want to totally stop working by 65, we’ll challenge them a little bit and go through what we call a time exercise.
And so we’ll break down, draw a circle here. Your day is split into three categories. You see, you sleep, you work, and then you have free time. A lot of times, work is ten to 12 hours. Maybe you sleep six, and that leaves eight for free time.
Well, we’ll then ask the client that’s getting ready to retire. If you were not financially independent and you were not able to work doing the job that you are currently doing, and now you had 18 hours of free time, how would you spend it?
And a lot of times we’ll get blank stares. They have no idea. They’re so caught up in their career and they love what they’re doing that they can’t even imagine not working. So important to think about how you’ll spend your time.
And we would recommend consider volunteering or part time work, or doing something that keeps you still mentally stimulated and entertained and happy. Because we found that a lot of people that go from working working, to just totally stop and not working at all.
They actually end up being the most unhappy versus somebody that can go through a transition, phased retirement and go from part time to totally stopping. So would recommend thinking about and maybe going through an exercise similar to this, of how you would actually spend your time if work was not part of the equation.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
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