Only you can know if you're ready for a checklist for retiring. If you’re 60 or getting there, retirement is no longer a hazy concept in the distance. It’s a real deadline. In five or six years, or maybe just a year. Or six months. Or even six weeks. You are going to leave your full-time job, not for a new phase in a working career, but for a largely unknown future.
Ideally, you’ve prepared financially and otherwise ahead of this looming date to ensure a calm, rather than chaotic, transition. If you're hyper-organized, you may have already ticked off most of the 10-year checklist for retirement planning tasks. But the lead-up to the last day requires a sharpened focus. What do you need to know about your finances? Your health insurance? When do you tell your boss and colleagues? And how do you leave your job looking forward to a new phase, rather than looking back and longing?
