For the many baby boomers who will be leaving the workforce in the next 10 to 15 years, retirement is about doing the things a full-time job prohibits — working part-time on a few well-chosen projects, volunteering for a favourite organization, finally getting that arts degree. If planned accordingly, life and all its surprises won’t thwart an active retirement but will add to it.

Advisors and planners need to make sure their clients’ golden years of retirement live up to their hopes, and that clients are taken care of through all of their retirement years. If retirement plans are not in place, there’s a risk clients will miss out.

“It’s important to provide good service because you’re preparing clients for a big change,” says Ian Secord, a registered financial planner with Secord Kolo Wealth Management Group in Calgary. “It’s best to be prepared, or else their retirement won’t be what they want it to be.”

Secord works in three steps to secure the state of his pre-retirement clients and ensure they can relish their retirement years. Together, he and his clients develop detailed plans that often include lifestyle plans, implement the plan and then continually monitor the plan’s progress.

Secord is one of many successful retirement planners looking beyond finances and taking a stronger interest in clients’ lifestyle choices.

There are pitfalls at every turn, he says, and the first and most dangerous trap is to lack goals when planning.

“People who enjoy their retirement most are those who’ve thought about it and know what they’re going to do,” Secord says. “For example, you hear a lot of people say they want to travel after retirement, but often they’ve never travelled before and don’t know if they’ll like it. Or they don’t make the effort to take a trip while they’re still working. Usually, if you’re not inclined to do it before you retire, you’re not going to take to it afterward.”

Calgary-based Lanagan Lifestyles Ltd. is operated by husband-and-wife team Nick and Lucette Simpson. Nick retired four years ago from his first calling, engineering. He soon found he was not ready to give up working altogether, so he joined Lucette’s financial planning business as a lifestyle counsellor.

“To retire cold turkey is really difficult,” Nick Simpson says. “I suppose you could say I retired for six months and, at the end, I was at loose ends. So, I can tell you how important it is to have a plan.”

Retiring baby boomers often walk a precarious line between strongly identifying with their profession or the company they work for and anticipating the fun they’ll have in retirement. The transition from working life to personal life can be rocky if there’s nothing there to replace their work, whether that’s taking up a hobby, or getting a part-time job at their favourite bookstore.

“More and more boomers are thinking of retirement not as the day they lose their role in society,” explains Secord, “but as the day they no longer have to earn a paycheque.”

Lynn Biscott, a financial educator and writer based in Toronto, has seen some clients take up volunteer work or even go back to school — and she encourages that. But, although Biscott agrees retirees need a plan for their new-found free time, she feels there are financial issues that often are overlooked.

Based on her experience in running retirement workshops for organizations such as the Province of Ontario and the Yukon Territorial Government, Biscott says, many people underestimate how much they’re going to spend after they retire.

With expenses such as mortgage payments or monetary support for children out of the way, people tend to expect they will spend much less. But depending on what is planned for retirement, Biscott warns, expenses may even increase. In a workshop of 20 people, she estimates that less than five have a handle on what their actual expenses will be, while almost as many have no idea.

“Instead of looking at generalities,” says Biscott, “people should take a good hard look at where the money is going today, and how it will change in retirement.”

Secord stresses the importance of the early stages of retirement planning, when clients first start to think about it.

“Usually, we address it in a strategic plan,” Secord says. “But the earlier, the better. Most people start thinking about retirement in their 40s, when they have 15 or 20 years left to work, but they’ll have 20 to 30 years of retirement to provide for. I’d love if people in their 30s were thinking about it.”

@page_break@Many people who are starting to think about retirement realize they are in positions they love, doing work they love to do. These people aren’t working simply for the sake of paying the bills and they aren’t looking to end their careers. Rather, they picture themselves working for longer. But instead of postponing retirement, they are making plans for a gradual transition.

“I really love what I do,” says Secord. “As long as my clients will have me and I’m enjoying what I’m doing, I have no aspirations of retiring. When I do, it’ll be a transition to less office time. But I don’t want to call it quits. I still plan on being involved with clients well into my 60s.”

The Simpsons, as well, are putting their retirement plans into effect. Having learned from Nick’s first attempt at retiring, the Simpsons aren’t closing up shop right away but are limiting the services their company will offer. Lu-cette works solely in financial planning and no longer sells products, while Nick wants to become more involved with designing the company Web site. Although they have stacks of books they hope they’ll soon have more time to read, they aren’t quitting the business just yet.

“We’re developing the workshop side of the business,” explains Lucette. “We combine financial planning with lifestyle issues. We flesh out dollar numbers into real-life issues and topics in health and wellness. Hopefully, we’re stimulating people into thinking.”

Meanwhile, Biscott is moving from the role of educator into retirement. Having experienced a few careers before starting to work in retirement education, she is ready to have more time to spend with her husband.

“I’m getting to the point of phasing out some of the workshop contracts,” she says. “Being self-employed, I have the option of phasing it out slowly. I want to keep my hand in and keep writing, but there are lots of other areas I’m interested in. I want to go hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter.” IE