Traditional retirement planning assumes that there is little employment income and that every retirement issue could be solved if only you had enough money! Intuitively, we know that this is not the case and that you will likely experience challenges and opportunities that will not necessarily be affected by the size of your investment portfolio. 

 

I prefer to think of retirement planning as transition planning because the idea of making a transition to a new stage of life is a stronger reflection of how ‘money’ and ‘life’ affect each other.

 

Also, this next stage will give way to new stages in the future. The idea of planning ahead for your transition makes good sense from a financial planning and life goals planning standpoint.

 

A good way to look at the transitions associated with retirement is to consider the key areas that will be affected by the transition. This will give you a basic structure to create the life plans and strategies that will allow you to create a financial planning framework later. 

There are seven of these areas that you will want to consider: