Plan Your Retirement And Improve Your Mental And Physical Health
I recently returned from the Healthy Aging 2025 Conference at Stanford University, sponsored by the Longevity Project. This fascinating conference focused on research-based solutions for improving our physical and mental health.
One topic that piqued my interest—as it's something I've long believed—was the finding that financial stress is a top concern of pre-retirees and retirees. This stress can negatively impact your mental health, which in turn can worsen your physical health. This stress can be particularly acute for women, who face a double whammy regarding their retirement finances: Compared to men, they often live longer but have fewer financial resources to draw from.
If you're feeling this type of stress, what can you do to address it? The most important action is to make a realistic financial plan for transitioning into retirement and living through the rest of your life. While it may take some time to develop and implement your plan, it's a wise investment given the stakes. Let's look at the steps you can take to create such a plan.
To best manage your money in retirement, it's essential to make sure that your lifetime retirement income will pay for your living expenses throughout your life. The formula to follow is I > E, or your regular retirement income should be greater than your living expenses. Balancing this formula will go a long way to making your retirement financially sustainable.
You'll want to build sources of retirement income that will last the rest of your life, no matter how long you live. These sources include Social Security, a pension if you have one, lifetime annuities you can buy from an insurance company, and carefully designed systematic withdrawals from invested assets.
You'll also want to prepare a budget for your living expenses that analyzes how your expenses might change in retirement. You'll want to identify your must-have and nice-to-have expenses. And if you find that you're spending more than your retirement income provides, you'll want to look for ways to reduce your spending—before you end up in a financial crisis.
There are a handful of risks that can upset your careful plans to balance the common-sense formula for retirement security described previously. These risks include high health care costs, the stock market crashes that are inevitable during a long retirement, expensive home or car repairs, and increased costs due to frailty late in your life. Taken together, these risks fall into the category of 'longevity risks,' which can be broadly defined as anything that can go wrong during a long retirement.
Fortunately, there are strategies you can adopt to address each of these risks, including improving your health with realistic lifestyle changes, choosing the right mix of investments, purchasing the right medical insurance to supplement Medicare, and developing a strategy to pay for long-term care. While it will take some time to develop the right strategies to protect yourself, consider it part of your 'retirement job.'
The Healthy Aging 2025 conference presented many suggestions for improving and maintaining your health, including addressing the foundations of good health in your later years: exercise, nutrition, and sufficient sleep.
Ironically, speakers addressed the difference between 'good stress' and 'bad stress.' Good stress motivates you to take action to address the source of your stress. Bad stress is chronic stress that results from consistent and persistent stresses that continue for long periods of time. This distinction is particularly appropriate for financial stress for retirees and pre-retirees, since procrastination often prevents people from being proactive about facing their financial challenges.
Another common concern among older Americans is that they'll be a burden on their family in their later years. If you adopt strategies that will help you address the risks discussed above, you'll reduce the odds of being a burden on your family.
Much of the planning described here might be beyond your skills and experience, which is entirely understandable. For help, you might want to work with a retirement advisor who has the specialized training and skills to help pre-retirees and retirees and has your best interests at heart. If you decide to go this route, you'll want to shop carefully for a retirement advisor, since it's one of the most important decisions you'll make to manage the rest of your life.
The bottom line for a more stress-free retirement? Plan, plan, plan. You'll feel better, both mentally and physically, if you set some plans in place, and you're more likely to enjoy your retirement even more.
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