Guiding pre-retirees through the emotional transition to retirement

While the decades of work and planning that people put in to afford a comfortable retirement can feel like a long, dull slog for most, one adviser has found that the actual transition into a life post-career can be jarring and unsettling to some clients.

The solution, he discovered, is letting retirees mentor pre-retirees during the transition to those golden years.

“Retirement is the principal concern in most peoples’ lives, and they tend to think of it as the final chapter, but we try to get them to think of it as the next chapter,” said Jason Juhl, a Des Moines, Iowa-based adviser with Carson Wealth.

Juhl's client base averages 60 years of age, 60% of whom are already retired, and he's become familiar with the pattern of increased anxiety as clients get closer to retirement.

But with much of the financial planning work on track, Juhl said the anxiety is less about money and more about emotional and lifestyle issues related to leaving the workforce.

“We noticed similar concerns among our clients who were approaching retirement,” he said. “Concerns such as loss of job title, identity, loss of social network and what will they do to fill their time during this next chapter. While I have helped hundreds of clients retire and can empathize with their concerns, I personally haven’t retired. That’s when we saw a unique opportunity to help.”

That help has taken the form of a Retirement Advisory Committee that Juhl and managing director Joel Worsfold created as a way of tapping into the expertise within the firm’s existing client base.

“We pair a pre-retiree with two or three retirees who’ve had similar experiences and retirement concerns,” Juhl said.

The mentoring program, which was established in January, begins with the mentee completing a questionnaire to help the mentors become familiar with the various concerns or challenges facing the pre-retiree.

From there, Juhl sets up a video call with the group.

“We start the meeting with a quick introduction and then ultimately open it up to the group for discussion,” he said. “We also provide the mentee with some discussion topics to get the conversation going. Occasionally a follow-up call is needed; otherwise, we reconvene after six months for a group check-in.”

At the six-month mark, Juhl brings the smaller groups of mentors and mentees together for a video call with other mentoring groups for a larger discussion on the topic of transitioning toward retirement.

So far, six pre-retirees have participated in the program, which has been tweaked a bit since it was launched. “We did not originally have an agenda or shared background information,” Juhl said.

He's been impressed with how willing retirees have been to volunteer their time to act as mentors.

“We have a number of people on the bench willing to participate,” Juhl said. “We’ll send out invites to six mentors and the first three to respond will fulfill that need. Some of the mentors have doubled up with more than one mentee, and mentees have requested to become mentors.”

The program’s first major adjustment was a shift toward emotional and lifestyle topics, and away from financial matters.

“We thought initially this would be more financially oriented and focused on the concerns about replacing a paycheck with a retirement distribution,” Juhl said. “It was not. The focus was more psychological, social and time management issues. And there’s a little bit of mourning involved related to the loss of titles and social networks and a daily routine.”

Juhl said pre-retirees who have worked hard their whole lives are often blindsided by the adjustment to having a lot more time on their hands.

“You work for a company, develop a social network, and now you’re retiring and wondering will those relationships fade away,” he said.

The No. 2 concern is managing life on the home front.

“One senior executive who was getting ready to retire said he wanted to make sure that three years from now, his wife still loved him,” Juhl recalled. “We ask them what things you’ve always dreamt of doing that you haven’t been able to because of work. A lot of it is health-related and wanting to exercise more. Just knowing that others have been there before you and are there to support you has inspired confidence.”