We last spoke with Barbara about a month ago and she is still in the honeymoon stage of retirement. She said it is like she is on an endless summer vacation.

Barbara and her husband were planning a trip to St. George Utah, but they decided since she is retired, and they have more time, and life is more flexible, that they would drive instead of fly.

Her husband planned a wonderful trip to get to their destination. They went from Washington to Oregon and from Oregon to Boise, Idaho, and then to Utah from there.

Letting the planning reigns go for an endless summer vacation

I asked Barbara what it was like for her to let her husband do all this planning because she is normally the “planner” in the family. She said for this trip she yielded happily. Her husband spent hours trying to figure out where to stay and what activities they would do because he wanted to mix it up between golf and walking or hiking.

“He just did a great job. So, I guess in retirement, what I'm learning is roles can reverse a little bit. And that's okay. I think when I've initiated the trips, I needed the power and control. But with that comes a heavy responsibility of wanting to make sure people are having a good time and they're having fun. Sometimes I just wasn't able to be in the moment where this was super relaxing.”

Travel Budget

One of the things that hold me back personally from retiring is not being able to replenish that bucket of money. Even though financially able to retire now, there is something holding me back. So Barbara I and talked about how she is managing her travel budget. Sometimes they make choices to spend less on other things such as maybe clothing for example to put extra funds in a travel budget. The one thing that is important to Barbara is that they never travel on credit. They always have the money when you think about your life, and all the different things that you choose to spend your money on, I just choose to not spend it in other areas of my life in order to travel, because that's my priority. That doesn't mean it needs to be yours. Maybe you travel to baseball games all the time, or you buy lots of things. Those are policy choices that each person can make.

“You can afford anything, not everything”-Paula Pant

The Kolob Arch Hike

This is a 14-mile hike where Barbara’s husband tried to kill her (not literally but it was very intense) The Kolob Arch is one of the largest natural arches in the world but it is seven miles in and seven miles out to see it. She used up all of her water and had to share it with her husband for the last mile. Barbara was dehydrated, her heart was racing and she felt nauseous. Her husband told her to put on her big girl pants. After it was over Barbara was very glad she did it. Her takeaway for the listener is this. If there are places that you want to see before you die, that require mobility and being in shape, you should do them. It gets harder the older you get.

Barbara and I also talked about a miraculous experience she had while hiking. She and her husband ran into a street performer and healer and that has performed as “Angel Bird” all over the world, including Florence, Berlin, and Paris. She described her dance as a celebration of life and freedom. You can read more about this experience on Barbara's blog post: Snow Canyon and Angel Bird

From being able to travel without time restraints to having the time to walk her grandchildren to school Barbara has learned that these moments she is making during her "endless summer vacation" are precious and she is so grateful she is able to make them.

If you have any questions for Barbara, please feel free to email us at Podcast@RockYourRetirement.com and we will try to answer your question on the show.

Health Break Segment

One of the six pillars of retirement is Health and if you don't have your health, nothing else matters. For our health segment, we have Jon Pearlman, co-founder of Mission Lean the leading fitness app for anti-aging.

John and I talk about flexibility for peak performance. So basically, how you can start to incorporate stretching into your workout. Stretching has shown to have a very positive impact on performance in workouts and just staying loose generally, in life. I think that tightness and stiffness is a large result of a lot of injuries that people suffer from out there and obviously the main goal of any fitness program whether it's mission lean or another one should be to keep the exerciser healthy and ready to go so that they don't have any interruptions and in with an injury. Especially for older people because it's well known that if you're older you might you have might have increased stiffness and decreased range of motion which will, in turn, make you more susceptible to injury. To learn more, download the Mission Lean app on your cell phone or you can visit https://missionlean.com

To get a copy of The Baby Boomer's 30-Day Journal go to: www.RockYourRetirement.com/Journal

Read all of Barbara's blog posts by visiting https://www.rockyourretirement.com/blog/