The Retirement Newsletter: What do I need to do to retire?

Issue Number: -131 — Making the lists

Nick

Jul 18, 2021

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Welcome

Welcome to issue number -131*.

This week, I am mainly going to start talking about pulling together the retirement lists.

Planning

OK, last week (issue -132) we looked at how to do a SWOT analysis for our retirement plan, and as I said in the newsletter, you don't need to do one, but I did, and I found it very useful.

So, the next stage — making the lists.

In newsletter -133, I said I was a big fan of Evernote and that I had used it to plan and manage my retirement plan. I also said that I had used Evernote to produce my lists and track how I was getting on with my plan.

Now, you don't have to use Evernote to do your planning; there are lots of different programs you can use, but I was familiar with Evernote, and I knew it could do the job I needed to be done.

Planning with Evernote

Putting together my planning lists was relatively straightforward, and I used an approach I learnt from 'Getting things done' (GTD — more information on GTD) — the brain dump.

In Evernote, I created a new notebook that I called ‘Retirement Plan’, and in that notebook, I created three notes — one for each of the reoccurring themes from the SWOT analysis I described in newsletter -132.

The three notes were:

Money
Job
Health

For each note, over a few evenings, I dumped everything I could think of related to that aspect (Money, Job, Health) of my plan to retire into that note. I dumped in no order, and I often found that when I 'dumped' one particular thought, it spawned two or more related thoughts.

During the 'brain dump', I didn't worry about the order of the items. I didn't worry about repeats, grammar, or spelling. I just got it out of my mind. I let my thoughts' free-form', and I put down anything and everything I could think of, even if it didn't seem to make sense.

If I got stuck, I went back to the SWOT (see issue -132) and used it as a prompt to get going again, or I switched subject areas, or I went over what I had already dumped to see if that triggered any further thoughts.

Once I felt I had got everything down into the notes, I left it a week or so and then returned, re-read the notes, and added any additional thoughts.

What I ended up with was, quite frankly, a horrible mess, but I felt reasonably confident that I had captured all the significant points.

Next, I took each note and started to sort through the mess and group ideas and issues to make the lists. I found some things that needed to be merged; some deleted and some refined. There was also a considerable amount of crossover between the different notes.

Finally, I grouped similar themes and ideas within the Money, Job, and Health master lists and put in notes on crossovers between the different lists.

It was a lot of work.

What did I find?

Well, I had my lists.

The Money List

The money list was surprisingly long and complicated and essentially contained three lists:

Debt — credit cards, car debt, and mortgage.
Pension — what condition was it in, and what could I do to improve it?
Extra-income — could I generate 'extra-income' to help reduce my debt, improve my pension pot and also give me some little extra 'luxuries' in my retirement?

And each one of these sublists had components (sub-lists?) that outlined a plan to tackle the debt or options to explore and think about to generate extra income.

The Job List

The job list was considerably shorter than the money list and came down to two lists:

Current job — pros and cons. Should I stay, or should I go? What could I do to improve my current job to improve my retirement chances when I want to retire and possibly boost my pension pot?
New job — pros and cons of getting a new job.

Again, both lists had sub-lists. For example, the 'Current job' list had pros and cons of the current job and actions that I could take to address the cons and improve the pros, likewise for the 'New job' list.

However, two things were sure, I needed a job as I couldn't afford to retire (this was confirmed as soon as I checked my pension in the money list), and if I changed jobs, it should enhance my pension.

The Health List

Finally, the health list, and surprisingly, it only came down to two things:

drop some weight and get fit
have a health check

Easy!

The ‘Life’ List

And that was it. I had my lists all nicely ordered with checkboxes in Evernote.

However, several things appeared in the notes that didn't belong in any of the three original lists.

So, I made a new list which I called 'Life' and which contained:

Family — things I needed to do that were linked to my family and my retirement.
Relationships — that one surprised me! Things I needed to fix or improve in my relationships.
Stuff — these were weird things that I needed to do, everything from decluttering to house maintenance.

Lists done!

So, I had made the lists…. I ended up with one more list than I was expecting, but I felt (and still do feel) that the lists captured pretty much everything.

But, what next?

Well, as this newsletter is already getting a bit long, I will leave the 'what next' to next week.

In the news

Well, this is not international or national news or even local news, but last week a good friend of mine, who I have known for over 40 years (we went to school together), retired. And I don't know how I feel about that, mainly as he is a few months younger than me.

I am happy for him — he has worked hard and has been planning his retirement for the last seven years. His plans have worked. He is retired.

I am envious of him — I want to retire. I want the freedom he now has, although he claims he doesn't have any freedom thanks to all the things that need doing around the house that he has been putting off over the years as he was busy working.

I am worried for him — what is he going to do? Over the years, I had had several conversations with him about what he plans to do with his time when he retired. And he has repeatedly said he doesn't know. This week, now that he is retired, I asked him again, and he still didn't have an answer. This is not good. Retiring without a plan or some idea of what you want to do with your time is not good. It is potentially unhealthy. And this is something I will be returning to in future newsletters once I have finished writing about planning to retire.

Next week

Next week, I will look at what I did with the lists and how I used them to move forward with my retirement plans.

Thanks

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Until next time,