Plan to Live Well for Retirement

Unless one dies young, due to a myriad of reasons, everyone gets old. I would like to discuss how we can live to a ripe old age and how to live well in our golden years. For most of us, our life would have been filled with work. Work in the work place or at home bringing up children. The day will come when we have to stop work. That happens when we retire or all our children have left home for studies or start to have their own family. What do we do then? How do we fill our days? Do we have sufficient money to live the lifestyle we are used to? These questions and more we have to face now. It is better to be prepared than to be bewildered.How long can we expect to live?

Most of us have a life expectancy of around 80, with females living a few years more than males. I believe how long we live is dependent on how well we have been taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally when we are young.

Physically, we can take care of ourselves by having regular exercises and eating balanced diets. This is living a healthy lifestyle. We can also enhance our diets with good quality supplements that is now widely and easily available, I would not go overboard with this. Moderation is the key. If we do this, our latter years will be healthier and we will encounter less medical problems which can be costly.

Emotionally, if we know how to live in a good relationship with God, family, friends, we will be able to live with ourselves better. Learn to develop healthy relationships. Our mind and spirit has to be well nurtured.How do we achieve the above? What do I recommend? This is a first article, I shall develop it further in the future.How do we fill our days?

At age 65 and above, that is when most of us retire, there is really not much physical activities we can do if we have not kept fit. So plan to keep strong and healthy through out life as I have briefly mentioned above. Abusing our bodies with drugs, nicotine, excessive alcohol and processed junk food when we are young will only destroy our physical bodies faster. If we are reasonably fit, we can take daily walks or swim. Golf is a good form of outdoor recreation too.

In our golden years I recommend that we actively give back to society because it has been good to us. If you are active in Church, continue to serve in areas that you are gifted for. If you are not a believer, and do not belong to a church, join charitable organizations that you are comfortable with to help out and offer your time or expertise. The satisfaction of giving is immense. Try it.

Of course spending time with your spouse, children and grand children are essential for emotional balance. Family support in our old age is a two way traffic. If we have good relationship with our family, getting support will not be difficult to come by. Those who love you will be standing by for you.Again many of these issues will be developed in future issues.Do we have enough money to retire?

Money is essential. We all know that. Without money or the lack of money causes untold problems if we want to have a certain lifestyle that is dependent on large amount of money, we must make sure we have that cash stashed away. However if you have been living a moderate lifestyle, you do not need much to live by so we still need to save for our golden years. Unless we have saved well during our productive years, we will run out of money a few years into our retirement.

I strongly believe that the most important thing we must do when we are still working is never to spend beyond our means. Credit cards are the most dangerous if we don not know how to control our spending. With credit cards we are spending our future earnings. Spend now, pay later might be the motto for many. But many forget when we pay later, we pay heavily!

How can we avoid facing the possibility of running out of money? Save, save and save when you can. Invest wisely. Spend within your means. There is no short cut for this. There are many ways to save and to invest. More of this in later articles.I think this article is long enough to bring about some thoughts for most of us and I would love to have feed backs so that I can discuss further on what you think.