Review: Purposeful Retirement Workbook & Planner: Wisdom, Planning and Mindfulness for Your Happiest Years

Purposeful Retirement Workbook & Planner: Wisdom, Planning and Mindfulness for Your Happiest Years by Hyrum W. Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Smith's book that this workbook was based on a few months back. I liked the audio of the book, as it had a personality that came through in the writing that was not typical for such books. It felt more friendly. I assumed this would have that same personality. It really doesn't, but only because the writing here is pretty brief. I found one section of a page or two that had a different take on a retirement topic than expected, and so for that it was worthwhile. Given this is a "workbook and planner", you expect worksheets, and here you get a lot. The first half or more of the book consists of about half page of writing and half pages of questions and blanks to fill them out. Most are typical. One example, what did your parents do during their retirement. Mostly thinking, feeling questions, with a few lists (think bucket list). Nothing deeply financial. The second half or so of the book was very specifically focused on two exercises for time management. Given the author was the president of the company responsible for the Franklin Day Planner, I expected a focus on time planning. What I didn't expect was that there would be two exercises that take up almost half the book. The first exercise is to lay out the perfect day in retirement, assigning activities to hours, then to create additional schedules of perfect days that have slightly different focuses. Say a learning day, and a chores day, and a visit friends day. There are worksheets for five or ten of these day plans. Then, covering roughly the last 1/3 of the book, the author includes about 50 blank weekly schedules. Your assignment is to fill out the weekly schedules for the bulk of a year with those perfect days. Shades of Franklin and Day Timer and other time management systems, but applied to your retirement time.

I read this as an ebook, so the worksheets weren't very helpful, beyond getting me to think about the questions being asked. But I believe any reminder to plan and to think through your options is a good thing, so I will rate this positively. But don't expect miracles, and do expect the guy from Franklin will have something to say on planning your time. This doesn't repeat what was in Smith's book of the similar title, so it could be used as an additional resource.

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