So much changes when we retire.  Our roles in society.  The structure of our time.  The things people ask of us.  The way we set up the week.  How we see ourselves and how society sees us.  What our families expect of us–and think of us.  And on and on and on.  Yet there is little available to get us ready for all these transitions.  As a start at remedying that,  I’m going to explore  some of them in posts from time to time over the next few months.

Before we retire, we look longingly at what is on the sometimes-way-too-distant horizon–the chance to give up all we are doing now and just STOP.  To retire.  When we are running too fast from thing to thing with too much to do and not enough time to get it done, the appeal of this “do nothing” future is unparalleled.

Don’t be fooled.  It’s a mirage.

Doing nothing is no more satisfying that doing too much.  The trick is to do enough and to do it on the right things.  This is where the real treasure of retirement lies.  But it’s not at all like the “do nothing unless I want to” fantasy that we usually leave work with.

What happens when we no longer have to get the work we’ve been paid to do for years done?  If you’ve been doing a job you hated, the loss is truly liberating.  But if there is anything about that work that gave you satisfaction, you will find yourself feeling less about yourself and wondering why.

Odd as it sounds, part of the problem is that we no longer have the authority of the job we did so well.  Yes, authority.  Even if you have been cleaning motel rooms for a living, there was value in what you did and you had the responsibility and the authority to get it done.  You had a role to play that went beyond  “whatever I feel like.”  You had things that were expected of you. And you knew how to do them and do them well.  When you give that up, you might want to put some thought into how you are going to retain your sense of relevance.  And your sense of competence.

For those of us who were in jobs that weren’t particularly satisfying, that “something else” might be a bit easier to latch onto.  My dad spent over 40 years making paper for Kimberly Clark.  What he really wanted to do was write, sketch, and paint pictures.  When he left work–a couple years early because of health problems, these interests carried him the rest of his life–another 24 years.

My grandfather was a different story.  When he retired, he sat down. And pretty much stayed there.  Whenever we went to visit grandma and grandpa, he was in that easy chair, watching television.  He retired from an office job but had owned a successful commercial fishing business earlier in his career years.  He too lived another twenty plus years after he retired.  I use the term loosely though.  What he did with his days was so uninspired that it almost seemed like he had died but forgot to stop breathing.

This is a key piece of why the “extended vacation” model isn’t going to get you what you need as retirement.  It just doesn’t work to be “on vacation” for twenty years.  You lose your sense of direction and your sense of time when you are “gone” for that long.  Remember how hard it is to figure out what day of the week it is when you don’t have things you have to do?  Well, don’t build a life out of that!

Okay, so if you are ready to leave what you are doing and have no idea what about it you are going to miss–and what you want to do instead–does that mean you need to keep working?  Not at all.  It means you need to start paying attention to yourself so that you can start to remedy that information deficiency.

We all have interests, whether we acknowledge them or not.  We all have skills and abilities that give us a leg up on doing certain things.  We have longings that allow us room to find a new source of “being an authority.”  It might be as the builder of doll houses and it might be as the builder of Habitat for Humanity houses, but if it’s you, honoring it will give you the greatest thrill of your life.

So give up the rat race if you can and it’s time.  Give up the workload that keeps you from the rest of what you enjoy.  But find things to learn and become good at that make you have that sense of authority, that feeling that “Yes, I do know a lot about this and I’d be happy to help you with it.”

Below are some thoughts on this question from Bold Retirement:  Mining Your Own Silver for a Rich Life.

Is the next step simply not working? Or do you want to redesign your life so it contains everything you want in the proportions you prefer personally? Are you looking for a rocking chair or a launching pad? A nap or an adventure?

… The Harvard management professor and corporate guru Rosabeth Moss Kanter noted that those now on the brink of retiring are not likely to make this transition quietly as a group. “Having been told from birth about their own significance, they aren’t going to feel less significant simply because they’ve hit a career ceiling called retirement age.” She cites research done by Met Life and Civic Ventures where the majority of the Americans between 50 and 70 who were asked said they wanted to benefit their communities in some way with what they do with their time and/or for a living at this point in their lives. This is only one of the differences between our venerated image of “the golden years” and the reality of what they will be like once the baby boom steps into them.

… But this is a new paradigm and the answer is still in the works. For the time being, those of us asking are going to have to figure it out for ourselves. And since, by this point in our lives, we are all incredibly unique, the answers aren’t going to be the same for all of us. That will be true even when the resources and roadmaps needed to do this smoothly are in place—which they aren’t yet.

These answers are probably not going to be easy to figure out for you specifically either. Why should they be? You might be looking at as much as forty or fifty per cent of your total life span in what remains. What do you want to do with all that? What is important to get done? And how do you want to go about it? How do you LIKE to do things?

These are the more important questions about retirement. The point at which you are well enough off to give up a regular job and rely on the sources of income you’ve secured that don’t require your hours and days is not really “retirement.” It’s just another graduation—like high school and college. Congratulations! You have met all the requirements to be allowed to move on to the next level of life. Like all graduations, this involves a commencement. A beginning.

… “Retiring” provides the chance to exit the current work situation gracefully—usually with at least a partial financial safety net–and begin again, reconnecting with “calling” as the compass for charting a new course.

… For many of us, this phase of our lives will involve more than one “career” and more than one direction, perhaps even simultaneously. … It is also the time of our lives where we owe it to society to model balance in how we go about that. The years are silver because we do good things for others, but they are also silver because we have designed a sterling quality lifestyle for ourselves. We do what we want, but that includes doing good.

For many, that “good” is likely to be on a paid basis. People who get paid to do things tend to have more clout and more credibility than those acting as volunteers. “Work” also provides a better framework for focus and goal setting. But it won’t look like the work we are leaving.

…This is the time to create beautiful lives. Meaningful lives in terms of our own uniqueness. Lives that give those still trudging along in standard career mode inspiration to keep going. It is not about giving up work. It’s about working at what we want, at what we think is important and therefore worth doing. It is also about shaping the work we choose so it doesn’t exclude the other things we want in our lives.

From Bold Retirement:  Mining Yor Own SIlver for a Rich Life, pages 6 to 9.

By Mary Lloyd, CEO Mining Silver

This article originally appeared in the October 2008 edition of the Barbara Morris online newsletter Put Old on Hold.

How Greed Happens

We have two choices as the US economy convulses. We can point fingers and blame the people most obviously at fault. Or we can get serious about fixing it and admit our own part in this mess. The first option is a victim role—easy and appealing because we’ve given victims an honored place for decades. But it’s not the way out of this mess. To really fix it, we need to understand what made it happen–rather than pointing to a specific “who”–and implement a system of checks and balances so it doesn’t happen again.

This financial debacle is supported by a huge, stinking pile of greed. Greed per Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary is “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed.” Yep. We are drowning in a sea of that. It’s not just the sub-prime wizards who are guilty though.

It’s easy to see greed in preposterous CEO salaries. It’s easy to see it in those who “made a killing” selling houses to people who couldn’t afford them. It’s not so easy to see our own greed. But that’s what we have to look at to get this fixed.

Buying things we can’t afford when they’re not essential is greed. Why? Because we’re using that kind of shallow stuff to feel good about ourselves. We think that if we have that, we’ll be “successful.” Martha Beck refers to it as “the shallows” and contends that “the real reason we feel so starved in the shallows is that we aren’t made to be satisfied with material possessions or with concepts of ourselves as famous, noble, smart, handsome, righteous, influential, blah blah blah.”

We are way off track on creating truly satisfying lives for ourselves. Instead of doing what we believe is important, we do whatever makes us money so we can buy stuff. Instead of doing work in which we believe, we sell out so we can keep buying. But filling the hole where meaning belongs with “stuff” is never enough. Or as Matthew Kelly puts it in The Rhythm of Life, “You never can get enough of what you really don’t need.”

What we really do need is a chance to connect fully with other people, a chance to prove our competence in what we do, and a chance to claim our authentic purpose in what we commit our time, effort, and money to. We don’t need the 54” plasma TV. We need to get out there and help someone learn to read. We don’t need a $1000 outfit. We need to find the joy of a real hug.

Greed is a dead end. When we get on that road, we get lost easily. We take the road because it’s got the neon of Madison Avenue pointing the way. It looks “exciting.” But a dead end is a dead end, razzle-dazzle or not. Before we get this mess fixed as a nation, we need to individually chart a better course. We need the high road—of meaning, of integrity, of purpose.

If you are sitting there congratulating yourself because you are debt-free with money in the bank, don’t get too comfy. Martin Luther King warned “Our lives begin the end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

We must say “You’re going the wrong way” to loved ones who are buying things they can’t afford. We need to stop enabling that wrong behavior by giving them money to make ends meet when they can’t. We need to YELL about the self-serving foolishness of offering credit cards to people who are already deeply in debt. There oughtta be a law!

Let’s not assume that this will “correct itself” as lending institutions bear the consequences of their own version of greed—the defaults of the heavily burdened interest-paying creditors they’ve cultivated as the credit situation tightens. We need to do our part, too. Say “No” to greed.

“Stuff” is not the answer. As a nation we need to get back on the high road of integrity and purpose. The view is nicer, it costs less, there’s more true satisfaction, and you sleep better.

Mary Lloyd is author of Bold Retirement: Mining Your Own Silver for a Rich Life and creator of Living Silver a one-day seminar on non-financial retirement planning. She just released a large-page format workbook, Planning Tools for Bold Retirement, based on the exercises in Bold Retirement and is working on her next book, about “work after work.” She’s available as a speaker and for customized retirement planning seminars. Her website is www.mining-silver.com. She can be reached at mary@mining-silver.com.

Last weekend was Oktoberfest at my local fairgrounds.  It was a bigger deal than I expected–and a much better good time for me personally than you might have guessed.  That Oktoberfest had untold delights.

We got there in the late afternoon when the little kids were still allowed on the premises.  (I live in a state that does not allow children at public drinking sites.)  The music was already oom-pahing along when we arrived–polkas, waltzes, and, of course, the “duck dance” (which no self-respecting adult would do anywhere else).  But the best part about the first two hours was watching the little ones do their thing on the dance floor.  When you reach “grandparent” age, little ones having fun are precious no matter whose they are.  Their dancing is particularly delightful–even when they are just whirling around or plopped in a heap in the middle.

Then there was the tuba player!  A two-time national champion.  He was good.  And I could notice the difference when he played.  I spent eight years in Midwest school bands.  You need that much experience to recognize good tuba playing.

It got better.  The band doing the next set featured an authentic alpenhorn player–a silver-haired sprite of a woman in a dirndl skirt.  How she made 15 feet of wood sound that beautiful was miraculous.  She had experience.

Later in the evening yet a different band, billed as “the Dixie Chicks of the button box,” took the stage. They were good, too.  In a very different way.  They were there for the young adults–who probably didn’t have anywhere NEAR as much respect for the cute little blonde leading the band as I did.  She plays “an accordian”–an instrument scorned by legions even in my home state of Wisconsin.  But she made it hip.  The young dancers had major fun–but so did we.  And yes, they played The Duck Dance–also the Hokey Pokey!

Four days later, I’m still thinking about that good time.  It was a great reminder of what’s good about getting older.  Experience gives you so much more depth to what’s going on right now. Experience reminds you that what was uncool can become cool.  That what seems impossible–like playing sweet haunting notes on a horn designed for goatherds–is indeed possible.  It helps you set wider boundaries and build more solid bridges.

And the best part?  The older you get the more experience you have to work with!  Cool.  So go have some fun–and let yourself enjoy all that it reminds you of all over again.  Life is good!

This post if for those who spend their time and save their money.  I’ve been pretty adamant that people who don’t have the money to pay for it should stop buying things.  For the rest of you, that seems so elementary you’re probably wondering about my sanity.  Right now, you’re probably hunkered down as if tanks had rolled into town, denying yourself the simplest of pleasures even when you can pay for them.  We need a different strategy from you, too.

If you are 95% sure you will outlive the money you already have put away, please consider spending some of it now.  I know, that sounds like lunacy, but the only way to get the economy going somewhere close to the right direction again is to keep commerce flowing.  The free-wheeling folks with the high credit card balances are going to have to stop, but that doesn’t mean you need to.  Please don’t scrimp on food because it FEELS like you need to be frugal.  Please don’t decide to forgo the vacation you can afford–especially if you are going somewhere in the United States.    Please don’t avoid buying what you need if you DO have the money to pay for it.

For me, that’s a scary idea.  In any economic downturn, my first and continued strategy is to cut back.  To not buy anything I absolutely can’t do without.   But if I have the wherewithal, I need to look that fear in the eye and go buy something.  And if you have the cash to do it, so do you.

Those of us who’ve been better at making money than spending it are not as conspicuous.  (Who knows how many of us there are?)  We wear five-year old jeans and a worn tee shirt and focus on doing what we enjoy.  Maybe for you it’s reading or working crossword puzzles or hiking.  Maybe it’s volunteering or spending time with family.   Please get out of your wonderfully effective rut and do something bold.  Spend some money. It can make a difference in whether we back on track as a nation.  Really.

But PLEASE, do not spend it bailing out loved ones who have gotten themselves into credit trouble.  (That’s what a healthy saver would typically do.)  They need to learn the really hard lessons this time around so they stop doing that for good.  Instead, buy something you deserve.  If you do, you win twice.  You get the nice thing, and you help improve the nation’s economic chances.  Or help someone who has maintained good credit.   That’s a double plus, too.

And there’s another benefit in this.  People stay healthier if they can find a way to take action when things aren’t going right.  Wise spending by those who would otherwise pass the money on to grandkids is good action for this dilemma.

If you have money to spare, please make plans to buy something soon.