The more I talk to people, the more I shake my head in disbelief on how people are so brainwashed into believing you are supposed to work until you drop dead. Good grief, who came up with this nonsense?

Many people are afraid of retirement, specifically not having anything to do with all that time. Often I am asked, “Won’t you get bored?” Heck no… are you kidding me? I would gladly take the opportunity to travel, pursue my hobbies and take a nap over working any day. Retirement is no different from any other chapter in our lives. It does not come together by mere happenstance…it must be planned. Specifically the life you want to live in retirement.

I am no retirement guru but I do have insight into early retirement planning. In fact, I started planning my retirement at age twelve. No joke… I had always planned to retire early, long before I entered the job market. Through the eyes of a twelve-year-old, all I saw was unhappiness, discontent, and unfulfilled dreams from the adults in my life. Why would I want to grow up to be like them? I started keeping a journal of all of the things I wanted to see and experience. As I began to compile my Wish List or pre-Bucket List I realized that there is no way I could work until I was old because I would run out of time to do all of things on my list. By college, I had formulated a plan on how to retire early but it would take me marrying my soulmate to successfully execute the plan.

Planning your retirement lifestyle is not as daunting as it seems. Here are 5 easy steps to get you started:

1. Set goals. I would recommend no more than three goals each year.
2. Identify actionable tasks for each goal (break down the task to daily action items)
3. Establish an overall timeline – Note, in retirement, the timeline does not have to be so far out. (Example 5-year, 3-year goals are too long just focus in on 12 months)
4. Target milestones or checkpoints along the way to monitor progress
5. Celebrate achievements for reaching your goals

In order to keep it engaging set one or two individual goals and one goal together or vice versa. It is important that you not only have together time but also me time.

Here are our goals for our first year of retirement:

• Get healthy (Us)
• Learn Spanish (Us)
• a: Day trade penny stock (Me)
  b: Write a book (Hubby)

Finally, it is never too early to start planning your retirement lifestyle.  Remember, the last thing you want to be in retirement is bored.