More Than Money

We can count on seeing more workshops on how to handle the nonfinancial aspects of retirement.

An excerpt from Business Week:

Just as people take classes to prepare for other major life changes, whether it's job advancement or first-time parenthood, prospective retirees are studying for their next act. This type of planning goes beyond the workshops that employers and financial-services firms offer to teach you how not to go broke after you stop working. Courses such as a 2 1/2-day workshop at the National Center for Creative Retirement at the University of North Carolina in Asheville (www.unca.edu/ncccr) focus on mindset and lifestyle, not 401(k)s and annuities.

"When people begin thinking about retirement, preferably 10 years before and no less than five, they need to plan in detail for what they're going to do with their time, how they'll replace the social relationships they had at work, and where they might want to relocate," says Betty Meredith, director for education and research at the International Foundation for Retirement Education in Lubbock, Tex., which trains retirement specialists. But William Arnone, practice leader for employee financial services at Ernst & Young in New York, estimates that just "5% or fewer" of the retirement programs offered to employees address nonfinancial issues.