Weekend Reading: Begin at the End: Create Your Eulogy to Envision Retirement
This article appears as part of Casey Weade's Weekend Reading for Retirees series. Every Friday, Casey highlights four hand-picked articles on trending retirement topics and delivers them straight to your email inbox. Get on the list here.
Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has been a resource I’ve utilized both in my personal and professional life for many years. In it, he lists habit number two as: “Begin with the end in mind”, and that same strategy can be incorporated into how you structure your retirement plan.
READ THE ARTICLELook at your legacy: Creating your eulogy while you’re still alive and well does not have to feel dark or depressing. In fact, it can reveal pertinent details regarding how you think or feel about yourself, and provide clear ideas of how you want the rest of your life to look (including retirement). Considering how you want to be remembered by family and friends is impactful in that it can help you identify not only what is most important to you, but where you might need to make changes in your life.
Find equilibrium: After writing your eulogy, the author here suggests analyzing what you’ve written, and sorting all of the things you’ve noted into three crucial life categories: Health, wealth or purpose. If you have more in one category and less in another, it might be time to steer your course in a different direction to find the balance you’re truly looking for. This will not only help you live a more purposeful life, but retirement as well.
My thoughts: I’ve done similar exercises to this before, and you may have as well. However, I’ve never considered a deeper analysis of what I actually wrote. Add that to your to-do list.