Financial Independence Lifestyle After Retirement

In my last article, I discussed how to maximize your financial independence lifestyle during your working years. Today, let’s shift gears and talk about maximizing your lifestyle during retirement when you’re ready to set your work schedule aside. If you’ve been working with our team at Lord and Richards, you’ve been practicing the financial independence lifestyle even in the years leading up to retirement. In retirement, you are no longer bound by time constraints and have a clean slate before you. Let’s discuss a couple of priorities I want you to focus on during these critical retirement years.

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Though time is no longer a constraint, creating a plan around retirement is still vital. Often, people don’t develop a retirement schedule and discover their lives lack purpose, meaning, and value. Subsequently, their health declines and their lifespan is shortened. Study after study has proven that leading a sedentary lifestyle destroys physical health.

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Avoid surrounding yourself with friends who are passive and prefer to sit around and watch TV. Find an active group of like-minded friends who enjoy getting out and taking on new challenges. Look to your church for social network clubs, or join us at the Lord and Richards Wealth and Wisdom events! These events are open to anyone of retirement age interested in connecting with others. Whether you're a client or not, we’d love for you to come. We typically go someplace fun, such as an aquarium, car museum, or a baseball game. I also spend a brief amount of time teaching the principles of financial independence.

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My clients who are the most fulfilled are pursuing new challenges. My wife owns Inspire Music Arts in the Centennial area. This is an academy for adults and children teaching music and instruments of all kinds, including voice, piano, harp, strings, guitar, and more. Many of her students are adults who have taken up music in their retirement years or picked it back up after setting it aside during their busy working years. Perhaps you plan to travel overseas and want to learn a foreign language. Find something that fascinates you and pour yourself into it.

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Creating a loose daily schedule is a great way to spend your retirement. You can wake up naturally and revel in the fact that you don’t have to set an alarm unless you have a place to be. If you walk with the Lord, you can start your mornings meditating in the Word and praying for those you love.

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I also encourage you to include exercise in your daily routine. The rest of your day can include being social, garden time, or pursuing a hobby. A schedule may not sound appealing in retirement, but that which doesn’t get scheduled rarely gets done. Overachieving isn’t the goal of retirement, but focusing on active learning, growth, and activity.

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Once you’ve established a retirement lifestyle and schedule, prioritize your health. In our working years, critical priorities can get laid to the wayside. Heaven forbid you miss out on time with your kids, spouse, and godly pursuits. Once those are in place, you must focus on your health, no matter your age or stage of life. As you reach your 50s, 60s, and 70s, make sure you are prioritizing three critical areas of health.

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Number one: prioritize your mobility. I’ve mentioned the importance of building muscle and strength before, but there must be balance. Studies have shown that putting strain on your muscles to grow and adapt is vital for longevity. Conversely, you can swing too far. You want to maintain both strength and mobility. Mobility is sustained through stretching, rolling, and not pushing yourself too far. I encourage you to train with someone if you enjoy that. I used to go to Aspen Park with a great group of people about 20 years older than me who focused on strength, mobility, and avoiding injury.

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Secondly, prioritize longevity. Sleep is a primary contributor to longevity. Warren Buffett just turned 94 and eats the worst diet known to man. He admittedly eats like a child, often starting his day with a breakfast from McDonalds and drinking several cokes per day. However, he gets eight hours of sleep each night and is sharp as a tack, running one of the largest companies in the world. That being said, diet does?play a vital role in longevity. Though Warren Buffet has gotten away with eating poorly, imagine how long he could live if he ate well and exercised!

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Thirdly, you must prioritize your quality of life and develop a stress-free attitude. Stress is detrimental and can potentially shorten your life and ruin your retirement years. Distance yourself from people who exhibit a negative attitude or are consumed with what's going on in the news. Though we have TVs on the walls at Lord and Richards, we never broadcast the news. Instead, we display beautiful scenes of tranquil locations around the world designed to encourage you to be stress-free and relaxed. This is one of the keys to enjoying a long financial independence lifestyle in retirement.

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In our next segment, we’ll address one of my favorite topics, which 82% of people say they want to have more of in their life. In the meantime, give us a call. My team and I would love to chat with you and work together to enable you to develop a written plan so you can enjoy all the things that come with financial independence.

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Investment Advisory Services offered through Lord and Richards Wealth Management, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser.

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