- The Retirement Countdown Plan
- Facing the Facts
- Let's Physically Climb the Mountain
- A Lesson from a Great Corporate Leader
- Procrastination
- What If I Don't Reach My Goal? Facing Compromise
- Meet the Glovers
- You're Not Alone
- Summary
- Power Checklist
What If I Don't Reach My Goal? Facing Compromise
One of the goals of Retirement Countdown is to minimize the circumstances in which you are faced with compromising your lifestyle after you retire. The younger or richer you are today, the easier that task will be. For some, it may be time to discuss the areas where you want to consider compromising or trading off one need for another. Remember at the opening of this chapter, we discussed the recent study showing that about half of retiring baby boomers will have to find ways to make compromises in their post-retirement lifestyle.
Many aging baby boomers, rapidly approaching retirement, will have to determine if they want their style of retirement to be financially passive or financially active. A passive retirement is one associated with predominantly managing assets and distributing income. In an active retirement, there is a need to continue to earn income to supplement assets used to create retirement income. With the current and historical savings rates in America, many retirees will have to face reality and recognize that they will likely have an active, not a passive, retirement.
Once you accept the fact you may be faced with an active retirement lifestyle, I would encourage you to embrace it. There are so many ways to contribute post-retirement that can be both financially and emotionally rewarding. We'll discuss some of those in Chapter 3.