How Do I Get There from Here?

“How Do I Get There from Here?”
by George H. Schofield, PhD
2017, Amacom
$16.95/$24.50 Canada
237 pages

White sandy beaches. Waves that gently kiss your toes with warm water. Long days that stretch for miles filled with infinite possibilities. That will be your retirement, or so you hope. But as you’ll see in “How Do I Get There From Here?” by George H. Schofield, you might dare to hope for more.

Thanks to technology and modern medicine, today’s 50-year-old may have 50 more years to live. What will you do with all that time? Most, Schofield says, will find idleness boring after awhile. A survey conducted in 2014 showed that the average retiree takes just over two years to “relax and recharge” before returning to the work world. The “new normal” is that we don’t want to slide “slowly downhill through golden years of leisure until death.” Instead, there’s a chance for challenge ahead, opportunities to learn new things and to jettison that which doesn’t work for us anymore.

To get there takes a good balance between planning and action. Be willing to listen to the experiences of others before leaping. Become financially literate, and update that knowledge often. Gather a handful of pros you can rely on for various issues of your life. Ask your doctor what she’d like to see you do to become healthier. Cultivate curiosity, learn new things and let go of old notions. Remember that retirement is not a life stage so much as it is a continuation of life.

Right from the outset, it’s the whole-life advice that sets this retirement book apart from the others. Schofield doesn’t just focus on the financial; he encourages readers to look within and ask hard questions before making any kind of move.

Quizzes help here, as do DIY worksheets. This book means work, but it’s eye-opening so grab a pen and figure out “How Do I Get There from Here?”