The Dreams of Retirement Edit

Sunlit Table by a Garden Door

What If Retirement Isn’t About Stopping Work?

For years, I thought about retirement mostly as a number.

There was the age I might retire. The amount I needed to save. The mortgage I wanted paid off. The pensions and Social Security and 401(k) calculations that would eventually tell me whether I could stop working.

All important things.

But lately I've been thinking much less about when I can retire and much more about what I'm actually retiring to.

I'm close to my mid-50s now, which makes retirement close enough to imagine but not close enough to stop planning for it. And somewhere in that shift, I've realized that I don't actually dream about never working again.

I dream about working differently.

I Don't Want Every Day to Be Saturday

Whenever I picture retirement, I don't see myself sitting beside a pool indefinitely.

Don’t get me wrong, I like vacations and beautiful hotels. I can spend a very happy afternoon lounging by the water.

But forever?

Probably not.

I like being useful. I like solving problems. I like interesting conversations and meeting smart people. I like having something I'm working toward.

What I don't particularly want forever is the structure that has traditionally come with my work.

The calendar that belongs to everyone else.

The meeting that appears at 4:30 PM.

The Sunday-night glance at Monday's schedule (see The Sunday Reset Edit).

The strange corporate expectation that because technology makes us reachable almost anywhere, we should be reachable almost everywhere, at any time.

After decades of working, I've started wondering whether the thing I want to retire from isn't work at all.

Maybe it's the lack of control over my time.

The Old Retirement Story Doesn't Quite Fit Me

The retirement model many of us grew up with was fairly straightforward.

You worked for decades. You saved. Maybe you received a pension. Eventually you had the retirement party, packed up your desk and entered an entirely different stage of life.

My parents' generation could understand retirement as a fairly clean dividing line.

I'm not sure ours will.

Gen X has lived through pensions disappearing, multiple recessions, layoffs, corporate restructurings, the arrival of the internet, smartphones, remote work and now AI changing what work itself may look like.

A gold watch and a permanent move to Florida were probably never going to be our ending.

And maybe that's not such a bad thing.

I Keep Coming Back to Freedom

When I try to imagine the life I want in my 60s, the word that keeps coming up isn't retirement.

It's freedom.

Freedom to work on something because I'm interested in it.

Freedom to take a trip without negotiating around a corporate calendar.

Freedom to spend a Tuesday morning outside and work on something later if I feel like it.

Freedom to say yes to an interesting advisory project, speaking engagement or board opportunity.

And, equally important, freedom to say no.

I would still like to earn money. In fact, I hope I do.

I just don't necessarily want all of it to come from one employer in exchange for most of my available time.

That's a very different retirement dream than the one I had at 35.

Money Still Matters

There is a temptation in conversations about leaving corporate life to make it sound romantic.

“Just follow your passion.”

“Life is short.”

“Take the leap.”

That's nice advice when someone else is paying your health insurance.

For many women in midlife, the calculation is considerably more complicated.

There are mortgages. Aging parents. Children. Healthcare. Retirement savings. Spouses. Homes that occasionally need a new roof at exactly the wrong time.

There is also the reality that women tend to live a long time.

So I'm not interested in blowing up a financially secure life simply because corporate work often frustrates me now.

I'm interested in building choices.

That's different.

Every dollar saved, every debt paid down, every additional source of income and every year spent strengthening something that might eventually earn money outside my primary job creates another little piece of freedom.

I find that much more motivating than simply watching a retirement countdown.

Don’t misunderstand, I appreciate what I do and that I have a good job. I want more flexibility because my schedule is always tied to company annual goals and my team’s needs.

Maybe We Need a Runway, Not an Exit

I've started thinking of the next several years as a runway.

I can continue earning and saving while experimenting with what might come next.

I can write.

I can build The Polished Reset.

I can develop my professional work and relationships outside the boundaries of a job title.

I can explore advisory work, boards, consulting and speaking.

Some of those things may become meaningful sources of income.

Some may go absolutely nowhere.

That's the point of experimenting while I still have a paycheck.

I don't need to know exactly what my life at 60 will look like today.

I need to start building enough possibilities that I have choices when I get there.

I Want More White Space

There is something else I want that is harder to put into a financial plan.

White space.

I don't mean a blank calendar.

I mean enough room in my life for things to happen that I didn't schedule three weeks earlier.

A friend calls and wants to have lunch.

The weather is beautiful and I decide to go to the beach.

My husband and I find inexpensive hotels or flights somewhere interesting.

Someone asks me to work on a project I hadn't anticipated.

Or maybe it's Tuesday and I simply don't have anywhere I need to be.

That kind of time feels incredibly luxurious to me now.

Not because I want to do nothing.

Because I want more say in what I do. That dream hasn’t materialized in the corporate world.

For you boss women out there who own your own businesses, I realize you are somewhat at the mercy of customers, too.

The bottom line is that you get to choose your own adventure, which is not an option those of us in corporate jobs have today.

I Also Don't Want to Wait Until 60 to Live That Way

This may be the biggest thing I'm beginning to understand.

If the life I'm working toward includes better health, meaningful relationships, travel, time outside, interesting work and more control over my days, I shouldn't postpone all of it until some magical retirement date.

I can start building pieces of that life now.

That's partly what The Polished Reset has become for me.

It started as a place to write about the things I was changing in midlife: sleep, beauty, clothes, travel, my home, what I buy and what I no longer need.

But underneath all of those things is a bigger question I've apparently been asking without realizing it:

How do I want the next part of my life to feel?

I don't have a perfectly formed answer yet.

I'm actually glad I don't.

In my early 50s, perhaps I'm not supposed to.

I know I want meaningful work.

I know I want financial security.

I know I want to travel.

I want mornings that don't begin with an alarm more often than they do now.

I want time with people I care about.

I want to keep learning and contributing.

And I would very much like fewer 4:30 PM or back-to-back meeting days.

That seems like a reasonable place to begin.

Maybe retirement isn't the day work ends.

Maybe it's the point at which we finally have enough freedom to decide what work—and the rest of life—looks like.

I'm working on that.

If you want to get started on your own retirement journey, a good place to start is with your finances.

They're not a sponsor (yet), but one resource worth checking out is Boldin, a DIY retirement and financial planning platform. I'm interested in tools that can help us think beyond a retirement number and start figuring out what our own runway might look like.

Ashley
Founder, The Polished Reset