168 Hours a Week of Retirement? Better Get a Job

The commonality among the non-financial benefits of working are that they all help with our emotional and physical well being. Working during retirement can also aid our cognitive health. The more we use our brains the healthier they are likely to be! The key to our second act work is engaging in work we find meaningful and that brings value to others. The great thing about it is we can define for ourselves what constitutes meaningful and provides value to others. In a nutshell, we can create our own personalized retirement job that works for us.

I want to pass on two suggestions from Anthony when planning for your own retirement. The first is to write down how you plan to spend your 168 hours a week in retirement. If you are staring at an almost blank piece of paper you have got some work to do. The second idea is to get a mentor for retirement. Find someone you know who is doing retirement well, from your perspective, and engage them in a dialogue about how they did it. Remember, having enough "financial resources" to retire is only the first step towards a successful retirement.

--By Michael Maye

Michael Maye is the founder and president of MJM Financial Advisors (www.mjmfinadv.com), a registered investment advisory firm in Berkeley Heights, N.J. He is a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and has been a speaker covering tax topics at NAPFA's national and regional conferences. Maye has also been a frequent contributor to the Star Ledger of New Jersey's "Biz Brain" and "Get With the Plan" articles. In addition to NAPFA, he is a member of Financial Planning Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, New Jersey State Society of CPAs and the Estate Planning Council of Northern New Jersey.