Thrive in Retirement: Simple Secrets for Being Happy for the Rest of Your Life - Softcover

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ERIC THURMAN has a history of blazing trails. He was one of the early leaders of the microfinance movement, heading anti-poverty programs in 30 less developed nations. Now, driven by personal passion to find both meaning and enjoyment during his later life, he is creating a new path for people who also want to thrive during the last third of their life. Thurman began his career as a broadcast journalist and has extensive media experience. A partial list of his coverage or appearances include: CNN, Fox and Friends, Wall Street Week, PBS, CBS News, Newsweek, Time, Harvard International Review, CNBC TV, Forbes, Christianity Today, The 700 Club, Financial Times, and The Economist. Thurman and his wife, Diane, reside in Illinois.

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Chapter 1: A Surprising New Stage of Life.

Long life is not enough. You can have more. Aim for your life to be both long and happy. It’s possible! Do all you can to be healthy and extend the years of your life. In addition, be sure to include delight and meaning so you enjoy all the years you have.

Every day another ten thousand Americans turn sixty-five. On average, all will have another twenty years to live beyond their milestone birthday. Many will live well into their nineties, and an increasing number are passing one hundred. Compare that to the 1800s when the average person died near age forty. Retirement is no longer a short pause between work and the grave. It is now a long, major stage of life, because never before in human history have so many people lived decades beyond their working years.

Growing older is your destiny. How do you feel about what lies ahead? Do you consider it a curse or a blessing? The witty Kitty O’Neill Collins reminded us, “Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.”

You probably have healthy, active decades to fill. Yet older adulthood is different from other seasons of life. Will your extra years be inspiring and satisfying?

I have a friend in California who is in his mid seventies and says he’s still getting used to retirement. He built a good-sized business that he was able to sell a few years ago. He is secure financially but says this stage of life is a huge emotional adjustment:

Nobody warned me about this time of life. I thought that if you are in pretty good health that things didn’t change much between sixty-five and eighty-five. That’s not true. It is very different, a big adjustment.

My ego and the image I had for myself—what it’s been for a long, long time—had to change. That’s hard to deal with. I really had no concept about how challenging that would be.

Men and women who had powerful careers usually feel loss when they step down. Moms and dads often undergo a difficult transition when their children grow up, launch out, and leave an empty nest behind. The life you’ve known for so long just isn’t the same anymore.

Even if your transition into retirement is ideal, you are likely to be surprised by unexpected, new realities. A close friend told me what happened when she and her husband began planning their retirement:

My husband was a lawyer who joked that after “the big case” came across his desk, he would retire to a warm climate, play unending golf, and dine out to his heart’s desire. We had friends who were buying second homes in a lazy Florida coastal town. We dreamed of doing the same and, one day, moving there full time to spend our old age.

Then it happened; a wrongful death suit for the son of a former client resulted in the largest settlement in the history of the county. With our part of the fees, we purchased a gorgeous home on the outskirts of that coastal town, close to his buddies for a guaranteed foursome whenever the course summoned his inner golf pro. This home had bedrooms for our daughters and their future spouses plus a loft where we dreamed of eventually welcoming grandchildren who we would lure to visit Grandpa and Grandma with our backyard pool and the Atlantic beach a block away.

That fall we began picking out furniture to ship to our new home. Shortly after Christmas we took off in a fully loaded Jeep, heading south to soak up the sun’s rays in anticipated coastal bliss. Those first January days were filled with decorating and settling into the house, golf dates every other day and dining out at the city’s many popular restaurants. Friends and family lined up to visit. This was the life we had dreamed of for years. Or was it? At the end of that first month, we were surprised how we felt. My husband said, “I can’t live the rest of my life in constant weekend mode.”

Without realizing it, many people expect to “live happily ever after” in retirement but haven’t thought much about how that will occur. The good news is it is possible to thrive throughout your later years. How? The purpose of this book is to help you identify the few critical factors that will matter most to your life, then offer practical tips on how to increase your happiness.

Three Seasons of Life

Life has three primary seasons, with each lasting twenty-five to thirty years.

Season one is childhood when you grow up, acquire most of your education, and eventually move out on your own to work, start a family, or both.

Next comes season two, adulthood. This covers your most productive years when you build up your net worth, make big purchases like a home and cars, and rear your family.

In due course, you come to another major juncture. Your house is bigger than you need. Your career is over. Your kids are off on their own. Now what? For that matter, what do you even call this next season? Third season? There isn’t a widely accepted term for this period. It is telling that we don’t have popular language to describe this significant period of life.

For a while retirement was the label for this third stage of life, but that word is no longer fashionable. Did you know that AARP dropped retired from its name? Older adults are sensitive about the words used to describe aging and retirement. In 2010, Elderhostel rebranded itself Road Scholar. Whether you call it retirement, third season, or something else, you can be sure that the life-altering experience is still around and stronger than ever.

The third season of life is new territory, in large measure because people didn’t use to live very long past retirement. It is different today. Your third season will likely last decades. What kind of life will you put together in your bonus years? Will your third season be the exhilarating capstone of your life or a dismally long, slow decline? This book will show you how to make your third season a time to thrive.

A friend from North Carolina disagrees with me about life having three major seasons. He argues there are four seasons of age:

1.  Childhood: when you believe in Santa Claus

2.  Older childhood: when you no longer believe in Santa Claus

3.  Adulthood: when you are Santa Claus, giving presents to your kids

4.  Later adulthood: when you look like Santa Claus

Decades to Go

When you turn sixty-five—perhaps you already have—and anticipate twenty to thirty years still ahead of you, what other period of life lasted this long? Two or three decades are about as long as you spent getting all your education. That block of time is similar to how long you took raising your children. It takes thirty years or fewer to slowly pay off an entire mortgage. Hardly anyone stays at the same job for twenty years anymore. Think hard about such an elongated span of time—twenty to thirty years. How will you spend yours? And where will you turn for ideas and advice about how to thrive during your extra years? There are plenty of ways to learn about parenting, marriage, a career, or financial planning, but where do you look for answers about a fulfilling life as an older adult?

This book will help you identify the few critical factors that matter most to your life and then give you practical tips on how to increase your happiness in each part of your life.

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