Amy Lindgren

Is it time for you to retire? In last week’s column I discussed the logistics involved, and took a look at post-retirement life, with short bits of advice on housing, impacts on health care and finances, and the larger question of what someone’s vision might be for the next chapter.

Emphasis on short bits of advice. This topic is so massive, tomes could be written and we still wouldn’t scratch the surface. Wait — tomes have been written about the retirement decision. And yet, here we are, with the largest group of people reaching 65 in our nation’s history and probably half of them not knowing what to do about the retirement question.

I made that part up, by the way. We do know definitively how many people are turning 65 – about 11,000 a day this year, thanks to the baby boom. But imagining that half don’t have a solid date or plan for retirement? That’s just an educated guess on my part, based on the steady drumbeat of conversations I’ve been having with clients, friends, colleagues and, last week, a stranger in the elevator.

So let’s take one more look at the retirement issue, this time from the decision-making aspect. I’ve been modifying a list of questions for years to use in conversations with my career counseling clients. Here they are, in no particular order.

• Does the thought of retirement excite you? Fill you with dread? Something in between?

• Would your life be significantly easier if you retired?

• When you think about actually retiring, is it your job that you want to leave? Your profession? Or the entire world of working for a living?

• How do you define retirement? Does it include downscaling to easier or part-time work?

• What’s everyone else doing? Are your friends and family already retired?

• How’s your health? Do you have conditions that are likely to get worse in the foreseeable future? How does that impact your thinking?

• Same question about your partner: Does his or her health impact your thinking on retirement?

• How difficult is your current work? Is it getting harder to recover from your work days?

• Do you have a bucket list? If so, do the activities depend on being retired in order to do them?

• If not a bucket list, is there an activity you enjoy that you can’t do often enough because you’re still working?

• Is there anyone you want to spend more time with now, who might not be so available later?

• What scares you the most about retiring? Is it running out of money, feeling isolated, becoming irrelevant without your work identity?

Related to this last question, I usually have some tough talk to share, which is this: Recognize that you are just as vulnerable to these particular concerns pre-retirement as you could be post-retirement. If your organization closes, for example, or lays you off, you’d face the same potential for running out of money or becoming isolated.

The solution to those fears, with or without retirement in the picture, is to resist putting so many eggs into one basket, at least in terms of relationships and interests. People who volunteer, take classes or join clubs tend to do better after leaving their jobs, regardless of how their job ended.

But what about the money? Not having enough is almost certain for millions in our aging population, particularly if they hope to live at a similar level as they do pre-retirement.

Most of these questions are based on the assumption that you’ve already examined your finances and know if or when retirement is possible. That’s when the decision really boils down to “Stay or go?” and “When? How?”

My one solid piece of advice: If indeed retirement is possible for you, don’t delay the process of deciding. You can certainly postpone acting on whatever decision you make, and of course you can change your mind.

And even if retirement doesn’t look possible for you, it’s still important to determine what you want for the last part of your life. As always, the key to achieving goals is to know what they are so you can start the problem-solving process while there’s still time to affect the outcome.

But ignoring the decision altogether means that you’re inevitably letting doors and opportunities close. That’s going to happen anyway — you can’t do everything just because you can imagine it. But it will always be better to choose from a list of options while the options are viable, rather than have the possibilities dwindle while you’re not looking.

Time for the next chapter? You’ll soon find out!

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.