Till such time, as a few years before retirement, one imagines a carefree life post retirement imagining a life of - relaxing, lazying around, reading, listening to news/music, watching movies or learning some hobbies that was planned but never achieved during working life.
The reason for seeking a carefree life is due to the running around making a career soon after passing out of college and the trials and tribulations of daily life - marriage, children, work pressures, peer pressures, medical issues and the list is endless.
One generally imagines that retired life is a panacea for all the above listed issues and leading a cool after life is the dream many have.
Many financial advisers ask you to see what is the current expenditure you have and multiply with an inflation factor to give you a bit scary expenditure you are likely to have. But I have an opinion on that. Rather than taking the current expenditure, one needs to look at the breakup of the likely expenditure post retirement.
For eg, when young you go out to movies and eat outs a lot. This will not happen when you are retired as health consciousness also kicks in. Thus if your expenditure on going out is X, it may reduce to 1/2 of it. So, that should be the basis for computing the current expenditure. Intake of food also reduces and this should be taken into computation of current expenditure.
As one gets past 50 years, the body starts to get stiff giving joint pains, back pains etc. Very critical that when you are young you start Yoga to make the body flexible.
Financial comfort zone is an area which every retirement starts to fret a couple of years before retirement. Thus right from the first salary one should start saving to avoid this palpitation at the close of your retired life. There is a detailed blog of mine on how to go about it that you may find it useful.
Wives generally fear husband's retirement - apart from losing the income and rely on savings, the husbands become stingy (partly by fear of running out of money) and every purchase becomes a heated argument regarding its usefulness. Additionally, Wives fear interference from husbands (now that they have more time) on the nitty grittiness of daily life chores.
While the food intake in terms of lunch or dinner (some skip it) reduces, the tidbits intake increases more to compensate for the boredom than anything else.
Retirement planning should not just be restricted to financial comfort, but planned by the couple in their 40's to getting together for a common interest - music, books, etc. This common hobbies nurtured over a period of 20 years will stand in good stead when one retires as they have things in common to share post retirement.
Please note that most of those who go to Middle east in their 30-40s imagine themselves to construct and live in a huge house with facilities to live peacefully after retirement. But soon after 60 when reality strikes and retires, one notices the Duplex house is a pain to climb and maximum you need is a room and an attached toilet. Children, most often stay separately, if independent or in other cities and countries making you and wife/husband the sole occupants and vulnerable in old age.
This is one of the reason, a place like Nana-nani and other retirement homes are becoming popular.
Some westerners even setlle in places like phillipines, vietnam or thailand as the pension from US, UK etc go a long way in these places (you can buy a large house, have 2 or 3 drivers, maids, gardners etc)
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