This is part 3 of 4 in this series. In episode 1, we talked about the article Bringing Old Americans Back Into the Mix. Episode 2, was about Why Older Men Should Lift Weights. Today's episode will be about the article, 5 Steps to An Awesome Retirement by Costco. Rocky Lalvani, the host of the Richer Soul's podcast is back with us to be part of this episode about having an amazing retirement process. The retirement process ought to be a happy time. You can set your own schedule, take long vacations, and start spending all the money you’ve been saving. Having a great life in retirement is not just about having enough money saved up. Like most anything worthwhile in life, it takes hard work, clarity, and dedication to make your retirement process look like what you imagined. Never Call It Retirement Don't ever call it retirement. Besides, it doesn't even sound good. Because if you think about the word retirement it's kind of like to retire, to put out, or to pasture. Instead of seeing retirement as an end to a productive, and rewarding professional life, we can view it as a rebirth to opportunities. The Retirement Process The article talked about the three steps. You have your childhood, adulthood, and elderhood. Since this is about the retirement process, we need to focus a little bit more on elderhood. Elderhood is probably the point in life where you get to do what you want. Your kids are no longer your responsibility. Therefore you don't have to go to work anymore. Not to say you don't work but think of it as you no longer have to do things. Moreover, it is the point in time of your life where you get to choose everything and you have that flexibility in life. Knowing yourself, your values, your strength and weaknesses, and then saying, I'm going to live my life in congruence with that and be purposefully happy. And maybe create your legacy and give back, or maybe continue to work. But it is whatever retirement process you choose it to be. Because now you have the freedom to do so. People Are Redefining What Retirement is All About All of us are sort of redefining retirement right now. Because there are some really young people who are retiring but in a different kind of way. That is to say that it's just amazing that these 30 or 40 somethings are financially able to retire but still wanna give back to society. Some of them work for money and some of them work for passion. Certainly, retirement isn't the right word for any of us regardless of how old we are. Choosing the Right Medicare It really depends if you're below 65, you're gonna have to figure out health care and if you're 65 and older and you're eligible for Medicare, you have to figure out Medicare. People don't usually realize how much Medicare is changing right now. How much they're going to start restricting what you can and can't get. And how much your choice of a Medicare Plan, whether it be an Advantage Plan or a Medigap Plan, it is dramatically going to affect what you're eligible for when it comes to healthcare. Let's face it we're buying insurance not because we're healthy, we're buying insurance for catastrophe. And when people go shopping for insurance, they shop for premium. They don't bother to say when things go really, really wrong, who's going to protect me the best. Therefore, you need to balance those 2 areas out because in the past you have the ability to switch around with Medicare but now it's harder. Creating a Team for Your Health and Your Money In this case, you should have people on your side on both sides of this area. The big part of that team are people who are going to be there to help you.