Are You Heading for Retirement Heaven – or Hell? – Mike Drak

Are you well-prepared for the transition to retirement and the life you want to lead? It's one of life's major transitions and it takes much more than money. Our guest, Mike Drak, shares his insights from his personal experience with his retirement transition and his recently released book Retirement Heaven or Hell. We discuss: The lessons from his retirement transition What's changed about retirement since he retired in 2014 The different stages of retirement How someone can get to Retirement Heaven and stay out of Retirement Hell How people find purpose in retirement What the pandemic taught him about retirement How people can foster new social connections and find their new tribe in retirement His advice on planning for a great retirement Mike joins us from Toronto. _________________________ Bio After a thirty-eight-year career within the financial services industry, Mike Drak experienced what he has now termed "retirement shock". As a result, Mike spent the next 6 years doing research about retirement which resulted in his best-selling book "Victory Lap Retirement" based on his realization that full stop retirement doesn't work for most people. He most recently released "Retirement Heaven or Hell: Which Will You Choose?" which shares some of Mike's personal experiences in retirement and highlights how people can design and transition to their own unique retirement lifestyle. This book also outlines the valuable retirement lessons learned from the pandemic and introduces nine retirement principles that can support creating a long, healthy, and fulfilling life. __________________________ Wise Quotes On Purpose & Attitude "The biggest one for me was finding purpose, finding a sufficient purpose in retirement, so I wouldn't get bored and I wouldn't get frustrated, and I had a good reason to get out of bed in the morning. That took a lot of time. That was probably one of the most important ones, but there are other ones too that are equally important. If you think about the importance of relationships, that's the key factor in focusing on your health, because without having good health, it doesn't matter how much money you have, you're not going to enjoy yourself in retirement. And having a good attitude is so important. It all comes down to how you look at retirement and what you think about it. If you think retirement is going to be great, odds are, it will be. But if you look at it as a terrible period, when you're going to get old and it's going to suck, well, guess what? So those are important things that I had difficulty with myself." On Planning for a Long Retirement "People...think when you retire, you're going to be the same person for 30 years. You're not. You're going to keep continuing to change and you're going to keep becoming a different person over time. And it's important to understand that and to know what kind of person you want to become because that's where you're going. And it's still becoming someone different than you are before you retire. So you want to be able to sit down and say, okay, this is the kind of person I want to become. This is the lifestyle I want that person to enjoy and start putting those things in place because you're setting yourself up for a 30-year payoff. And you got to do it right. And it's, that's why I say it takes a lot of planning, proper planning." _________________________ For More on Mike Drak Retirement Heaven or Hell Victory Lap Retirement _________________________ Podcast Episodes You May Be Interested In The Skill Set for Life’s Transitions – Bruce Feiler From Finance to Becoming an Author – James Hockenberry...