Women and Retirement: Planning for Structure can Ease Transition

Undoubtedly, you are a very busy person with a lot of structure in every day. You wake up with a plan for the day, check email, voice mail and probably social media. You read the news, you eat breakfast (sometimes on the way to work) and you arrive at work at basically the same time every day. You work; you come home and do the things that need to get done to keep your life and the lives of your family on track. You are basically structured down to the minute. Keeping some (but not all) of that structure in your life when you transition into retirement will help you transition successfully.

While planning for retirement, one of the first things that you can do is to commit to doing some basic planning with a broad brush. You can take a look at a calendar breaking down the chunks of time into year, month, week, and day. Use these questions to add some structure into these timeframes:
• What goals do you want to achieve in the first year after retirement?
• Do you want to travel anywhere during the first year after retirement?
• What is the most affordable time to travel during the first year?
• What are your quarterly savings goals for money?
• What time of the month do you receive your annuity check (if you receive one)? Can you budget around that date?
• Are there certain activities that you want do to every month on the same day?
• When you wake up in the morning, are there specific duties/tasks that you want to do on a regular basis?
• Are there fun activities (meeting friends, having lunch, professional meetings) that you can put on your calendar that occur on a regular basis?

When doing your planning, be sure not to over schedule or overwhelm yourself with too many items on the calendar. The goal of this exercise is to put some structure into your day because it will help you transition by maximizing your time and making you feel more comfortable because you live such a structured life now. For most people, transitioning to retirement takes a lot of planning, thought, and many times causes worry and outright fear. Adding structure to your life before you retire can alleviate a lot of angst and increase your chances of successfully transitioning into this new and exciting phase of life.