Reading Time: 4 minutesOn July 1st, 2009, I attended my Air Force Reserve retirement ceremony at McCord Air Force Base, Washington. That was the specific date the loss of my title of “Air Force JAG” became real. I knew I would never be a JAG in the Air Force again, and I grieved the loss of the role. …
Reading Time: 5 minutesRetirement is one of the most significant transitions most adults will ever face. It’s as momentous, researchers say, as becoming a parent, getting married or divorced, or leaving home for the first time. If you’re retired and having emotional difficulties dealing with this transition, that’s normal. Unfortunately, in our culture, we only highlight the pluses …
Reading Time: 4 minutesRetirement often starts like a dream vacation you never have to end—but sooner or later, the scenery changes. But what happens when the vacation feeling wears off? The Vacation You Never Have to End Most people experience a ‘honeymoon period’ when they first retire. In his TED Talk and his book, Dr. Riley Moynes describes …
Reading Time: 4 minutesWe spend decades getting the money right. Almost no one thinks seriously about the character challenges retirement brings. Most retirement advice focuses on money, but retirement success depends far more on who you are and your approach toward retirement than what you have. Long before retirement calculators and lifestyle spreadsheets, philosophers asked a deeper question: …
Reading Time: 2 minutesFor the past 10 months, I have been writing, editing, and publishing two blog posts each week. I’ve published an Original Mac Guy post on Tuesdays and a Retirement Reinvented post on Saturdays. Starting this week, I’m going to publish one standard post each Tuesday morning. I’ll be alternating between Original Mac Guy and Retirement …
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe Model That Doesn’t Exist Nobody tells you this before you retire: the day you stop working, you’ll probably have no idea what you’re actually supposed to do next. Not in a panicked way — just a quiet, unsettling “now what?” that nobody warned you about. Our culture does not provide a single model for …
Reading Time: 3 minutesPeople assume that if they’re financially ready, everything else in retirement will fall into place. The dominant retirement narrative says, “Get your finances right, and everything else follows.” It’s baked into every retirement calculator brochure and planning conversation. Money does allow us to buy things that enhance our lives and provide a sense of security. …
Reading Time: 4 minutesWe often view retirement in unrealistic terms. The myth of retirement is that once you stop working, life will be wonderful all the time. Financial planning ads show retirement as a non-stop luxury vacation — but the reality often doesn’t come close. When Retirement Goes Wrong When I was a shift leader in a sheriff’s …
Reading Time: 3 minutesThe death of a long-term partner is one of the greatest fears we can have. Eventually, either your partner will die first or you will. Refusing to acknowledge this doesn’t make it less true; it just makes us less prepared. The Risk Nobody Wants to Talk About When we lose a partner, there is a …
Reading Time: 4 minutesOur financial advisor told us something most advisors won’t say: “You should retire now.” He’d watched too many clients wait past when they could have retired — and then die shortly after they finally did. They never got to enjoy what they’d spent decades working toward. That conversation changed everything for us. We retired at …