Jamie Hopkins, CEO of Bryn Mawr Trust, and Bonnie Treichel, partner at Endeavor Retirement, like to say that there are no commandments or universal laws for retirement. Instead, there are rules of thumb, best practices and helpful guides.
That’s why in their new book Your Retirement Sketchbook they literally and figuratively "sketch" out a retirement plan that can be lived and enjoyed, not simply calculated.
InvestmentNews sat down with the authors to learn more about their spirited new approach to saving for retirement.
InvestmentNews: Why did you write Your Retirement Sketchbook now? Based on your work, what is the single biggest fear or knowledge gap that prevents people from feeling confident about their financial longevity, and how does your framework address it?
Hopkins/Treichel: We wrote Your Retirement Sketchbook now because we’re at a moment where people are being asked to make increasingly complex retirement decisions at a time when certainty feels harder than ever. Longevity is improving, traditional pensions are disappearing, markets are volatile, and responsibility for retirement income has shifted almost entirely onto individuals. Yet many people still approach retirement planning with rules of thumb and static projections that don’t reflect how unpredictable life actually is.
One of the biggest fears many people have is trying to understand how much money they will need because they don’t know how long they will live. That uncertainty creates paralysis. When everything feels unknowable, people either overspend and risk running out—or underspend and unnecessarily sacrifice the life they worked so hard to build.
Additionally, we wanted to flip the script on boring retirement plans. For too long retirement planning has been boiled down to spreadsheets and Monte Carlo simulations, instead of focusing on meaning, purpose, and fun.
InvestmentNews: How did you determine the 125 essential concepts that made it into the book?
Hopkins/Treichel: Your Retirement Sketchbook started with more than 125 concepts, but it was important to us that we organized the book in the timeline of life – breaking the book into eight manageable chapters focused on the topics that everyone could benefit from, instead of just topics that financial professionals find interesting. Each chapter is grouped by concept, starting with your relationship with money, moving on to saving, then investing, moving throughout life as you work on your retirement income plan, live in retirement and prepare for the end of life.
However, this book is not intended to be a book where you sit down and read the book in its entirety; rather, pick it up, put it down, and let the book meet you where you are in your life’s journey.
InvestmentNews: You deliberately framed this as a "sketchbook" rather than a rigid "blueprint" or "textbook." Why is a flexible, creative mindset essential for successful retirement planning today?
Hopkins/Treichel: Setting and forgetting your retirement plan will make it hard to cope with life's challenges. Instead, consider taking a "sketchbook approach," in which you redraw and refine your plan as all of life’s challenges come along – perhaps a marriage, divorce, unexpected job change, death in the family, or change in values. All of these things may force a change in the plan, but the sketchbook approach allows you to be creative and be the artist that creates your own masterpiece. After all, retirement looks different for everyone. Retirement will not be a straight line, instead it will be many different phases of life all requiring constant adjustments. This is why sketching your retirement is so important, it will change, adapt, and develop over time – allowing you to redo the sketch as life moves.
InvestmentNews: What is the psychological or practical benefit of having readers visualize their retirement vision, as opposed to simply reading about generalized financial strategies?
Hopkins/Treichel: People who feel a strong connection with their future selves save 40% more for their future. People who vividly visualize and specify their financial goals are more likely to delay gratification in favor of those specified goals, and groups exposed to visualized financial concepts show better financial knowledge. Visualization can also reduce anxiety around budgeting and result in more savings. Thus, using pictures, visualization and drawing out the end goal, will result in better outcomes and allow people to reach their goals rather than a static financial plan that consists solely of numbers, charts and graphs.
InvestmentNews: Is there one concept among them that you feel is particularly contrarian or often misunderstood by the public or advisors?
Hopkins/Treichel: One of the most misunderstood ideas in retirement planning is that the transition to retirement should begin before you actually retire. Many people spend decades mastering the habit of saving but never practice the equally important skill of spending. As a result, they enter retirement financially prepared but psychologically hesitant to use the money they worked so hard to accumulate.
In Your Retirement Sketchbook, one of our biggest contrarian views is that we encourage people to think about the final few years before retirement as a practice period for spending not saving more. Imagine the three years leading up to retirement as a rehearsal. If possible, consider easing back on aggressive savings and redirecting some of those dollars toward the experiences you hope to enjoy later, whether that is travel, hobbies, or time with family. This small shift allows you to test what your retirement lifestyle might actually feel like while you still have the safety net of income. It can reveal whether your spending assumptions are realistic, help build comfort with using your money, and sometimes even inspire you to work an extra year or two simply because you enjoy the balance you have created. Learning how to spend with intention is just as important as learning how to save.
InvestmentNews: Why was collaboration between multiple authors and even an illustrator so important to make this book successful?
Hopkins/Treichel: The whole philosophy behind Your Retirement Sketchbook is about increasing engagement, making retirement planning fun, and welcoming others to participate. Your clients should want to do their own drawings and you can help them along this journey. With that in mind, we didn’t think there was a better way to do this than to bring a few people together to build it. We actually did try AI for drawings first but it felt like we were missing the human element. We worked with illustrator Grace Haworth to develop custom illustrations. As co-authors we have different expertise. Both as attorneys and both with a passion for teaching, Jamie brings behavioral finance expertise and Bonnie brings retirement plan expertise. Your Retirement Sketchbook demonstrates how true collaboration results in more fulfilling and richer outcomes.
InvestmentNews: The book is for people ranging from those "just starting to save" to those "nearing the finish line." How should a younger person, in their 20s or 30s, use the book differently from someone who is only five years away from retirement?
Hopkins/Treichel: We learned a lesson from Jamie’s previous retirement book where someone in their 30s read it and told him, “…this isn’t for me, I can’t even think about retirement at this stage.” We wrote this book to cover all phases of retirement planning from the first dollar saved to the last dollar spent. The good news is that it is never too early and it is never too late to start planning for retirement.
As we discussed, the book is broken into eight distinct chapters, which allows someone who is earlier in their journey to jump in at the beginning and learn more about their relationship with money, how to maximize their employer-sponsored plan and how to invest the dollars from that plan. On the other hand, for someone that is later in their journey, jumping into the living in retirement chapter or the last chapter to prepare for end-of-life decisions is still advantageous – even for someone reading at age 70. The book has an exercise and opportunity to learn for everyone, regardless of where you are in your journey.
InvestmentNews: If a reader only internalizes one lesson from the many included in Your Retirement Sketchbook, what single, actionable piece of advice do you hope they take away and implement?
Hopkins/Treichel: Retirement planning can be visual and fun. Anything you can explain verbally you can show in a sketch. Welcome in your clients to draw out their retirement plans, increasing engagement and bringing some fun to the planning process. You are the creator of your retirement masterpiece, so build it your way! The most important part is that you pick up the pencil and start sketching!
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