Home
>
Wealth Building
>
What is Your Creative Retirement Plan?

What is Your Creative Retirement Plan?

The idle are a peculiar kind of dead that cannot be buried."
Oriental proverb

One thing is certain - when you do not have a creative challenge during your retirement years, the idleness and its accompanying despondency blots out any chance for happiness and contentment and can even encourage an early death.

We spend a great deal of time on our retirement financial planning thinking if we have a roof over our heads and food on the table we're all set. But no matter how big or small the roof or how limited and abundant the food, without a creative challenge to fuel your mind and spirit, the money is meaningless.

There's a story about US President Calvin Coolidge. He died at the early age of sixty. He had an office but little or nothing was accomplished there ? few came to visit. At his home, he had no hobby or interests. So empty was his life he used to go down in the cellar to watch the handy man throwing coal in the furnace.

In Michael Connelly's novel "Lost Light", the hero, a Los Angeles cop describes his retirement.

"?.I was now retired. I was supposedly comfortable. I had a house with no mortgage and a car I'd paid cash for. I had a pension that covered more than I needed covered. It was like being on vacation. No work, no worries, no problems. But something was wrong and deep down I knew it. I was living like a jazz musician waiting for a gig. I was staying up late, staring at the walls and drinking too much red wine. I needed to pawn my instrument or find a place to play it."

That is not a good place to be.

When fuelled by continuous creative challenges, the ability to originate new ideas does not diminish with age. When you think of your retirement years, remember age is just a number - health, heart and mind determine age.

In his book, "Staying Young Beyond Your Years", Dr. Howard Wilcox Haggard notes that many people have acquired the habit of NOT learning ? they allowed themselves to get out of the habit of learning.

Don't fall into that trap. If you are planning for your retirement remember - to be a happy, contented and creatively-active older person is to make yourself a happy, contented and creatively-active younger person.

If you are retired NOW is the time to step up to the plate and go for a creative homerun. Create a life work that pops you out of bed in the morning.

Here are a few extras ? retirement add-ons that wrap a blue ribbon around a happy, contented and challenging retirement.

See don't just look - study the beauty that surrounds you. Take time to sit on a park bench or on a lakeshore and play the "Positive Game". Make a mental list of all the positives around you ? the laughter of children playing ? a couple holding hands ? the structure of a flower ? the movements of a bee.

Spend time with the younger generation ? their youthfulness will rub off on you. My grandchildren keep me young in mind and spirit.

Exercise is vital ? even a daily thirty minute hike works wonders. Play the positive game on your walk. I download motivational books and listened to them on my portable CD player while I'm walking.

"Do not act as though you had a thousand years to live"
Marcus Aurelius

Dave Wright is a retired television reporter and editor of http://www.pppretirementplans.com a site dedicated to the development of Postive, Productive, Profitable and creative home based business opportunities. Copyright ? 2005 PPP Retirement Plans - Reprints Accepted

quick home cleaning Bannockburn ...

In The News:

Facebook ads promising to recover stolen funds are targeting scam victims again, and Meta confirmed removing flagged accounts after investigation.

Tesla Cybertruck production is winding down at Gigafactory Texas to make room for Cybercab robotaxi manufacturing, but key questions remain for owners.

Identity theft can hide in phone accounts, medical records and utility bills long before it shows on a credit report. Eight places to check now.

JR East's towering ZIZAI ZX-3 chainsaw robot tackles dangerous branch-cutting along Japan's Koumi Line while a trained operator controls it remotely.

A massive DHS data leak exposed records of over 41,000 employees, revealing links to undercover ICE operations, Palantir tools and AI platforms.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

UCLA's PhoneBot turns old Android phones into the brain of a two-legged humanoid robot that walks, follows people and stands up after falling.

A fake Amazon invoice charging $988.18 for an iPad lists the same customer support phone number three times to steer panicked victims into calling.

A handful of food delivery robots from Uber Eats and other platforms have gotten kicked and knocked over in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Data broker opt-out forms may not protect your family. People search sites can still expose your info through a spouse's or parent's profile.

Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro starts at $2,899 with a PROLED XDR OLED display, but the non-touch M6 model costs $900 less at $1,999.

Black Friday deals are already drawing scammers who use fake delivery notices and gift card payment requests to steal your personal financial information.

Apple's iPhone Duo reportedly outlasted the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 by over three hours in battery tests, but its weight and repair costs raise concerns.

Florida Polytechnic University's Jetson ONE eVTOL police vehicle named Astro still awaits FAA authorization before officers can fly operational patrols.

OpenAI's new locked chats feature lets you protect ChatGPT conversations with a PIN, Face ID or Touch ID, but there are key privacy limitations.

A phishing email disguised as an Evite fooled a man even after he emailed his friend to verify it, revealing how compromised Gmail accounts aid scams.

Microsoft's AI diagnostic system identified 83% of complex medical cases in a study, more than doubling the 36% accuracy of generalist doctors.

Account takeover threats go beyond stolen passwords as criminals exploit session cookies, SIM swaps and MFA fatigue to bypass your login security.

SpaceX is reportedly pursuing access to 80,000 cell sites to turn Starlink into a major wireless carrier rivaling Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Tech advocacy groups warn that foreign nationals at AI companies like OpenAI and Google pose a national security threat amid a lack of federal oversight.

Singapore researchers built the world's first touchscreen woven into clothing, surviving 50 machine washes while displaying images and responding to touch.

The Fox News AI Newsletter covers the latest artificial intelligence technology advancements, including the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

A startup founder woke to $449 in unexpected OpenAI and Anthropic charges after stolen API keys were exploited during the "Black October" cyber wave.

Educational Testing Service hackers stole millions of California student records, but families who moved out of state years ago may also be affected.

Apple's iPhone Duo screens are cracking near the hinge just days after its $1,999 launch, and iFixit's CT scans may reveal what's going wrong.

What is Your Creative Retirement Plan?

Wealth Building