When You Transition to Retirement, Remember the Lid is No Longer on the Jar
How much would it bother you in your advanced years to realize that you could have experienced so much more if you had only known the truth?
Over the last 34 years, my hands-on experience helping coach individuals and couples during their unique stage of life has shown me that many grossly understate their ideal lifestyle because of how they “perceive” their financial capabilities.
Until now, you have developed spending patterns based on your perception of what you could afford to spend. If you’re not careful, that perception will govern everything you will do during Phase II of your financial life, when you are no longer receiving a paycheck from the work you do to support yourself.
And it will prevent you from experiencing what you deserve to experience based on your lifetime of hard work and preparation.
Let me tell you a brief story to illustrate my point:
Fleas in a Jar
As you likely knew growing up, fleas love to jump. If you caught some fleas and put them in a jar, they would jump and jump and jump until eventually they would jump so high that they would jump right out of the jar.
Instead, if you put a lid on the jar with holes in it like we did when we were kids, the fleas would continue to jump. However, as they continued to jump higher and higher, they would eventually begin to hit their heads on the lid, causing them pain.
Because they don’t like that feeling, they learn to jump just high enough so as not to hit their head on the lid. This way, they can still enjoy jumping, but without experiencing the pain of hitting their head on the lid.
Now, what is so interesting is that if you now took the lid off the jar, the fleas would still continue to jump only high enough to not hit their heads on the lid…EVEN THOUGH THE LID IS NO LONGER ON THE JAR.
Isn’t that amazing?
Unfortunately, we all do the same thing in so many areas of our lives.
Now, this is not to say that you’re a flea, but is it possible that you are allowing your perceptions and conditioned experience to dictate how much you enjoy your life?
Is it possible that the lid is no longer on the jar, but you’re living like it still is there?
This is why it is so important, when brainstorming and clarifying your priorities and visualizing your ideal lifestyle at this critical stage in life, to do so first without the constraints of how you’re going to pay for it.
For a moment, give some serious thought to spending all of your time doing exactly:
- What you want
- When you want
- When you want
- Where you want
- With whomever you choose
Just let your mind go….no limits for right now.
And, then let’s put a price tag on that vision.
Now, it’s possible that you may need to adjust these after, but my 34 years of experience has shown me that people often underestimate what they’d really like to do because they’ve been conditioned to believe what they can afford to do.
After going through this exercise this way, their reality changed dramatically when they discovered that they had been selling themselves short. They felt liberated!
I strongly encourage and invite you to enjoy the same experience
Jack Phelps
Financial Advisor / Managing Director