Give Yourself Something to Look Forward To Sometimes having something to look forward to is more valuable than any money or deposit you might lose. In terms of retirement planning, Barbara has been listening to all kinds of webinars and seminars that her employer offers. When you're in work mode, these things go past you with these emails and training and classes and you just let them go by and it's kind of like when you're pregnant, you all suddenly see all these other pregnant people. Now that Barbara's on the road to retirement, she's seeing all these opportunities that she didn't pay attention to at work. Every month, there's training and classes that are offered, but there's always one about preparing for retirement. Now there's zoom. She's learned more about deferred compensation and more about Social Security. And then there was one that really aligned with the Rock Your Retirement program where it wasn't anything about money, rather it was about creating your personal definition of retirement. The presenter was talking about the steps of retirement, the stages of retirement, how important it is to redefine who you are, and just the different approaches. The time Barbara's spending in either reading or listening to the Rock Your Retirement podcasts or these classes is just really helping her form an idea of what her life is going to look like in retirement.

The transition to retirement can be tricky for many, as spending discretionary income we can’t earn back seems risky. The last time that we got together, Barbara and I were talking about her pending vacation. Not only her pending vacation, but the vacation that she just went on, and how that was similar to a mini-retirement. Today we are talking about canceled plans. And I'm sure that you the listener has had some canceled plans this year, too.

Planning is Difficult During This Period of Time

I've had a couple of canceled plans. When COVID first started, I was really just getting off of a cruise. We almost didn't go on that cruise but my husband and I kept going back and forth on it. Like many, we didn't think the virus was going to get as bad as it did. What we di was we prayed about it. For those of you who listen, you know that I am someone who prays. It's not something that I focus on during the show, but we prayed about it and we ended up going on our trip. Honestly, that last cruise was probably one of the most interesting cruises we've ever been on because it was the cruise that kept going back and forth to Florida. For one reason or another, we kept heading back to the port.

Since then, though, I had a trip to Hawaii, that was canceled, a wedding that was canceled, and a lot of other events that have been canceled or postponed.