In a previous post entitled Retirement Planning 101 , we dealt with the concept that retirement planning involves issues above and beyond simply financial planning, 401K management, IRA issues and estate planning issues. Of course, financial planning such as estate planning, insurance planning, 401K management and the like are a very important aspect of retirement planning, but it is only once piece of the puzzle. In this post, let us consider another aspect of retirement planning, namely, planning to manage your time in retirement. The concept of time management during the hectic years of earning money while you are burdened with responsibilities of making your mortgage payment for your house, car payments, making ends meet as far as children’s college education, etc is much different from the concept of time management in retirement. Whereas in the former, you are more interested in making every minute of time productive enough from a financial stand point, in the latter you should be interested in making every minute of time productive in producing satisfaction in doing the things you “want” to do which may (or may not ) actually produce financial rewards too. Those folks who retire from the active workforce and simply while away their time in the traditional retirement scene, actually may end up with a variety of problems in their sense of satisfaction from the point of view of accomplishment; this in turn may lead to health problems and associated worry. It then may snowball into other areas of problems such as anxiety and depression and may reduce life expectancy. People that tend to keep themselves busy can avoid a whole bunch of unnecessary headaches.
Hence, a critical aspect of retirement planning involves planning on what to do with your time. While you may have put in strictly eight hours a day, forty hours a week and you need to fill up only those eight hours a day with things to do, you may have been a very zealous worker who put in twelve hours a day six days a week and are now faced with filling that seventy-two hour a week time slot This is especially difficult to do for those people that held two or three jobs though out their active working lives. While addressing time management during your retirement years, ensure that you put in place time slots for specific activities and put them down in writing. For example, if you have been an executive of a medium sized business throughout your active life and plan to provide business advice to small and medium sized companies in your retirement, then you need to specifically write down how you plan to spend your time performing this field of activity. You may for example break down your eight hour day into three hours soliciting and developing new contacts and prospects; two hours writing small business management articles, two hours meeting with clients and providing actual business advice and one hour managing accounts and other administrative functions. Your written time management plan needs to be this specific to be of any value; otherwise it ends up being just a hazy picture at best. Of course, your spouse needs to buy in to your time management plans also. This needs to be a co-operative effort and not a solo one.
