Smooth Sailing into Retirement: How to Navigate the Transition from Work to Leisure Paperback – December 7, 2017

What a find! I just purchased and read “cover-to-cover” Smooth Sailing into Retirement - How to Navigate the Transition from Work to Leisure by Dave Hughes (Prickly Pear Publishing, 2017).This easy-to-read paperback publication focuses on the emotional not financial aspects of preparing for that first year of retirement, including self-reinvention and designing your new day-to-day life to reflect your new passions and interests, elimination of old habits and activities that may no longer serve your needs in retirement, strategies for goal-setting, time management, and fulfilling your “bucket lists,” fostering good communications with your spouse/partner/family members or handling retirement as a single person, and so much more.Every chapter is short and written in plain language. My mother always said, “Eat slowly and take small bites!” You will want to pick up Smooth Sailing into Retirement often and re-read several pages at a time.Sections• Your Last Few Months of Work• Your First Few Months of Retirement• Curate Your Retirement• Your Marriage• Retired and Single• Looking AheadI particularly liked the chapters on “8 Surprising Ways That Retirement Can Stress You Out” and “Unexpected Emotions You May Experience After You Retire.” Hughes discusses in great detail the confusion and “ups and downs” of the passage through one of life’s greatest life-style transitions.“Most people approach retirement with one of two outlooks: eager anticipation or dread... Since so many aspects of your life will change when you retire, it’s not surprising that you will experience some emotional upheaval. Which emotions you experience, in what order, and at what point after you retire will be unique to you.”He touches on…• Loss of identity/lack of purpose• Uncertainty about whether you made the right choice• Guilt over no longer working• Disappointment• Disorientation• Fear and worry• LonelinessI have not met a retiree that has not experienced at least of few of these, myself included!His final two chapters reflect on “Ten Ways to Stay Young After You Retire” and “12 Regrets You Can Avoid in Retirement,” a road-map for truly “living the dream” in retirement.This is “must-read” manual to answer the essential questions, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” and “What are you going to do with yourself for the rest of your life?”

Liked the book. Will recommend to others. However, since I have been reading the "blogs", it was mostly repeat of what I had already read.

I am a CPA & Financial planner. I help clients with the financial aspects of retirement, but there is so much more to it than that. This is the book I was looking for to help people with the non-financial aspects. Great advice on what to expect mentally and emotionally with a lot of advice on how to ease into the transition.

I enjoyed the realness of this book. Not "rose colored glasses", not "Doom despair". After I got done reading the book, I felt I had gotten straight talk, good information and had a new outlook. I felt more ready and excited for the future.

I've been reading Dave's retirement advice for several years now and find it invaluable. My husband and I have applied a lot of what we've learned from reading Dave's advice, while one of us has become retired with the other (me!) remaining "semi-retired" with a new job that suits our plans for this phase of our lives. Get this book! It helps you navigate the very different realities of moving into the retirement period of your life, whether you're there yet or not.

Lists of actionable ideas. Non-financial advice; there are plenty of other books for that. I've read several retirement books and would say that this is the most useful.

Gave as a gift.