Retirement is a significant part of life. It requires planning and preparation so you can make the most of it. However, planning and preparing for it is not as easy as you might think because of its many factors. If you are somewhat intimidated by retirement, you might need a retirement coach.
This post focuses on the benefits of having a retirement coach. We will cover how they can help you and how much better the next stage of your life would be if you have one.
Why Do You Need a Retirement Coach?
You might think you don’t need a retirement coach because you have been planning how your life will go for so long. But sometimes, there are factors with which an expert can help you. Here are a few examples.
Retirement Has an Emotional Blow
Most of the time, people getting ready for retirement often plan extensively about the money aspects of leaving the workforce. However, they often underestimate the emotional impact of retirement. The result of their planning usually leaves them unprepared for the emotional baggage that comes with drastic life transitions. In more extreme cases, some people don’t even make a plan at all. Instead, these individuals often have to answer one glaring question: “Now what?”
Then some people take all precautions to plan the perfect retirement activities. They create an extensive bucket list that they manage to do within a few years into retirement. Then they still have to answer the question: “What next?”
Whatever plan you make for your retirement, you will likely face the emotional impact of not knowing what to do next. A retirement coach can help you with that.
Retirement Affects Relationships
Any significant change in the life of someone will often affect the people closest to them. In a marriage, for example, the dynamics almost always change when one or both parties retire.
Usually, there will be some form of tension due to varying reasons, including:
- Varying expectations: spouses in a marriage might have different expectations about their future. When they decided to purchase a beach home and live there, the wife assumed they would visit the grandchildren every couple of weeks. On the other hand, the husband thought they would only leave their new home every six months.
- Building tension: after moving away from the workforce, people in a relationship suddenly get to spend every second of every day together. They no longer have to go to work and be apart for at least a third of each day. Suddenly, the littlest quirks about each other become unbearable, and the tension thickens; after all, some people need “me” time while others prefer “we” time with their loved ones.
- Who will do what now? Sometimes, homemakers might hope their retiring husbands (or vice versa) will help with house chores. However, this assumption may be a surprise to the retiring spouse.
A Retirement Coach Helps You Navigate Retirement Problems
A retirement coach will not only guide you about money problems but also help you address the emotional and relationship problems that come with retirement. A retirement coach can help you solve the “what now or what next” question.
Retirement coaches employ various strategies to help you realize and make your retirement vision concrete. For example, they use assessment tools, skillful questioning to deepen the understanding of what you want to do, and interactive activities to gauge what you want to accomplish in your retirement years.
Filling the Void of Purposelessness
Before retirement, most people have big, glaring, and apparent purposes: earn a living, pay the mortgage, feed the children, pay the insurance, etc. But upon retirement, such concerns usually vanish. Money is no longer that big of a problem, children are grown up and live their own lives, and the things we pay for are almost always wholly paid for by the time we retire if everything goes according to plan.
A sense of purpose is fundamental in life. As we age, a goal is one of the things that we seek, along with well-being and a sense of belonging or community. For this reason, retirees often look everywhere in search of purpose.
Of those three needs, a sense of purpose is probably the most difficult to find. However, a retirement coach can help you find it.
Here is a detailed list of the benefits of having a retirement coach:
- Define the new phase of your life in your retirement career
- Find a way to use your time, skills, and talents outside of the workplace
- Discover new personal interests or hobbies
- Develop a healthier attitude about yourself as you discover your identity apart from the work you used to do
- Help you define what success looks like outside of work
- Become more sensitive and aware of your needs regarding the environment where you want to spend the rest of your life
- Nurture your relationship with your family and friends
- Birth a joint vision of your future with your partner that consists of mutual support, encouragement, respect, and cooperation
- Manage a robust support system for the future with your family and friends if you are single
- Becoming more proactive about your physical and mental health as you age
As you can see, the benefits of a retirement coach extend far beyond just managing your savings after you quit the workforce. Finances are just the tip of the iceberg regarding retirement coaching.
Enjoy Your Retirement with the Help of Infinite Love Homecare
A retirement coach is beneficial for people nearing retirement age, and so is home care for the elderly. Infinite Love Homecare offers numerous services that let you pursue your interests in your retirement years. Our services include light housekeeping, transportation, grocery shopping, bathroom assistance, companionship, surgery recovery, specialized home care, and many more.
You can contact us by phone at (949)-529-4130 or the form on our Contact Us page to get a free consultation. You can find us at City Tower 333 City Blvd. West Suite 1700, Orange, CA 92868.