Planning for retirement needs:
what is your creative retirement plan?

Planning for Retirement Needs for -

Planning for Retirement Needs
A Creative Challenge

Planning for retirement usually centers on the financial and rightly so, however, there is one other consideration that must be part over your overall retirement planning.

Prior to retirement, many spend hours on financial planning and obviously, that's important. However, we spend little or no thought about planning creative retirement needs.

The belief seems to be as long as we have a roof over our heads and food on the table we’re all set. But no matter how big or small the roof or how limited or abundant the food, without a creative challenge to fuel the mind and spirit, the money is devalued.

In Michael Connelly’s novel Lost Light, the hero, a Los Angeles cop describes his retirement.

“...I was now retired. I was supposedly comfortable. I had a house with no mortgage and a car I’d paid cash for. I had a pension that covered more than I needed covered. It was like being on vacation. No work, no worries, no problems.

But something was wrong and deep down I knew it. I was living like a jazz musician waiting for a gig. I was staying up late, staring at the walls and drinking too much red wine. I needed to pawn my instrument or find a place to play it.”

Where was his creative retirement planning?

There’s a story about US President Calvin Coolidge. He died at the early age of sixty. During retirement he had an office but little or nothing was accomplished there – few came to visit. At his home, he had no hobby or interests. So empty was his life he used to go down in the cellar to watch the handy man throwing coal in the furnace.

Where was his creative retirement planning?

One important lesson I learned during my retirement years - when fuelled by continuous creative challenges, the ability to originate new ideas does not diminish with age.

Always keep in mind that age is just a number - health, heart and mind determine age.

I look at the inhabitants of my retirement world and I see those, a few with severe physical handicaps, who will be young until the day they die because they continue to create, learn and challenge - others are old because they think old.

Planning for Retirement Needs – A Creative Challenge

In his book Staying Young Beyond Your Years, Dr. Howard Wilcox Haggard notes that many people have acquired the habit of NOT learning – they allowed themselves to get out of the habit of learning - Don’t fall into that trap.

When planning for your retirement needs, remember - to be a happy, contented and a creatively-active older person, you have to make yourself a happy, contented and creatively-active younger person.

If you are about to retire - NOW is the time to step up to the plate and go for a creative homerun. Creative thinking before and during retirement is vital.

Planning for retirement needs must include some sort of creative challenge that will pop you out of bed in the morning.

On the subject of the importance of creative thinking, John Mason Brown, in his book Seeing Things writes;

"A (person) is as old as their curiosities are keen, as their sympathies are kept informed, as their hopes are young, as their enthusiasms as a participant are unpaled, and as the step of their spirit is elastic enough to keep up with the procession of their times."

Planning for Retirement Needs – A Creative Challenge

Creative thinking is just as important as physical workouts as you grow older. Areas of the brain that deal with attention, multitasking and processing speed all of which can be lowered with aging, must be continually challenged.

Dr. David Snowdon, director of the University of Kentucky study on aging says:

Dr. Snowdon’s study on the aging process involved nearly 700 members of the School of Sisters of Notre Dame who gave the researchers full access to their medical records and agreed to donate their brains for autopsy upon death – their findings led to some fascinating conclusions – one example –

“one participant died at the age of 102. She was notable for her full mental command right up to her death, yet researchers were surprised to find that her brain exhibited all the physical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Researchers' initial conclusion: her mental functioning remained intact by virtue of her “regular mental exercise.”

The importance of mental workouts have been proven in other studies. From Penn State University's Gerontology Center –

“a study on patients who had been followed for fourteen years. In that project, 70 and 80-year-old patients were given tutoring sessions and retested on spatial skills, inductive reasoning, vocabulary and number skills. Two-thirds improved their mental functioning; forty percent returned to the level of functioning they had demonstrated fourteen years earlier.”

Planning for Retirement Needs – A Creative Challenge

Build a creative challenge that will pop you out of bed in the morning.

On the subject of the importance of creative retirement thinking, John Mason Brown, in his book Seeing Things writes;

"A (person) is as old as their curiosities are keen, as their sympathies are kept informed, as their hopes are young, as their enthusiasms as a participant are unpaled, and as the step of their spirit is elastic enough to keep up with the procession of their times."

Planning for Retirement Needs – A Creative Challenge

Mental workouts are essential no matter what your age – the earlier the better – but vital during the retirement years.

creative thinking is just as important as physical workouts as you grow older. Areas of the brain that deal with attention, multitasking and processing speed all of which can be lowered with aging, must be continually challenged.

Dr. David Snowdon, director of the University of Kentucky study on aging says:

Dr. Snowdon’s study on the aging process involved nearly 700 members of the School of Sisters of Notre Dame who gave the researchers full access to their medical records and agreed to donate their brains for autopsy upon death – their findings led to some fascinating conclusions – one example –

“one participant died at the age of 102. She was notable for her full mental command right up to her death, yet researchers were surprised to find that her brain exhibited all the physical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Researchers' initial conclusion: her mental functioning remained intact by virtue of her “regular mental exercise.”

The importance of mental workouts have been proven in other studies. From Penn State University's Gerontology Center –

“a study on patients who had been followed for fourteen years. In that project, 70 and 80-year-old patients were given tutoring sessions and retested on spatial skills, inductive reasoning, vocabulary and number skills. Two-thirds improved their mental functioning; forty percent returned to the level of functioning they had demonstrated fourteen years earlier.”

Planning for Retirement Needs – Become a Life Long Learner

Planning for a creative retirement challenge helps you become a Life Long Learner

You need a creative challenge and I have found that the computer and the internet can offer that positive and productive mental workout – plus an opportunity to sell your knowledge.

Many who are already in their retirement years fear the technology as I once did – too complicated – to them I say you’re missing the point. If you agree that planning for retirement needs must include a vigourous mental workout remember - the learning experience itself is a creative challenge that exercises the mind and makes your life more interesting the longer you live.

Planning for Retirement Needs – You and Your Compter

You have taken the first step by learning at least basic computer skills - now take the next challenging step – study and learn how to use the internet by offering up information you are capable of giving – information that people are willing to pay for – yes, additional income can be earned by mentally exercising on a regular basis.

Planning for Retirement Needs - A true mental workout - a computer and the internet – a wonderful combination for remaining mentally alert as you age.

Planning for Retirement Needs – Do Your Research

Take the time to visit our Creative Retirement Job Library – it’s time well spent – here is everything you need to learn more about building a creative retirement job.

Creative thinking for retirement is a must.

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