{"id":36269,"date":"2025-09-22T11:28:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T11:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/36269\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T11:28:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T11:28:17","slug":"you-dont-need-to-climb-everest-to-have-a-fulfilling-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/36269\/","title":{"rendered":"You Don\u2019t Need to Climb Everest to Have a Fulfilling Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this episode of The Long View<\/a>, author and retirement coach Larry Jacobson breaks down how people can plan for the nonfinancial aspects to retirement, what to expect during life transitions, and more lessons on retirement planning from his book, Your Ideal Retirement Workbook, A Step-by-Step Guide to Retiring With Purpose and Fulfillment.<\/p>\n

Listen to the full episode of The Long View Larry Jacobson: \u2018The Good Things in Our Life Are What Get in the Way of Great Things\u2019 <\/p>\n

The author and adventure sailor on thinking big, changing your life course, and managing the transition into retirement.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are a few highlights from Jacobson\u2019s conversation<\/a> with Morningstar\u2019s Christine Benz<\/a> and Amy Arnott<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You Don\u2019t Need to Climb Everest to Have a Fulfilling Retirement<\/p>\n

Christine Benz: So, I felt like a lot of the book got me thinking about doing really big things in retirement. But what about people who maybe do have somewhat more modest goals? So, you reference the idea of making every soccer game for your grandkids or something like that. Do you think that thinking big can be kind of stymieing for some people, that they think they need to climb Everest or sail around the world in order for their retirement to be a success? Can you make it a little smaller scale and still be happy?<\/p>\n

Larry Jacobson: Absolutely, you can make it smaller scale. Whatever your dream, whether it\u2019s to sail around the world or open a corner coffee shop, that dream is just as valid as mine was of sailing around the world. And it\u2019s more valid because it\u2019s yours, it\u2019s not the other person\u2019s. I say, think big, because we\u2019re always told, or we\u2019ve been told that through our lives don\u2019t be a daydreamer, be practical. And I want to encourage people to not think like that. If there\u2019s a remote idea of moving to Italy to write the book in Tuscany, I want people to think that, hey, they can do that. They really can do that. And so, don\u2019t think small. But if your dreams are to open a little corner coffee shop or to go to your grandkids\u2019 soccer games or be their coach or something, that is a perfectly valid dream as long as something that you\u2019re doing is giving you long-lasting purpose and fulfillment. We forget that at work, we have purpose and fulfillment. We have the idea and the feeling that we\u2019re part of something larger than ourselves. And that\u2019s what I want people to strive for in their retirement.<\/p>\n

Where People Get Stuck in the 3 Stages of Life Transitions<\/p>\n

Amy Arnott: Do you ever run into people who aren\u2019t really sure what they want to do in retirement and is there any value in taking more of an experimental approach where you might try a few different things to see what you like?<\/p>\n

Jacobson: Absolutely. Most people don\u2019t know what they want to do, and that\u2019s a big reason why clients come to me is, they\u2019re going to say, I\u2019m ready to retire, or usually clients come to me about a year after they\u2019ve retired. And then they\u2019re like, \u201cGeez, I thought there\u2019d be more, I thought it\u2019d be more fun. I thought there\u2019d be more to it. But I\u2019m ending up just fixing the dishwasher and mowing the lawn.\u201d And it\u2019s easy to take up your time in retirement doing things like that. But just the idea of your transition to finding something that you want to do requires experimentation for a lot of people.<\/p>\n

So, I subscribed to the philosophy of William Bridges, a great guy who wrote a book called Transitions. And he basically says that transitions come in three stages. And the first stage of a transition is an end. It\u2019s the end of something. It\u2019s not the beginning. It\u2019s the end. So, you graduate, or you get married or divorced or a move or someone dies or something like that. That\u2019s the end. And that\u2019s what begins the transition. And then the middle stage is the exploration of new things and things that you maybe aren\u2019t sure what you want to do. I think, again, I was lucky in that I knew that I wanted to go sailing, but most people don\u2019t have that.<\/p>\n

And then after you\u2019ve experimented around for a lot of different things comes the last stage, which is the new beginning. And that\u2019s when Julie Andrews comes running over the hillside singing the hills are alive and everything is beautiful, and the birds are chirping, and the grass is green and everything. But it\u2019s important to remember though that each of these stages is not a parking lot. What I caution people about is that you get into stage two and experimentation and it\u2019s great. It\u2019s funny. Try tennis. You don\u2019t like tennis. You try pickleball. You don\u2019t like that. Then you try traveling to castles in Europe. OK, that was fun. Now let\u2019s try something else. But we\u2019re still looking for that purpose and fulfillment. That\u2019s something that makes you feel part of something larger than yourself.<\/p>\n

How Fear Can Stop People From Finding Fulfilling Goals for Retirement<\/p>\n

Arnott: And in thinking about those three phases, it seems like in the first stage where something is ending, I\u2019m imagining people might get stuck at that stage, if they\u2019re sad about the end of a career or kids leaving the house or things like that.<\/p>\n

Jacobson: You are exactly right. They do get stuck there and that\u2019s why I try to urge people into the second stage as quickly as possible. But I do caution people saying this is not a parking lot. You\u2019re not staying here forever. So, choose something. Do it. If you don\u2019t like it, that\u2019s OK. Fear plays a big role in retirement. And one of the fears that people have is that they\u2019ll choose the wrong thing, that they\u2019ll go down the wrong road, that they might not like what they\u2019ve chosen. Well, that\u2019s OK. You can stop and you can do something else. And you do it until you find something that you do like or where you do get that feeling of purpose and fulfillment that you\u2019re part of something larger than yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this episode of The Long View, author and retirement coach Larry Jacobson breaks down how people can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":["post-36269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}