Tag: #stagedretirement

How are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions from just a few weeks ago? Often the goals we set at the beginning of a year are ambitious, but then they fall by the wayside. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Ron Shaich, billionaire entrepreneur and investor, offered a more practical alternative: the “premortem.” Each year, Shaich reflects on…

Yes, there’s really such a thing as coaches for your retirement – and there are even multiple certifications for professional coaches.  What do these retirement coaches offer? Retirement coaches help you navigate the transition from work to retirement by addressing both practical and emotional aspects. They assist their clients in clarifying goals, finding purpose, and planning for a balanced lifestyle…

Throughout my career in information technology, I’ve witnessed the rise of Agile software development practices, emphasizing flexibility and iterative progress. These replace older approaches where a complex, multi-year project was planned out in detail…but those efforts were rarely successful…requirements changed, people changed and there were many things we learned along the way. I realized that my notion of ‘phased retirement’…

Retirement marks a major life transition, one that not only signals the end of a career but the beginning of a new and blank-slate phase of life. Increasingly, experts are recognizing this period as its own distinct life stage—a time of potential, reinvention, and challenge. Programs at Stanford, Harvard, Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago offer structured ways to…

If you’ve ever reflected on how much time you really have in your life, you may have come across the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. The title is a sobering reminder of the typical number of weeks in a lifetime—about 4,000 if you live to 77. But if you’re approaching or have reached retirement age, that number dwindles…

At recent Sunday services, I was tuned in for a word or phrase that might offer some guidance for the week ahead.  From Psalm 90, I got what I was listening for: “Our days may come to seventy years,    or eighty, if our strength endures;Teach us to number our days,    that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” That phrase “numbering our days”…

Last week I offered some ideas on how to think about wealth in different ways. While I was fairly adamant that income does not equal wealth, I didn’t touch on how much financial wealth is required for a comfortable retirement relative to your specific needs. In part 2 this week, I’ll address that question.  “How much wealth is enough?” Typically,…

One key aspect of retirement – whether you take a phased approach or not – is your personal financial situation.  If you haven’t addressed your financial needs you may have to continue working and putting off retirement until you’ve built up a more sustainable cushion. Today I want to share “part one” of what it means to me to be…