Making a Bucket List

It takes a lot of planning and stress to prepare for retirement. After worrying about your stocks, bonds, accounts and other vehicles, it’s easy to forget the rewards coming to you during retirement. Bucket lists are a great way to sort your priorities and use the money you’ve saved your whole career to enjoy your freest years. Retirement Income Strategies has a few tips for collecting your hopes and dreams into an easy list to follow in your golden years.

Write it Down

Whether it’s joining the circus or traveling to Australia, begin by writing down everything you’ve wanted to do. No matter how silly or strange your list items, write them down. You might be able to combine or specify some of these items later in the process. If you’re honest with yourself, you should end up with a really long list.

Edit and Get Specific

At this stage, your bucket list may not have many realistic or attainable goals. Instead, look through your list and see which items you can combine. Maybe you want to go fly fishing and visit the Rocky Mountains, so why not do both? Instead of just “learning an instrument,” specify what you want to learn and what you want to do with this new knowledge. This will help you narrow down prices for each goal and get closer to scheduling any trips or plans you want to make.

Prioritize Your List

Bucket lists are there for us to realize that we have a limited amount of time to pursue our dreams. Life moves fast when we get distracted by all the things we have to do, rather than the things we want to do. All these distractions are an unfortunate reality, so you’ll need to prioritize your list once it’s whittled down to a realistic length. As you prioritize your list, don’t wait to make these items come true pop over to this site. For example, if going to Thailand isn’t a possibility this year, compromise with a Thai cooking class instead.

Make Personal Changes

While being realistic is wise, you should keep some of your wildest dreams on the list. These allow you to identify what habits you should change or begin to reach your goals. For example, if you’re bad with money, take a financial literacy course so you can learn how to afford your bigger dreams. If you want to write a novel, the first step is forming a writing habit. If you want to run a 5k, begin with your small daily habits like quitting smoking, eating better or exercising more. These little daily changes can bring you a step closer to getting the most out of your life before and during your retirement.