Very soon, you’ll be celebrating your sixtieth birthday and that means you’ll be looking at your retirement, too. It’s natural to feel jittery about it as one question keeps popping into your mind: Now what?

It’s not that everyone over sixty goes through the same dilemma of finding new pastures. Some people keep working because they either need money or they just don’t want to get out of what they have become conditioned to. Well, in any case, if sixty is just not a number for you, it’s time to rev up your passion and pursue your hobbies like never before.

Before you enter your twilight years, you have every reason and opportunity to make your life rocking more than ever. By this age, you have lived most of your life, worked hard for your family and achieved success in ways that you know more than others do. Isn’t now the time you do something for yourself?

Here are the top things to do in retirement that can make your life more engaging and exciting:

Define your passion and purpose

This is going to be a new chapter of your life, so just sit back and ponder what has been missing in your life so far. What have you always been curious about?

Defining your purpose here means thinking about how you are going to spend your time in fruitful pursuits. It is the time to reassess your life and revisit your personal purposes that you couldn’t accomplish before. Now is the time to revisit the things that you always felt very strongly about.

Think young and spend time with your family and friends

Thinking young at this time simply means being energetic and enjoying the time you now have in your hands. Fun and enjoyment is a lifelong process and getting past sixty doesn’t mean that your attitude should be old and obsolete.

It’s time to have fun with your family and friends by talking and meeting with them more often. You can organize small parties and invite your friends to have sweet discussions and little toasts. This is the perfect time to give your friends an exotic bottle of wine or get them their favorite box of cigar. It is also the time to create sweet memories with your grandchildren.

Continue your hobbies

Following one’s hobbies is the biggest stress buster at any stage in life. So, continue what your favorite pastimes were even before your retirement. Be it gardening, traveling, reading, singing, dancing or playing golf. You always need to follow your hobbies to keep you fit and enthusiastic.

But, more importantly, your main focus should be doing the things that you enjoy the most. Pursuing your hobbies with heart and soul can give a completely new meaning to your life. So, get ready to make that push.

Volunteer your expertise

It’s time to use your expertise for a philanthropic cause in our society. Maybe your local library, school or pantry need your skills? Perhaps your local hospital and nursing home need an extra hand?

This might not sound like one of the most interesting things to do in retirement but volunteering your expertise will enable you to give back to the society what you learned as a professional.

See Also: Retirement Activities that are Financially Viable 

Develop new interests

There must be something itching inside you. These could be the activities that you were never able to do before or any untapped talent you have. Getting to know people with diverse interests will help you in that. Consider your retirement as a golden opportunity for you to try something new. It can be learning a new language or traveling to a place where you have never been but always craved to go to.

See Also: 10 Amazing Business Ideas For Stay-At-Home Retirees

Final Thoughts

The age of sixty is not the end of your days. It is, in fact, a new beginning where you can do the things that you were never able to do due to obvious obligations. It’s a new freedom and new purpose that will shape your life for the better.

 

The post Turning Sixty: Top Things To Do In Retirement appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

http://ift.tt/2xCxFsE

You were young and you just started your career a couple of years ago. You still have many years of work ahead of you. But then, someone talked to you about retirement planning. While he passionately shared his excitement about his plans, you pretended to listen when your mind was wandering around.

“Retirement plan is so not sexy”, you think.

When the person left, you happily shrugged everything he just talked about and moved on with your life.

Now, fast forward to your mid-thirties. Your career is booming and your family is expanding. Your expense is increasing and it seemed like despite the increase in your salary, your family’s demand is increasing as well. Somehow, your income is never enough to cover every need.

A thought of retirement plan crossed your mind, but it’s not a good time. You have a lot of important things to spend your money on.

Speed up to your mid-forties. Your kids are in high school or college. You didn’t know they would need that much money for tuition, clothes, prom clothes, studying tools and other countless things.

You started to worry about your retirement. You looked into some retirement plans and were amazed at how compound interest worked. Now, you wish you started it a long time ago.

If you saved $1,000 a month, when you retire, you could have around $500,000. But how in the world could you save $1,000 a month?

Then you thought about the medical bills when you age and the mortgage you are still paying. No way you could save more than $200 a month. You thought you were too late.

The truth is, the sooner you started your retirement savings, the better. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t start when you’re in your mid-forty, mid-fifty or even mid-seventy. No matter how late you start, an effective retirement plan could help you a lot in your future years.

Here are 6 secrets to effective retirement planning:

Never run out of money

The first thing to remember is to make sure you never run out of money.

If you start your retirement savings early, that’s great. If you start late, don’t get stressed out and try to make up for the past years by saving the highest amount of money you can.
Don’t confuse retirement money with emergency money. You always need emergency money. That comes first and retirement comes second.

Don’t be fooled by the big fat juicy yield

When deciding your portfolio, don’t go straight to the highest yield possible. Higher yield means higher risk. Be careful as all the stocks and bonds in the market try to emphasize their high yields with a little or no talk about the risks associated with them. That’s what they do to capture you.

Don’t be fooled by their lip-deep promises. Do your own research about the companies you want to invest in and diversify your portfolio. You will be much safer if you put your eggs in different baskets.

Watch out all hidden fees

This is an area that you need to put an eye on as those fees can take a bite out of your returns.

Think of all the scenarios that can happen and find out if there is any fee applied to them- from registration fee, investing fee, transaction fee to cancellation fee. You don’t want to find out you have to pay a penalty fee if you sell your preference bonds at the very last-minute.

Automate your retirement saving

Many people prefer to set up their retirement savings on autopilot. This way, you can’t touch that money and you also don’t have to worry about how much you should put into your pension plan.

If your employer offers a pension plan such as 401(k), make sure you register for it. If not, you can ask your bank to automatically transfer a sum from your account every month to your savings account.

Assess your retirement plan every year

Once you find your retirement plan, don’t abandon it. The market goes up and down and so does your portfolio.

Revisit your portfolio often or make sure to read notifications from your portfolio manager to assess how well your retirement saving performs. Make adjustments if needed. This way, you’ll be able to stay on track for a better retirement.

Increase your retirement savings every year

At the beginning, when you see a drop in your net salary, you would struggle to make it fit all your family’s expenses. However, once you are in a place that your net salary must work, things will work out. You would no longer pay for something you never use, like some cool gadgets or a gym membership.

Once you cut down all the unnecessary things you normally spend money on, you would save a bit more from your salary. Don’t use this leftover money to buy something fancy as a reward. Put it into your retirement plan and set a goal to increase it by 1% every year.

See Also: Retirement Activities that are Financially Viable 

Over to you

Creating an effective retirement plan requires hard work and commitment. It is not a sprint, it is a marathon. But, the hard work is definitely worth it.

Imagine your last working day before saying goodbye to 30 years of hard work. Your last paycheck is in your wallet. You drive home after a fancy farewell dinner and you have an exact plan on what to do next.

You come home to your spouse to start packing luggage for a vacation. Only this time, you don’t have to worry about getting back to work. Your vacation can last as long as you want to. You can totally afford it without a second thought because you have a great retirement plan to back you up.

And it really can. It is never too early or too late to start your retirement so start today.

See Also: 10 Amazing Business Ideas For Stay-At-Home Retirees

 

The post 6 Secrets To Create An Effective Retirement Plan appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

http://ift.tt/2yaJsyW

Setting life goals is generally considered as a positive thing. I disagree with this. In my view, setting goals provides motivation in life but kills happiness

Relation between setting goal and happiness

There seems to be no relationship between happiness, wealth and prosperity.

The latest figures released recently by World Bank recently show that global poverty level has reduced by half over the last 30 years. This implies that the poverty level has now dropped below 10%. A report presented by CNBC Money on March 24, 2017 shows that the wealth and purchasing capacity of American people at present is stronger than ever before.

However, all the reports and statistics indicate that American people have been less happy. United Nations Happiness Report 2017 suggests that happiness in the United States is declining. In the article ‘Why Americans Have Gotten a Lot Less Happy’ by Martha C. White published in Time Magazine on March 16, 2016, Jeffrey Sachs, the head of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, asserted that “the United States, which is very rich, has gotten a lot richer over the last 50 years, but has gotten no happier.”

This is likely to be the picture too in other countries around the globe.

Despite having increasing wealth, people are not becoming happier because the source of their unhappiness remains. There is no way to measure how wealth can make a person happy as it will depend on one’s expectation or goal. If a goal is not reached, people can’t be happy- even if they’re billionaires. Goals always exceed achievements.

Setting goal is never ending

Take, for example, a floating ball. No matter how high the water level increases, the ball on the water will remain afloat. Our goals float always on our achievements.

The process of setting life goals is never ending because people keep on setting new goals. We set mainly result-oriented goals and we take them so hard that we are always in anxiety and tension.

I agree that pursuing a goal gives motivation. It could be possible to be happier if attaining the goal is possible.

When we reach our goal, we instinctively seek another goal to make us happier. This way, we are caught in the habit of setting goals continuously in our lives. The process of achieving goals no longer becomes fun; it becomes a burden on our shoulders

Why happiness is on the wane

All the statistics regarding the level of happiness are done by surveys. The results vary depending on how the survey is conducted. And because there is no other way to measure these statistics, we simply accept them as the truth.

Wealth is often associated with satisfaction in life. However, it does not have the same impact on happiness. Happiness is a psychosomatic, matter which cannot be improved by material things alone. We can explain that by the old proverb, “the more you get, the more you want”.

Not many reach the goal

Some researchers have identified ten things that make us unhappy while others have identified five things. However, I find only one thing that hinders happiness and this is setting a goal in life.

Setting a goal is seen as a positive thing by the majority of people. However, I do not see that in the same way.

According to a research conducted by the University of Scranton, only 8% could achieve the new year goals they set while the other 92% could not and, thus are left feeling frustrated and unhappy.

See Also: How to Set Personal SMART Goals To Succeed

Aiming high cause unhappiness

As human beings, we are naturally driven by ambition. My primary school teacher once asked us about our aim in life. Every boy and girl in my class had an aim in life. Some wanted to become billionaires, some had the ambition to become doctors, and some wanted to become famous singers.

However, none of us seemed to evaluate the possibility of achieving those aims. In other words, we did not evaluate if we are capable of reaching our ambitions or not. As a result, we realize with time that we may not reach those goals and that realization makes us sad and frustrated. If we take that seriously and if we focus too much on achieving those goals, we become constantly worried. This can make us extremely unhappy.

Goal setting theory and my own experience

Locke’s Goal-Setting Theory suggests that what you want to do and how you execute strategies to achieve a goal is applicable for companies that set strategies to accomplish that. I have not seen that many people set process goal in their lives. Even if they do, it would make their lives boring as they’ll behave like machines following their daily routine.

Even all successful companies are careful to guide their outlooks. If the target is not achieved, then share price tumbles.

Such high aims or target setting upset our lives. Last year, I was working for Danish Refugee Council among the Syrian refugees who were crossing the Danish border. I counseled many of them who clearly expressed their unhappiness in Denmark. Their target was to be accepted as refugees in Sweden, but they were unfortunately stuck in Denmark. They escaped from Syria where thousands of people were being brutally killed every day.

They arrived in one of the most peaceful and prosperous countries but they remained unhappy because they could not reach their target destination. It crossed my mind that even in a desperate situation, the refugees were not happy.

Goal gives motivation but not happiness

It is possible to attain a goal for material gains, but attaining a goal cannot bring about happiness. According to a professor of Psychology at Denver University, Iris Mauss, wanting to be happy can make you less and, if you explicitly and purposely focus on happiness, that can have a self-defeating effect.

More often than not, we do not set our goals based on our own desires. Instead, we set goals in our early lives based on the desires of our parents and social pressure. In other words, we set our goals to compete with others.

However, it is important to note that when we set goals based on desires that are not our own, it makes us frustrated and unhappy. It makes us undermine our own desires.

See Also: 4 Powerful Ways To Stay Motivated And Reach Your Goals Through Tough Times

How to eliminate problems of goal setting

The main drawback of goal setting is that there are many unknown factors that can come into play. In a fast-changing society like the one we are living in now, long-term goals often fail. If we persistently stick to such goals, it creates a constant mental burden.

Instead of setting long-term goals, we can set a number of short-terms goals. These goals are easily achievable and do not involve a lot of uncertainties. We just have to know ourselves, so that we can have an idea of what and how much we can accomplish.

Goal setting is not the only thing that determines our happiness. Happiness has many elements, like positive emotions, relationships, accomplishments and gratefulness. Eliminating goal setting alone will not make us happy. You also need to have positive emotions and a deep sense of appreciation in life.

The post How Setting Life Goals Can Undermine Your Happiness appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

http://ift.tt/2wWTtiX