Angela Lechtenberg, APR
I’m not big on audience participation.
I don’t like going to a concert and being expected to sing along (What did I pay you $100 a ticket for?), and I don’t like going to conferences and being expected to answer a bunch of questions (I usually go to conferences to get answers to questions). Don’t get me wrong, when I do pre-retirement seminars for LAGERS I want my audiences to speak up and ask a lot of questions because I’m there to provide answers to them for their retirement questions. However I do ask one question of them at each of the seminars that I do:
“What are your big retirement plans?”
You see, people are very happy to come to us and talk about their retirement. After all, who wouldn’t be excited about the next chapter of your life, being able to come and go as you please and not answer to anyone and be able to do what you’ve always wanted to do? So I always ask people to share with me what their dreams are for retirement.
I’ve heard some great answers so far. Here are a few –
“I’m moving out of the country, to Costa Rica. It’s very inexpensive to retire there.”
“I’m buying a motor home and touring the country to visit all the national parks.”
“I plan to get up after 9 am, have some coffee, go outside for a while, and then do nothing for the rest of the day!”
“My wife and I are going to move to an RV park and live there and work there as park attendants.”
“My grand kids and my new cows and baby calves. That’s all I plan to do!”
“I plan to bike the Appalacian Trail from one end to the other.”
And I hope to hear many more of the wonderful stories that you all have about what you’re going to do next. For those of you planning to move away from your current location and see new surroundings, check out this fun quiz on where you’d like to live in retirement.
Keep dreaming folks. Retirement will be here for all of us faster than we think.
Angela Lechtenberg, Communication Specialist
