The Retirement Newsletter: A milestone reached!
Issue Number: -130 — there is still a long way to go!
Photo by Eric Rothermel on Unsplash
Welcome
OK, this is one of those milestones on the road to retirement — issue -130. But why is this a milestone?
Well, there are 52 weeks in a year, 104 weeks in two years, 26 weeks in half a year, so this means that at 130 weeks from retirement, I have 2.5 years to go!
I am not too sure how I feel about that…. 130 weeks sound like a long time, but 2.5 years doesn't sound that much. Friends who have retired have assured me that the time will fly by, and I will be retired before I know it. Is that a good thing?
So, this week we will look some more at planning and how I used a handy feature in Evernote (remember, that is the program I am using to manage all my plans to retire — see newsletter issue -133) for more details) to keep on top of my things.
Planning
In the last newsletter (issue -131), I explained how I came up with my lists of actions to help me get to my retirement date. And in the newsletter, I said I had ended up with four lists:
Money — debts, mortgage, savings, and pension
Job — keep the one I have got and improve it, or find a new job
Health — get healthy!
Life — stuff that didn't fit into the above
But there were still a few things I did with my lists to help move things along.
Ordering
Some items in my lists were more time-dependent (urgent) than others. For example, paying off credit card debt before tackling the mortgage (the borrowing is cheaper on a mortgage than on a credit card, so clear the high-interest loans first). Or, deciding what to do about my job — should I stay, or should I go — as there is no point changing jobs right before you retire, if you want to change jobs, it becomes a priority.
So, I put my lists in a 'to be actioned' order, with the ones that needed doing soon at the top and dependent tasks ranked in the order that the tasks required completing.
Timing
Some items in the list were time-dependent; that is, they couldn't be started until a specific date, or they needed to be completed by a particular date.
For these items, I used an Evernote feature that allows you to set reminders on notes. I set a reminder on a note for when I next needed to interact with that note to either complete a task or start working on a particular task. A bonus of setting a reminder in Evernote is that you get an email reminder.
Reviews
In addition to reminders for individual tasks, I also added a fifth note to my lists: Reviews.
The Review note contained just one list, and that was a list of quarterly review dates with a reminder set to fire on the next quarter date in the list.
On review dates, I would review all the four lists, money, job, health, and life, and assess how I was making progress against achieving my retirement date.
This approach of quarterly views forced me to keep a close eye on how things were moving forward.
My last review was on the 30th of June, end of Q2 of 2021, and things were looking OK.
Summary
OK, so that brings me to the end of the 'planning' phase.
I think the key things with the plans are:
Plan!
Be flexible with your plan
Review the plan at regular intervals (even with the best plan, it is all too easy for life to get in the way)
Do not be afraid to change the plan — it is your plan!
Through my planning, I ended up with five lists in Evernote:
Money — debts, mortgage, savings, and pension
Job — keep the one I have got and improve it, or find a new job
Health — get healthy!
Life — stuff that didn't fit into the above
Review — a list to trigger quarterly reviews of progress
Health
I came across this during the week — interesting:
How your driving might reveal early signs of Alzheimer's — BBC News
What do you think?
And then there is the question of sleep. How much do we really need?
How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? — Medium
Holidays
This year, as last, it looks like overseas holidays are off the cards thanks to COVID-19. However, that doesn't mean you have to stay at home, you can get out and about, and one site I have found particularly useful for planning (and dreaming) is:
Some great tips and ideas on the site — worth a look. The site covers rail journeys in the UK, Europe, and Worldwide.
I'll be looking more at holidays and travel in future newsletters.
Reflections
This week I had a few days off work, and I must admit I now use my holidays (vacation) as an opportunity to practice being retired — that is, to explore what I might want to do when I retire. So, over the last few years, I have spent my holiday time exploring my interests in travelling, nature, walking (hiking), skiing, writing, and just trying to forget the day job and imagining what it will be like to be retired.
As the weather was sunny and warm this past week, I decided to walk through the local woods. On one of my wanders, I stopped for lunch, and I was sitting on a tree stump admiring the view and listening to the birds. It was so quiet and relaxing.
And it just made me realise I need to retire and spend more time doing this.
Next week
Next week I will wrap up the material on planning and start thinking about what I will do post-retirement date. What will I do next, and how can I prepare?
Thanks
Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter, and please don't hesitate to share it with your friends or on social media using the buttons below.
If you would like to say ‘thanks’ for the newsletter, why not buy me a cup of tea?
Until next time,
Nick
PS, If you have something you would like to contribute to the newsletter — a story, advice, anything — please get in touch.