Interesting Topic of the Month: Non-financial Retirement Planning

Kevin Orsinger |

When thinking about planning for retirement, most people zero in on financials. Of course, financial planning should come first, but there are other factors to ensure your retirement is happy and healthy. Once you are ensuring you have a plan to pay the bills, you want to think about what you’ll do during retirement.

You might consider, for example, whether you want to line up some sort of work or volunteer plan after you retire. For many, the feeling of not working can be new, and jarring, and effect both mental and physical health negatively. Thinking through in advance how you might stay busy working a part time job or volunteering can help you to transition smoothly into retirement without too much of a dip in the schedule you’ve come to value.

You might also think about building strong plans to socialize. While you perhaps maintained friendships at work, that will not come as naturally once you are no longer working. Do you want to set up a weekly book club? A monthly golf outing? Continue to go to happy hour every other week? Start to think about what that will look like for you. Perhaps you have friends who you haven’t seen much over the past few years who are also entering retirement. What might you do to arrange time with them? The busier a retiree is, the happier they are.

Finally, you might want to think about how you’re going to stay active. Do you want to walk every day? Join a yoga class? Travel often? What are the things that are going to keep you healthy so that you can enjoy your retirement as long as possible? With endless time on one’s hands, often exercise and physical fitness gets pushed to the side, but it is even more important during retirement to have a plan to attend to these ideas.

Whether retirement is looming near, or feels like a distant future, we at Orsinger Investment Group, Inc. look forward to helping you make your retirement exactly what you want it to be.