While many working Americans assume the transition to retirement will be a simple affair once the financial picture is in order, the reality is that many people struggle to find meaning and stave off boredom after they retire.
There are the lost connections to longtime, like-minded colleagues. There are big questions about how to fill what might have been eight or 10 hours of working time from Monday to Friday. There is the need to confront one's own mortality and the physical and mental challenges of aging.
Overall, those clients who don't put in the work to truly envision their life after work will likely find themselves stumbling through what can only be called retirement planning blind spots, and all the financial stability in the world won't make the retirement journey an enjoyable and satisfying experience.
This warning was shared by Eric Weigel and Fritz Gilbert on the latest episode of Morningstar's The Long View podcast, hosted by Christine Benz and Jeff Ptak.
Fritz, a repeat guest on The Long View, writes the The Retirement Manifesto blog, while Weigel is the founder of a retirement coaching firm called Retire With Possibilities. Both have written books about the psychological challenges of planning for retirement, and they collaborated on a recent survey of retirees and pre-retirees aimed at gauging their attitudes and to help flag potential blind spots about retirement planning.
The pair say their survey results are equal parts eye-opening and unsurprising, given their long-standing focus on the retirement transition topic. Overall, they say, people tend to significantly overestimate their ability to transition smoothly and happily into retirement, but at the same time, many who engage in the proper planning activities pre-retirement are able to find enjoyment and meaning in their golden years.
Ultimately, Weigel and Gilbert explain, the new survey data (and their own anecdotal experience as aging Americans) shows lifestyle planning is every bit as important as financial planning in the pursuit of retirement happiness.
About the New Survey
Asked by Benz and Ptak why they chose to collaborate on their new survey, Weigel and Gilbert suggested there has just not been a lot of targeted research that focuses on this issue.
"We kind of went back and forth a little bit on this — but my interest was really to try to look at the differences between people that were retired and people that were still planning to retire in terms of how they viewed their life in retirement," Weigel explains. "We looked at a couple of surveys from Edward Jones and Age Wave, and that was a topic that was addressed slightly, but we thought that we could do a better job."
As the pair explains, the new survey featured a nearly 50-50 split between retirees and pre-retirees, with 54% of respondents being retired. Notably, they say, half of this group had just retired in the past two years, giving them a fresh perspective on the retirement transition.
Likewise, some 45% in the pre-retiree group were actively planning for their retirement transition, with half of these aiming to retire in the next two years.
"So, we got a big chunk of this population that's in that really sweet spot of just before or just after retirement," Gilbert says. "In terms of ages, 36% were 51 to 60, and another 33% were 61 to 65, meaning the majority of respondents were in the 51 to 65 age bracket."
The Challenge of Lost Connections
According to Gilbert and Weigel, a key area where people frequently said their planning could have been better was in replacing their lost work connections.
"I was kind of surprised by that," Gilbert says. "That was actually the highest response rate for people that had already retired in terms of the areas where they felt they hadn't prepared sufficiently, with 36% of retirees citing this issue."
What's more, when one looks at what people say they miss from their work, 62% of retirees say they miss the social aspect of their careers.
