By A.B. Ridgeway | The Ridgeway Report
You finally did it.
After 20, 30, maybe even 40 years of working, you’ve reached the “permanent vacation” stage of life—retirement.
But here’s the truth most people don’t talk about:
There can be trouble in paradise if you don’t have the right mindset.
As a financial advisor, I see the same mistakes over and over again when people first retire. On the surface, they seem small. But underneath, they can quietly derail your retirement if you’re not careful.
Today, I’m going to walk you through three critical things you need to do now that you’re retired—plus one bonus tip that ties everything together.
If you stick with me, I’ll give you a financial advisor’s perspective so you can increase the probability of having the retirement you’ve been dreaming about.
1. Make a Real Plan for the Next 20–30 Years
Yes, I know. “Make a plan” sounds obvious. I’m a financial planner, so of course I’d say that.
But this stage of life is different.
Most of your adult life was spent:
- Working
- Raising children
- Building a career
- Accumulating assets
Now… that identity is gone.
You are not the same person you were 20 or 30 years ago. And retirement is an entirely new stage of life that deserves intentional planning.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
With modern medicine and advances in healthcare, people are living longer:
- 85 is common
- 95 is no longer rare
- And many are reaching 100+
That means your money may need to last 20–30+ years in retirement.
So we need to answer questions like:
- How much will you actually spend?
- Is your house paid off?
- Is your car paid off?
- What are your true monthly expenses?
- How much income do you need to maintain your lifestyle?
This isn’t about guessing. It’s about knowing.
The 40-Hour Gap
And let’s not forget something just as important as money: your time.
You just gained 40+ hours per week.
- You can only sleep in so many times
- You can only visit the same restaurants so often
- You can only travel so much before it starts to feel repetitive
So ask yourself:
What am I going to do with my time?
This is where you lean into:
- Passions
- Hobbies
- Family
- Friends
- Purpose
Pick one thing you love and really pursue it. Don’t just “exist” in retirement—design it.
2. Redesign Your Circle (Your Social Network Matters)
For many of you, your identity was tied to your title:
- CEO
- President
- Vice President
- Manager
- Business owner
Your social circle was built around your career.
Now that chapter is closed.
Why This Is Critical in Retirement
As parents, we worry about who our kids hang around.
In retirement, you need to be just as intentional about who you spend your time with.
Here’s the reality:
- Your friends may still be working
- Your family may still be raising kids
- Everyone is not retiring at the same time you are
That means you can’t just call people at noon and expect them to be available.
But this does not give you permission to isolate yourself.
The Hidden Danger: Loneliness
Loneliness can lead to:
- Depression
- Emotional distress
- And unhealthy coping behaviors
For many retirees, that turns into retail therapy:
- Amazon purchases
- New gadgets
- New clothes
- Impulse spending
That quick dopamine hit can quietly sabotage your financial plan.
Instead, focus on:
- Building a strong social network
- Joining groups or communities
- Staying connected and engaged
Your circle will influence how you experience retirement—financially and emotionally.
3. Pace Yourself (Retirement Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint)
One of the biggest mistakes I see retirees make is hyper-spending in the first 1–2 years.
They finally buy:
- The RV
- The luxury car
- The motorcycle
- The dream vacations
- The toys they “never had time for”
And I get it. You earned it.
But remember:
You’re not retiring for 5 years. You’re retiring for 20–30 years.
Sequence of Return Risk (This Is Important)
In finance, we talk about sequence of return risk.
That simply means when and how you withdraw money matters just as much as how much you withdraw.
Example:
- You retire with $2 million
- You spend $1 million early on large purchases
- Now you’re working with $1 million
If the market goes up 10%:
- On $2 million = $200,000 gain
- On $1 million = $100,000 gain
It is very hard to climb out of that hole.
Add in:
- Market downturns
- Inflation
- Health emergencies
- Family emergencies
And suddenly, retirement can feel a lot tighter than you expected.
The Goal
Enjoy your life—but pace yourself.
Just like you had an emergency fund when you were younger, you need to maintain that same discipline in retirement.
Because even if you’re debt-free, it is still possible to run out of money.
Bonus: Get Help
You were great at what you did:
- Marketing
- Engineering
- Law
- Medicine
- Business
- Operations
But most likely, you were not trained in retirement income planning.
And that’s okay.
Your job now is not to be the expert in everything.
Your job is to protect what you worked your entire life to build.
When you combine:
- Proper planning
- A strong social circle
- Controlled pacing
- And professional guidance
You dramatically increase your probability of success in retirement.
Final Thoughts
If you can master these three things:
- Plan your next 20–30 years
- Redesign your circle
- Pace yourself financially and emotionally
You will have the mindset needed to enjoy the retirement you deserve.
Ready to Talk About Your Next Chapter?
If you’ve recently retired—or you’re getting close—and you’re looking for a financial advisor who understands both the numbers and the life transition, I’d love to speak with you.
👉 Click the link below to schedule a consultation.
https://calendly.com/abridgewaywm/consultation
Let’s talk about your goals, your plans, and how to make sure your “permanent vacation” stays permanent.
Transcript:
My name is AB Ridgeway. I’m the host of the Ridgeway Report. And today we’re talking about the three things you need to do now that you’re retired.
You finally reached that permanent vacation you’ve been dreaming about for the past 20 and 30 years. And you need to know these vital issues so you don’t run into trouble.
Yes, there is trouble in paradise sometimes when we don’t have the right mindset. And that’s why today we’re going to go over the three things that I see a lot of retirees make the mistake of when they finally retire.
So what I’ve done, I’ve given you a list of the things I’m going to talk about, and I also have one bonus tip I want to give you that puts it all together.
But I promise you, if you stick with me, I’ll give you a financial advisor’s perspective to these things. They look very simple on the surface, but I promise you deep down it will help you make sure you have the retirement of your dreams.
So let’s start.
So number one, we want to make a plan. And that seems very simple. I’m a financial planner, but planning is very crucial at this stage.
Why?
Because at this age, we really think we have life in the bag. We grew up as children. We were young adults. We think we have this life thing all figured out.
Unfortunately, we ourselves are still going through an additional stage and that is what does retirement look like?
A majority of our life was spent as adults working, raising children, making money. But now that’s gone. We are no longer the people we were 20 and 30 years ago.
So we need to make a plan for the next 20 years.
With modern science and medical advances, people are living longer. So no longer do you retire at 55, maybe pass away at 75. People are living to 85, 95.
And I’ve seen a lot of people online living to 100.
So with modern medicine, we need to make sure that our money doesn’t run out too soon.
What we want to do is figure out how can we preserve our money. So we’re going to do that by making a plan.
How are we going to live? How much stuff are we going to buy? What are our expenses? Is our house paid off? Is our car paid off?
We’re going to really figure out where we stand and where we want to be. And how are we going to fill that gap?
And that leads us to my next topic, which is the 40-hour gap.
Forget about money. What are you going to do with your time?
There’s only so many times you can sleep in till 12:00. There’s only so many restaurants you can visit in your local city. There’s only so many states and so many countries you can visit before everything starts to look the same.
What are you going to do with that 40 hours?
That is where we are going to lean into our friends, our families, our passions, our loves because the world is opening up to us right now.
It could seem overwhelming. So what I recommend is that you take one thing that you love and really pursue it.
Now number two is redesign your circle.
And when I mean by circle, I mean your social circle.
Think about it. You’re probably a vice president or a president or a CEO at a company. That was your identity. The people that you knew, the people that you hung around.
What do you do now?
Well, we are going to choose our friends wisely.
You know, as parents, we’re really worried about our children — who they hang around with, who they talk to, who they listen to.
This becomes even more important in retirement because our friends and our families that we spend the most time with are really going to influence how we experience retirement.
Remember this: everyone is not retiring at the same time you are.
Your family and friends may still have jobs. They may still have kids. They may be working longer than you.
So you can’t just call them at 12:00. They may be on shift.
But this does not give us permission to just isolate ourselves at home.
Loneliness can lead to depression.
When we voluntarily isolate ourselves from our friends and family, it can cause a lot of emotional distress, which causes sometimes to reach for what?
Retail therapy.
It’s so easy to go on Amazon, get a couple dopamine rushes, buy some new gadgets that you saw or maybe some type of new clothes that you can wear or shoes or things of that nature.
What we want to do is build our social network, get that strong in retirement and figure out who are we going to spend our time with.
Now number three, we need to pace ourselves.
Yes, pace yourself.
Once again, you’re not retiring for the next 5 or 10 years. You have to look down the road for 20 and 25 years.
Many retirees, what they do is hyperspend in the first one or two years.
So they’re buying the RV they always wanted. They’re buying the luxury car they never got a chance to have. They’re buying motorcycles.
They’re traveling state to state. They’re going around the world doing the things they thought they couldn’t do when they were younger.
Well, there’s only so many rounds of golf that you can play. There’s only so many puzzles that you can put together before once again you become bored.
You have all the money. You have all the time. But you have nothing to do to occupy it.
So we have to figure out how we can pace ourselves to do the things we still enjoy without thinking that every day is just YOLO — you only live once.
Another point that we want to make too is how you spend.
There’s a thing in finances called sequence of return risk.
That means that how we spend and when we spend is just as important as how much we spend.
If the market is down in the first year that we retire and then we withdraw a large sum of money to make these luxurious purchases, it may cause our retirement income to decrease in the long run.
For an exaggerated example:
You had $2 million.
You spend half of it paying off your mortgages, your luxury cars, maybe some student loan debt.
Now you have $1 million.
Well, if you make 10%, you’re only making $100,000 at this point as opposed to when you had $2 million, you could have made $200,000.
Does that make sense?
So it’s very hard to climb out of that rut.
We need to make sure that your sequence of withdrawals are appropriate for the market and what we need to do.
And once again, it goes back to knowing your income, knowing your expenses, what’s available, and pacing ourselves.
Because one of the things we don’t want to do is run out of money.
A lot of us may say, “Well, I’m out of debt. I have no debt. There’s no way I can run out of money.”
Well, it’s possible.
You may run into some inflation.
Maybe there’s some damage to your investment property.
Maybe the market has a correction and you’re still taking out large withdrawals.
Or there may be a family emergency or a health emergency that draws a large sum out of your account unexpectedly.
So we need to make sure that we’re pacing ourselves.
Just like we have an emergency fund when we’re younger, we need to make sure that we’re adopting some of those same practices even in retirement.
So I told you there was going to be a bonus.
And the bonus is get help.
As I said before, you’re probably a president or a former CEO or maybe just a really great employee.
But things have changed.
And most likely, if you’re watching this video, you weren’t in finances.
So you had your strengths — whether it was marketing, advertising, engineering, being a doctor or a lawyer.
But now you need some financial help because you want to make sure that you protect your assets the best way possible.
If you can master these three things:
- Planning out your next 20 years
- Redesigning your circle
- Learning how to pace yourself
you will have the mindset to increase the probability of success.
If you like content like this, or you just recently retired and are looking for a financial advisor, you can click the link below.
I’d love to schedule a consultation with you, talk about some of your goals and what you’re going to do in that third stage of life as you transition into your permanent vacation so you don’t have to go back to work.
About the Author
A.B. Ridgeway, CPWA® is the founder of A.B. Ridgeway Wealth Management and host of The Ridgeway Report. He specializes in helping retirees and pre-retirees create reliable income, invest with clarity, and make confident financial decisions.
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About The Ridgeway Report:
As Christians, we were taught to be good stewards over our tithing and giving to the less fortunate. But when it came to our personal finances and investing we were left clueless on what the Bible says. What does the Bible say about managing debt, leaving a legacy, investing, and planning for your retirement? Mr. Christian Finance answers these and many other questions because we want to teach you how to become rich and righteous!
Meet A.B. Ridgeway:
A.B. Ridgeway, MBA, CPWA®️ (info@abrwealthmanagement.com) is the owner and Christian Financial Advisor with A.B. Ridgeway Wealth Management. With a decade in the finance industry, his goal is to give believers clarity around the most confusing topic in the Bible, money, and tithing. A.B. Ridgeway helps tithing Christians become cheerful givers but unlocking their money-making potential, so they can prosper and be the great stewards of the wealth God has entrusted them with.
*Disclaimer: This communication is not intended as an offer or solicitation to buy, hold or sell any financial instrument or investment advisory services. Any information provided has been obtained from sources considered reliable, but we do not guarantee the accuracy or the completeness of any description of securities, markets or developments mentioned. This is strictly for information purposes. We recommend you speak with a professional financial advisor.
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