Most advisors and pre-retirees believe that planning for retirement should be entirely focused on the financial aspects of saving money and eliminating debt.  While that is certainly true, there is so much more.  How do you envision spending your time for the rest of your life?  Retirement planning considerations should include finding a meaning to your new life and creating opportunities to create value, fulfilling the goals that you put on hold when you were working.  In the beginning, sometimes referred to as the “honey-moon stage,” early retirees feel like retirement is one long weekend with endless days of no alarm clock, meetings and deadlines.  But once they have settled into a routine, now what?  Just as goal setting to get to retirement was a major criteria, so is it in retirement.  Start creating strategies to make your retirement more fulfilling and fun.  Consider creating a legacy, pursue new things: art, literature, leisure pursuits or even alternative work opportunities.  Happiness is not created just because you are retired, but rather experienced every day in retirement when you are happy doing the things that matter most.  Continue to dream and inspire yourself.  Everyone always knows where we have come from, but once in retirement, most are not so sure what they are retiring to.    If you are widowed, divorced and now on your own as a new single, all the more reason to look at your happiness beyond the money aspects.  In the past we looked at retirement as a couples’ event, today we realize it is so much more than that.  Put as much attention to your new lifestyle issues as you do to your new financial issues.  This is your time now, not to be defined by some poster picture of the old retirement images.  We are in a new decade, a more modern and progressive time that welcomes uniqueness, innovation, creativity and individualism.  Revel in your no-work days and make every day fantastical just for your happiness.  You deserve it!