Need Motivation For The New Year? Try This

If you need a boost of motivation or a new sense of direction, sit down and try this:

Write your retirement speech.

Not for today, but as if you have already lived your ideal, long future, and you or someone else wrote about your years of accomplishments in honor of your retirement.

For some people, their vision of their future may be clear (with room for realistic adjustments). But for others, they may not have any idea what that speech may contain, because they don’t have a good idea of where they will be even next year! Both of these are normal and give you room to benefit from this exercise.

What you write in this retirement speech can help you in two ways:

Explore Your Personal Goals: When you imagine your life in retirement, do you have a spouse and children? A group of friends that you still join for game nights? Have you achieved all your “bucket list” items, like taking a road trip along the entire West coast or attaining your dream job or income or both? Retirement may seem far away, but when we break down what we want to do with our lives, we may decide now is the time to take advantage of time! Or, to spend more time reflecting on exactly what memories we want to make before retirement age.

Motivate Your Financial Goals: You may have a particular vision for your pre-retirement accomplishments, as well as for the standard of living you want to enjoy in retirement. But don’t forget about budgeting and preparing for financial emergencies that will occur in retirement. Use the years between now and retirement to build your retirement fund and financial security. Having adequate savings will be a particularly important part of maintaining your long-term security in your dream retirement. When we know where we need to end up, we can plan backwards and prepare our finances accordingly. By saving regularly, between now and our imagined retirement, we will be on the road to making the dreams in our speech a reality.

This speech can be a helpful reminder of the benefits of long-term saving and goal setting. Reflection and check-ins are a healthy, necessary part of staying on-track with our goals.

We should also remember that as much as we try to, we cannot predict our futures with certainty. Life is full of unexpected events. It is important to be mentally and monetarily prepared for these situations as much as possible.  

To learn how to be better prepared for homeownership, retirement, and beyond, visit us at www.syncis.com/blog.