Book Review: How to Retire and Not Die

I love the title of this book written by Gary Sirak with Max Sirak. It conveys the importance of having a well thought out plan before making the leap into retirement.   

Having failed miserably at retirement myself, this is something I strongly believe in. 

So many people mistakenly think that retiring is easy, but the truth is it’s not.   

A growing body of research has found that retirement significantly increases the risk of depression (or in my situation what I called retirement shock) and in some cases may even lead to an early death.  

Early in the book, Author Gary Sirak brings this truth home by sharing with us a sad story about Bruno.  

Bruno was a successful small business owner who sold his business in the 1980’s for $10,000,000. With that kind of money in the bank, Bruno thought retiring would be easy and he could figure things out as he went along. 

But turns out he was wrong. 

The problem was that Bruno didn’t have any activities or hobbies to keep him busy in retirement because he had previously spent about every working hour at the shop. His company was his passion, purpose and identity and when he sold it, they all went along with it.  

Sadly, Bruno never did figure things out and was dead within two short years.  

During my banking career I’ve met a lot of people like Bruno.     

People who enjoyed a successful primary career and had substantial retirement assets yet just seemed to shrivel up and becoming shells of their former selves soon after packing it in. Looking into their eyes you could see that the fire has gone out from inside them and they end up sleepwalking through some of the best years of their life.   

These people should have had a great retirement but didn’t – because they no longer had the strong sense of purpose they once had when they were working.  

They no longer made a daily contribution that gave their life meaning and coherence and those missing pieces put them on the fast track to Retirement Hell.  

This book does a good job explaining how retirement shock is triggered by the loss of our sense of purpose, our identity, our community, our structure and routines all at once. These are all fundamental needs that we are all born with, needs that must be fulfilled for us to lead a happy healthy life.  

These needs which were satisfied through the work we did never go away - not even in retirement and unless we find new ways to satisfy these needs we are going to be in trouble.   

The author and I are both big fans of working part-time in retirement because it is the easiest way of satisfying our fundamental needs.  

Working part-time doing something you enjoy doing is something every retiree should consider when designing their own retirement lifestyle.  

Here are some of the important questions that this book asks; 

• Why do you want to retire?

• What will you do with your remaining time? 

• Are you retiring from something or to something?  

Surprisingly most retirees are unable to clearly answer these basic retirement questions and therein lies the problem. 

But not to worry, because after reading this book you will likely know how to answer them.   

About the Author

Mike Drak is the Author of the best-selling book Victory Lap Retirement,  Retirement Heaven or Hell - Which Will You Choose and Longevity Lifestyle by Design. Along with being an Author, Mike is also an award winning blogger and public speaker and has made appearances on BNN, CBC Radio and iHeart radio. He is a thirty-eight year veteran of the financial services industry and lives with his wife Melina in Toronto, Canada. You can contact Mike through LinkedIn.