Test-Drive Your Retirement

Before you quit your job, try out your new budget and your new lifestyle.

- ALINA TUGEND

BEV BACHEL, 62, IS TRYING retirement on for size. For years, Bachel, a freelance communications professional in Minneapolis, took on highly demanding contract jobs that typically lasted more than a year. She put in long hours, often managed other writers and had to be available for onsite meetings.

“A friend of mine said that when you’re self-employed, you never really retire. You just wake up and realize all your clients are gone,” she says. “I thought, Oh my God, I need to exert control instead of experiencing a slow decline into nothing.”

So, two years ago, Bachel decided to cut down on big projects, travel extensively—including lengthy trips to Panama during the Minnesota winters—and take on work that she could do anywhere, anytime.

She also watched her savings decrease instead of increase. “I have 40 years of ingrained patterns and being rewarded for saving versus spending,” she says. “Now I have to make a mental shift.”

HOW TO DO IT RIGHT

The idea of test-driving retirement—whether by cutting living expenses, staying for a few weeks at a potential retirement destination or hanging out at home for a week without work—makes sense to a lot of people. But it’s not easy.

“Test-driving retirement gets more attention in the press than it does with clients,” says Mari Adam, president of Adam Financial Associates, in Boca Raton, Fla. “I’ve had people do it in bits and pieces.”