Plan For Retirement? Who Does That?

By Erica and Karen

Did you plan for retirement? Are you planning now?

We didn’t. Retirement hit us like a ton of bricks. We didn't take any evasive action even though we knew it was incoming. At no point during our careers did we stop long enough to consider what we might need for post-career life. And that was partly because we had no idea what post-career life would be like. And very little interest in finding out!

We’re not talking money here, or health—of course we did our best to provide for ourselves for however long we might live—though we were astonished when we realized that might well be three decades or more. We’re talking about life. What would we do? How would we do it? With whom? Where?

But once we had been retired for a bit, we realized we actually had what we needed to deal with this next phase, once we got our heads in gear. We had planned for all kinds of things for all of our lives, including, of course, our careers. That was the ultimate retirement plan. And it will be for you, too.

Consider this:

• When we started out we had to paint a picture—for ourselves, at first—of what career women looked like. In the beginning, we thought we had to be mini-men. It took us a while to realize that, to succeed, we had to come out as women. We decided to look like women, and to think like women, bringing something new to the workplace. Now that our careers are over, we have to do the same thing—paint a picture of what retired career women look like, and then come out as a new breed of retired women who want to live as vital participants in our world.

• We fought for a place in the world and we were not going to give it up just because we had retired. But at first we weren’t as confident as we had been—and it showed. We had to get that confidence back. Once again, we had experience to help. We knew that taking that first step was key, and we took it.

• When we chose our careers, and chose to work for forty years, we took control over our lives. When we first retired, we felt felt a distinct loss of that control, and feared we might never have agency again. But then we realized we just needed to get back on the job—the job, entirely up to us, of styling a retirement that suited us.

• Right after we retired we made some mistakes. But we had learned the hard way that failure is a good teacher. We had learned to navigate our mistakes, to overcome challenges, to solve problems, and to execute solutions. Once we retired, we faced new challenges and problems—and we made new mistakes. But we had the muscle memory to know how to deal with them.

• At work we knew what our value proposition was—our skills, our experience, our relationships. Those same skills, experience and relationships helped us to define our value proposition in this new stage, as we made new partnerships and started new ventures.

• Part of our job success came from networking, and from being good team players. Both skills have come in handy now that we are building post-career communities—this time on our own.

• Working for decades gave us financial security. Financial security gave us independence and allowed us to make choices—while we worked and after our careers ended. Having the ability to decide what we wanted to do after we retired was huge.

So yes, we floundered after we retired, and we wondered why we hadn't anticipated what would happen, why we hadn’t made a plan. We didn’t realize right away there is no plan that allows you to shortcut the process. We had to deal with the trauma of being dumped on our heads before we could start to create a new landscape for ourselves. But we began to see that working for decades gave us the foundation to figure out next steps.

Right after you retire, you may flounder too. And you too will have to go through the retirement process, and it will take a while, and there will be strange days. But once you get through it, you will land on your feet. Just do what you know so well how to do, from years of work. Keep moving forward.