The ideal retirement looks different for everyone. Financial advisors know that’s true of their clients — but it’s also true of the advisors themselves.
“Oh my gosh, it’s such a wide variety,” said Tiffany Lee, an associate exit planner at Ellevate Advisors, a firm that helps wealth managers with their succession and retirement planning.
The fun part of Lee’s job, she said, is helping her clients envision what they’ll do after they leave the workforce. It’s an important question, because many planners are quickly approaching that transition. The average age of an American financial advisor is 56, according to a 2023 study by J.D. Power. And according to the research firm Cerulli Associates, 37.5% of advisors plan to retire within the next decade.
“I love talking about what they want to do next,” Lee said. “We have them list out anything they’re curious about — whether it’s a bucket list item, or a lifestyle thing, or a skill they want to learn, a subject that they’ve always wanted to know, a language they wanted to learn.”
Lee has facilitated a wide range of dream retirements. One client, an amateur pilot, has been planning out how to spend more hours in the sky. Another, a fitness buff, wants to compete in more marathons and bike races. One couple wants to roam the United States in an RV they picked out, and another wants to travel through Europe. The list goes on and on.
READ MORE: When advisors retire: A wealth manager’s guide to life after work
The common thread in all these lifestyles, Lee said, is that they give the retiree a sense of meaning and purpose — not just leisure.
“One unrealistic expectation is thinking, ‘If I can live like I’m on a vacation, I’ll be happy,'” she said. “And that’s just not true. … It really comes down to the day-to-day life and filling that with things that are meaningful to you.”
For wealth managers, what are those sources of meaning? Financial Planning asked planners across the country to describe their dream retirements. Here’s what they told us: