The three main ingredients to financial independence are:
Emotions
Many publications speak to the need for emotional support in financial planning, as it represents a key ingredient for your financial success. It will be essential that retirees remain emotionally connected and realize that the support system from their work environment will change post-retirement. Whether married or single, most retirees will still note a significant change. Married individuals will realize that spending more time together will draw different behaviors from both spouses. Some may receive the impression that they left one boss only to go to another. Single individuals could be alone more and away from a reliable groups for emotional support, which can bring on depression due to extended isolation from their social networks.
This writing will be further developed in the future. For now, just keep in mind that you need to think about the emotional change that retirement will bring. Don’t be so fast to think only about the people you can’t wait to get away from. Instead, take a moment and think about how you will pass your newfound free time and try to stay connected to those with whom you have shared the last 30+ years. Some of your co-workers know you better than your spouse or family. Whether it is a school, neighborhood, or workplace from which you are parting, leaving inevitably means disconnecting with a large percentage of friends. What matters then is how you choose to handle the process of moving on. You may not realize it, but staying connected and having a social life is a vital part of your overall health.
Health
This leads us to the second ingredient to a successful retirement: health. Before we define health, let’s first establish that, unfortunately, health is something money sometimes can’t buy. For example, if you have an incurable disease, all the money in the world would not buy you health. Therefore, if your current financial advisor is not talking to you about the importance of your health, they are missing something extremely important. In fact, health and finance are so closely related that they can be considered inseparable. If you don’t take care of your health, it is going to cost you more on doctors and medical expenses in the future. Annual medical checkups and having an exercise regimen are also part of leading a healthy life. Check with your doctor to make sure exercise is right for you. We cannot say enough about the benefits of a regular exercise program. According to information on WebMD, studies have found that exercise increases your ability to sleep restfully, focus attentively, and maintain high levels of energy. This barely scratches the surface of the many benefits of exercise (i.e. staying more alert, weight control, feeling younger, etc.), but we hope you are getting the idea by now.