Achieving Your Retirement Lifestyle

Retirement lifestyle should be your focus instead of retirement money. Most of the retirement experts out there insist that you focus on saving enough money for retirement. While money is obviously an important part of a stable retirement, I assert that money shouldn’t be your focus when planning for retirement. 

As you read in my previous article, your retirement lifestyle should be the focus. You need to first figure out how you want to live in retirement before you figure out how you can achieve your retirement lifestyle. In many cases, once you decide how you want your retirement lifestyle to be, you’ll find that you don’t need to have a million dollars sitting in an account somewhere. In other cases, you may find that you need much more than a million dollars to achieve your retirement lifestyle. My point is that your retirement lifestyle choice should come first, and your plan to get there should come second. 

Once you have started envisioning your retirement lifestyle, it’s time to figure out how to get there. What are the obstacles and challenges preventing you from getting to that destination in your mind? Typically these obstacles fall into four basic categories: resources, knowledge, people, and time. Don’t focus on money because money is only one of the tools at your disposal to remove these obstacles. Focus on your lifestyle and the resources available to you. Remember, you can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re headed. Now that you know where you want to go, you’ll be able to put a plan together to get there.

Making the Plan

Once you have a clear image in your mind of where you want to be in retirement, you may need to think creatively about how to get there. It will be up to you to figure out what it will take for you to achieve your retirement lifestyle goals. Just realize that the plan may not be what you automatically assume it should entail. You may have to make some very hard decisions. For most people, this entails a huge shift in thinking. You will need to take a hard look at the assumptions you have about life and how it’s supposed to work. 

For example, many people think that they’ll need to work harder in order to achieve their retirement goals. Working harder equals making more money, right? That’s what investment advisors tell you, and you assume that they always know what they’re talking about. But that line of thinking won’t get you there because ultimately, that’s being focused on money rather than lifestyle. And when you talk to investment advisors, you’re given two options: either live less now (save more money today) or live less later (reduce your lifestyle at retirement). That’s no way to live, now or in the future. Your life now is just as important as your life in the future. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice one part of your life for another. Let go of the assumption that you need to work harder now in order to obtain a better lifestyle later on.

Next, try working backward from your retirement destination. Another tip is to look at your largest existing asset and make sure to put that equity to work for you. For most people, their largest asset is their home. But if you aren’t within reach of your desired retirement lifestyle, then your home isn’t your asset at all; it’s a liability. It’s standing in the way of you achieving the retirement lifestyle that you ultimately want. 

Where does your “dream” lifestyle take place? If it’s on a beach and you live in the midwest, you’re going to have to move, right? Unless your lifestyle takes place at Alum Creek Dam in Ohio or Lake Michigan, you’re probably going to have to relocate. So where is this beach? Florida? Italy? What do you need to do to get there? Will you need a passport? How much does it cost to live there? If you own a house, are you planning to sell it or rent it out?You can see where I’m going with this. If you work backward you start to understand the exact steps that would require you to make the retirement vision a reality.

Get Comfortable With Discomfort

Albert Einstein said, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.” Achieving your retirement lifestyle dream will probably necessitate thinking outside the box. You’ll likely have to do some things that will make your friends and family and neighbors raise their eyebrows. In fact, that’s a good sign that you’re on the right track. 

Have your past habits and routines given you what you need to achieve that retirement lifestyle dream? Are you closer to the dream than you were, say, five years ago? Or are you just treading water, hoping that miraculously something will change. If you don’t make choices, then choices will be made for you and they won’t necessarily be in your favor. Are you making choices that are congruous with your values and what you deem to be important? 

Many people claim that family is the most important thing to them. And then they rush out the door for work in the morning with a quick peck on the forehead for their wife and children. They come home from work exhausted and check their emails while the kids are vying for attention. On the weekends, they lay on the couch watching a three hour football game while the wife makes snacks and the kids play video games upstairs. Now, to each his own. But take a good look. Are you doing the things that you say are the most important or are you just talking about them? Because only when you decide to actually do the things that are important to you will you have the courage to make choices that will get you closer to your dream retirement. 

The thing is, you may need to make some tough choices on the road to making your retirement dreams a reality. Those choices may feel scary and uncomfortable. But it’s a case of things getting worse before they get better. For example, let’s say you’ve owned your home for several years. You’re sitting on lots of equity. Yet, you’re no closer to retiring than you were five years ago. That equity isn’t working for you. But if you sell your house and invest the money, you could move and rent a home (maybe in your dream retirement destination) and start making passive income that pays part of your rent. Granted, holding yard sales and organizing a house sale and relocation causes a certain amount of life chaos. But when the dust settles and you’re in your new rental home in your retirement destination with passive income streaming in each month, you really will be several steps closer to achieving your retirement goals. Now you may be able to work less and actually spend some time with your family without feeling exhausted. It’s all within your reach.

Get the Support of Your Family

For me, getting closer to my dream of retirement definitely meant making hard choices. My wife and I decided to sell our home in California in order to capture the equity we had built up over the years and become renters instead. It wasn’t an easy decision at all. It’s the exact opposite of what most people strive for. It goes against the American dream itself. Most people work hard to stop being renters so they can become homeowners. But when my wife and I changed our way of thinking, we realized that the smartest thing we could do is capture the equity of our home by selling it and using that money to finance our retirement lifestyle dream.

We talked to our two adult sons about what such a move would mean to them. Were their childhood memories tied to the house in which they grew up? Or would they feel just as comfortable visiting in our retirement years in our house in the South of France or wherever else we decided to live in retirement? My wife’s happiness was paramount, too. I would have understood if she didn’t want to give up the place where she’d turned a house into a loving home where we raised our two remarkable sons. Thankfully, my wife understood and was onboard with the decision to let go of comfort and embrace a little risk in exchange for a better retirement lifestyle. Honestly, if my wife had nixed the idea, I wouldn’t have pursued it. In that scenario, I would still be working the daily grind to this day. But I’m not. I have retired from the rat race, and my wife has now retired from the rat race, too. Ironically, our rental home is bigger than the home we owned, and has a breathtaking view of San Francisco Bay. We have more now than we had before, and it all started with changing our assumptions and focusing on lifestyle instead of money.

We both work, with our two sons, at our family real estate business, MartelTurnkey. It’s grown beyond our wildest dreams and I’m happy to say it’s showing no signs of stopping. Every day we are helping people getting closer to achieving their own dream retirement lifestyle.

Sometimes letting go of the things you thought were important is the only way to grasp what you want in the future. Imagine what your future self would say to you now. Would your future self be proud of your present self for having the courage to make tough choices? The future is within your grasp.