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NewsDay

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Are your employees mentally prepared for retirement?

Opinion & Analysis
Take a moment and think about when you first started working and how many years you think you will still continue to work.

guest column Emmanuel Zvada

Take a moment and think about when you first started working and how many years you think you will still continue to work.

For some of you, retirement is itching close and you keep asking yourself: “When can I afford it?” and “how much money will I need?”. Most people often forget to question themselves if they are prepared both mentally and psychologically to retire.

As employees get closer to their dates of retirement, they are forced to spend most of their time and energy pondering on the consequences of retiring. Enjoying a successful retirement requires more than just being financially prepared. One also needs to be mentally prepared for retirement. The retirement planning process takes both time and effort. At times it may seem like an overwhelming task, but what you do today can help you achieve your retirement goals and allow you to maintain the lifestyle you want in your later years. Preparing yourself psychologically and emotionally should be an equally important aspect of your planning.

When we are working day-in day-out, the very question that should linger in our minds is that we are going to retire one day and after retirement, money should still find itself flowing into our accounts and the lifestyle we are living should not be disrupted much after we have retired, but rather flow even more into our accounts so that our lifestyle becomes even better than the previous one. When planning for retirement, one needs to consider a variety of factors such as what one will do after retirement. Where one will be staying after retirement is also an important consideration.

There are many pre-retirement factors to think about as one prepares to go into retirement. Preparing ourselves properly for anything new takes a bit of effort and commitment. Retirement is supposed to be a time for relaxation and fun, but in reality, the early part of retirement can be very stressful. There are a number of questions you should consider questioning yourself so that you adequately prepare yourself for retirement.

Planning for retirement is not something many people look forward to, but it is a necessary fact of life. No matter how much you are looking forward to it, retirement is a major life shift. If you are an emotional wreck before retirement, there is a possibility that you may remain that way even after, especially if you do not make the necessary changes now. You are who you are; meaning you have the ability to make significant changes in your dealings with life in general.

During working years, retirement may appear like a looming burden. With others it may seem like it is far off. Workers know that this time of their lives is coming, and do everything they can to save for it, but often give little thought to what they will actually be doing once they reach retirement period. We spend most of our pre-retirement years preparing financially for retirement, but not adequate time preparing both mentally and emotionally for it. This is a crucial step if one wants to make the most of this chapter of life.

Are you emotionally prepared to leave your job?

More than likely, you have been working and collecting a salary for most of your time as an employee, something which provides you with a sense of security. At or near the time of retirement, employees may start to prepare themselves for a time when they will no longer be receiving a salary. Rather, they will now be in the withdrawal phase and drawing a “paycheck” from their own savings. It is also important to note that although you will have your social security, savings and investments, the loss of a salary can be devastating!

No, it may not be easy to prepare oneself, but if you are concerned that the emotional withdrawal from receiving a paycheck may be too much for you at first, you may want to opt for a part-time position to begin with. This may include offering consultation services to other companies in line with what you were doing. The best way to prepare for retirement is to understand that retirement, just like other stages in your life, will offer a number of different financial and emotional phases, but what is important is to plan for it. Your willingness to plan, adjust and be ready for the unexpected will help you enjoy the golden years you’ve worked hard to reach.

Do you have an emotional plan for retirement?

To help you get ready for retirement, you should consider having emotional as well as financial plans. Here are some key issues to consider for the emotional aspects of retirement. Plan what you are going to do with your time after you retire. When you have been working very hard and you have been working for very long hours, you tend not to have had any time for hobbies so it’s something that you have to consider. You should think about hobbies or interests which you may like to pursue

You are supposed to set lifestyle goals before you retire. Another major problem associated with an aging workforce is the health component. Elderly people suffer from more health-related issues and as a result, they need to take more vocation or sick leave days while they are still at work. Furthermore, a company that has a large number of elderly employees needs to update its medical facilities and policies repeatedly. To that end, they may spend a lot of their revenue in trying to improve the medical benefits of their ageing employees.

Do not just retire from something, but to something.

Retirement is not simply a time to just stop working. It is a time of life that marks a passage from a life of work to one of accomplishment. In actual fact, retirement does not imply getting another job. It also means thinking in terms of staying productive and useful. Remaining productive goes beyond just being active. It means being purposeful and useful to one’s family and society at large.

Just because you have retired from one career does not necessarily mean you need to stop working altogether. In fact, many people enjoy the mental and financial benefits of being able to do a reduced schedule by doing freelancing jobs.

Retirement is something that we should not be afraid of, but rather be happy about since we know that it is coming, thus giving us time to plan for it. In fact, after retirement you can even still be able to pursue your yet to be realised dreams and still be active and busy. On the same note, for the younger generation, planning for your retirement is now is a good thing to do.

What it means is that when you begin planning for retirement now and start saving or investing for the future, you will definitely enjoy the peace of mind when you finally call it day from formal employment.