THE UN-RETIREMENT

Career issues are among the most important to do visioning and planning for much in advance of taking the actual steps to your next career/life destination. The issues fall into what I call the "Career Bucket."

How do you decide whether to work for pay or for no pay after you "retire" from your existing career?  According to The Wall Street Journal Complete Retirement Guidebook: How to Plan It, Live It and Enjoy It, there are a number of key questions to ask yourself. Here they are:

*   Do you need to work for money, and how much do you need?

*   Do you feel that work would make your "retirement" more worthwhile? Essentially, do you want your life to continue to revolve to a large extent around work?

*   How would work affect your social life? If most of your friends are working, that might be an important factor

*   Do you want to work full-time or part-time?  How consuming do you want work to be? What degree of responsibility?

An idea that is catching on for people "working in retirement" (an oxymoron)is "cyclical employment."  The concept is holding in serial sequence full-time jobs with breaks in between to travel, carry out a personal project or spend  spurts of time in some other fashion of your choice.

Time to thoughts on these questions way in advance of the time to make a move will lead to better decision-making and avoid the panic of what to do.