Book by Dennis Hall. Reviewed by Jennifer Lancaster.
Let’s get this straight. For one thing I am not even close to 70… but that’s good because this book enables me to think ahead — not with dread but with some great ideas for changes. I call this is a retirement or semi-retirement lifestyle planning book.
In the early chapters of this book it talks about making the most of your time, as we may well lived quite a while longer than we once expected and during those years, we’re likely to be both bored and near-broke. Meanwhile, the federal government likes to push up the receiving age of the aged pension.
For many, it’s about having all this time and needing more income flow. I mean we all hear the phrase “follow your passion”, but not many authors seem to take it any further to give you ideas of how that passion could make you money. In this book, Dennis Hall explains how we can keep our income flowing and our passions alive by thinking outside the box, by making tiny modifications to our hobby. By getting excited about what we do as we explain these special insights to other people.
For instance, I write books and teach people how to self publish them. Taking Dennis’s idea, in retirement I could potentially get free ocean cruises by offering presentations about how to self publish or write a book, with follow-up coaching sessions later.
Setting Personal Goals
Setting your personal goals and taking a true assessment of where you are is important, so the book also outlines how to do this using SMART goal setting and a really good prompting list. This is called a personal audit.
Taking into account all the elements in the personal audit, the author explains deeper how to use the SWOT and PESTEL analysis. These audit tools may be a step too far for the average Joe or Jill, but the reader can always skip that bit and go into the exciting next chapter.
This next chapter helps us delve into the magic of discovering our why, our reason for being.
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Tackling Changes Ahead in Retirement
I like how the author reminds us to that in retirement we will be not at the whim of so many extrinsic factors but rather more intrinsic ones. So we get to decide what happens in our life. This is a very real concern of those retiring… what am I going to do to ‘design my life’? There are four questions to ask yourself provided, with extrapolation.
I enjoyed Dennis’s insights, including knowledge of how we wriggle out of those uncomfortable parts in life to go back to our comfort zone. There’s no hiding… yet I feel the reader only benefits from these wise and insightful observations of human behaviour.
If you’re ready to start planning your retirement in full, not just in basic financial terms, then you really need to read the planning and goal-setting sections of this book. The retirement lifestyle plan is something that’s not usually talked about but this book goes into all the nitty-gritty; questions to ask yourself, things to contemplate, success indicators, how to keep on track, and how to get over obstacles.
Highly recommended for someone concerned about their retirement lifestyle, of ages 50 through to 75. It is also ideal for someone who has been made redundant and is wondering how they could turn their acquired skills into a new income and career they like even better.
252 pages. Paperback $34.95 (free shipping) or buy the Kindle copy.
Read more and buy the book at When can I Retire