The phone call usually comes on a Wednesday afternoon in my office in downtown Calgary.<\/p>\n
“Conrad, I just wanted to let you know, I am back at work.”<\/p>\n
After more than twenty years of helping clients retire and stay retired, that call is one of the most consistent patterns I have seen. A client retires. Things go well for six months, maybe twelve, maybe eighteen. Then, quietly, the pull back toward work begins.<\/p>\n
It makes complete sense.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The people who struggle most in retirement<\/strong><\/p>\n The clients who find retirement hardest are almost never the ones who struggled financially. They are the ones who built something, a business, a career, a professional reputation. People who were driven, who contributed, who defined themselves in part by what they did and what they produced.<\/p>\n Stopping that is not a financial decision. It is an identity one.<\/p>\n Retirement planning that focuses only on the money, the portfolio balance, the income projections, the tax-efficient drawdown sequence, misses the harder question. And the harder question is not “can I afford to retire?” It is “what does retirement actually look like for me?”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Retiring from vs retiring to<\/strong><\/p>\n Most retirement conversations start with what someone is leaving. The long hours. The commute. The demands of running a practice or a business through the ups and downs of Calgary\u2019s business cycle. That is understandable, those are real things, and stepping away from them is meaningful.<\/p>\n But retiring from something is only half the equation.<\/p>\n What you are retiring to is what determines whether retirement works. A person who retires to a clear sense of purpose, a board role, a volunteer commitment, travel with a plan behind it, time with grandchildren structured intentionally, a creative pursuit that was always deferred, tends to stay retired. A person who retires from work into an undefined open calendar tends to find their way back.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why this matters for the financial plan<\/strong><\/p>\n This is not just a philosophical observation. It has direct implications for how retirement should be planned.<\/p>\n If you know what you are retiring to, the financial plan can be built around that vision, not just around a generic income target. The number that makes sense for someone who wants to travel extensively is different from someone who wants to spend their time locally with family. Someone who plans to do consulting work in retirement has a different income picture than someone who is fully stepping away.<\/p>\n When the real picture comes into focus, the absolute size of the investment portfolio turns out to be less important than expected. Other factors such as health, relationships, structure and purpose, matter more than the fourth or fifth significant figure in a net worth statement.<\/p>\n Getting this right starts with a conversation that most financial plans do not make room for.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you are approaching retirement, or are already there and finding the adjustment harder than expected, that conversation is worth having. Reach out. The financial piece is important. But it follows from knowing where you are actually going.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Conrad Kluge CFA, CFP, Senior Wealth Advisor, Senior Portfolio Manager leads the Kluge Wealth Advisory Group and is a financial advisor at Wellington-Altus Private Wealth, working with high-net-worth families in Calgary, Alberta. This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Please consult with a qualified financial professional regarding your specific situation.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The phone call usually comes on a Wednesday afternoon in my office in downtown Calgary. “Conrad, I just wanted to let you know, I am back at work.” After more than twenty years of helping clients retire and stay retired, that call is one of the most consistent patterns I have seen. A client retires. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":1429,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"2normal","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-market-insights"],"yoast_head":"\n