#1 in series: When Can I Retire

The birth of a new year is a wonderful time, even I dare say, a magical time of the year.  Suddenly we collectively give ourselves permission to leave bad habits behind and begin again anew.  The world appears to us full of possibilities and its suddenly possible to believe that we are capable of accomplishing hard things.

At least until February. 

Forbes Health published its 2024 survey about New Years Resolutions and the statistics are not surprising.  The survey found that 22 percent of respondents gave up after two months and by the end of three months, 52 percent of respondents had walked away from their vision of a better self. 

I have been goal oriented my whole life.  Each year I update my current list of goals and make adjustments to my overall life plans.  I keep detailed goals for one, two, and three years out.  I maintain a list of five-year goals, which are directional in nature based on my three-year goals, and I maintain a list of ten-year goals indicating who I would like to become in the future. 

I’ve always used categories for my goals which include: personal, spiritual, professional, and educational.

Of course, I’m the nerd that used to print my goals out and tape them to the mirror – that is until technology made tracking behaviors easier on my phone.

A year and a half ago I turned 50, and for the first time, I ran into a mental block for one of my categories.  I realized that retirement could be possible at the end of the next ten-year period.  This was the first time retirement had ever come up and it caused some disbelief and then panic.  What do you do with your professional goals when you may no longer have a profession?  I’ve had a year and a half to consider this, so I’m not as anxious as I once was, but at the time, this was a real struggle. 

I felt old.

(Queue the midlife crisis melodramatic music)

It didn’t help when Jennifer reminded me that I had become the target market for AARP. 

I have always had an interest in personal finances but, for the first time in my life, the concept of retirement was something that I was actively thinking about.  Mind you, I still had 10 years (or more!) to go… but since I am a planner and a goal setter, I felt like I had to come up with some answer.

Spoiler: It’s been a year and a half and I still don’t have an answer.  What I will say, is that I’ve begun to spend a lot of time educating myself on a topic that I had previously allowed my wife to manage (investments, life insurance, retirement planning, and the like).

What is Retirement?

That’s a rhetorical question, I think most of us have the dictionary definition down.  However, retirement looks different for so many people.  I know people that want to work until they die because they can’t stand the thought of sitting around the house.  I know others that want to devote their time to hobbies and activities that they enjoy.  I know others that have found happiness in helping others.

Finding happiness.

I think therein lies a hint for answering the question.  For some people retirement will include work, some by choice and others by necessity.  I simply couldn’t picture myself doing anything during retirement – not because I wanted to sit on the couch all day – but because I simply didn’t know what retirement meant for me.  What is retirement?

What would serve as my goals? 

What would I want to accomplish?  How did I know that I was growing and bettering myself?  You know the saying, if you don’t have a destination in mind, then you don’t need a map, just start walking because any destination will do.

I decided that to develop my goals, I would first need to determine what’s my purpose.

What would be my purpose?

A year and a half ago, my purpose seemed crystal clear.

Professionally, I had a defined purpose.  After 25+ years, I had an alphabet soup of credentials behind my name that hinted at that purpose.  Spiritually, I felt I had a purpose.  I’d served in various church assignments for the last 30 years but I still believed my most important purpose was to bring myself, and my family, to my Savior, daily.   When I tried to think of my personal purpose, my determination started to falter.  I recognized that I had been focusing my personal purpose on improving my health both physically and mentally – typically to counter the effects of the insane stress related to my profession.  After that revelation hit me, I saw that my so-called educational purpose was also tied directly to my profession.  Cybersecurity is constantly changing and requires a near daily dose of education to keep up. 

That’s when I truly realized how dependent nearly every other aspect of my life was tied to my self-concept of who I was professionally.   

Who would I become?

So, it turned out that my little mental gymnastics exercise revealed that I’m really two dimensional: professional side and a spiritual side.  I don’t actually think that’s an accurate depiction of myself.  There are other areas of my life not represented in that simplistic portrayal, such as my family, my hobbies, my desire to leave the word a better place, etc. 

However, the big take away: I’ve always tried not to define myself by my job title; but as you can see from above, if I’m being honest, I haven’t been trying hard enough.

So, What Are My Goals?

I’ve listened to the experiences of other people who are in retirement and realized that this was something I need to prepare for.  I cannot just focus on the financial aspect and expect everything to work out somehow.  I know from experience that big changes in life are difficult – birth of a new child, moving, death of a spouse, divorce – and these changes usually require some level of soul searching and they typically alter the way that we see ourselves.

I just admitted that a lot of the way that I currently see myself is associated in some aspect to my ability to provide.  What happens to that self-image when that aspect of my life is no longer present?

Good question.

I think that’s where the goals come in – the ones that matter.  Who do I want to become?

For now, I have no idea.  For a guy that’s used to planning every aspect of my life, I find that thought terrifying.