This article is an excerpt from Kim’s book, which will be released in early 2027. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter so you can get every don’t miss the next installment!
In my previous life as a researcher at Oregon State, my primary area of study was decision science – a.k.a., decision-making – a field that combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to try to understand the underlying factors that lead people to make decisions.
Why do we do what we do? How can we quantify the decisions of large quantities of people? I spent years trying to peel back the layers to discover the driving forces behind people’s choices.
I was especially interested in behavioral economics, which explores why people spend their money the way they do.
One of my favorite tools from behavioral economics is something called revealed preference. Economists use it to figure out what people actually value – not what they say they value, but what their choices reveal. (There is much more to the concept of revealed preference, but this understanding will suit our needs just fine.)
The classic example involves something as simple as a national park: No one can put a price on the natural beauty of Yosemite Falls, so how do the people who run the park itself, plus the hotels, restaurants, and other tourist-related businesses in the area price in its value? Behavioral economics would look at, for example, how far people are willing to drive to get there and back to calculate how much it’s worth to them.
Our behavior is a clear indicator of what we value. For that reason, when we sit down with a new client who is trying to plan for retirement, we seek to understand their values before we ask any questions about their savings account.
In many ways, we’re doing research alongside each client to help them discover or explore their purpose in retirement, which will be the driving factor in how they spend their money, time, and energy.
If you’re feeling uncertain about your purpose in retirement, we recommend trying one of the three approaches below to help you find some clarity:
Approach #1: ‘But why?’
When we sit down with clients, instead of asking what they want out of retirement (which prompts a lot of empty stares or canned answers), we’ll ask about the most meaningful trip they ever took. Or a moment that made them feel more alive than anything else. Or what they did last Saturday that they’d happily do every Saturday.
The answers start to reveal a pattern, but only after I turn on my inner five-year-old.
“I want to travel in retirement.”
“Okay, why?” I ask, smiling.
“Because I love to travel.”
“But why?”
“Because I grew up in a small town, and I want to see the world.”
“But why?”
“Because when I experience life in a foreign area, I feel more connected to the world at large.”
Now we’re getting somewhere! Do you see how we went from a general statement (I want to travel when I retire) to revealing an underlying value (I want to feel connected to the world around me)? That’s when my ears perk up and we know we’re getting to the meaning of retirement for this person.
On the surface, we’re planning for the freedom to take a trip every summer, but underneath, we’re planning for them to create a meaningful life. Once we understand an individual’s meaning of retirement, we incorporate that into their financial plan and return to it over and over to help guide decision-making on an ongoing basis.
If this kind of reflection is difficult (and it is for many!), there are other ways in.
Approach #2: Start at the end and work backward
Another approach I use from my old academic days uses decision science, where you start at the end and work backward, to ask:
- Who do you want to be at the close of your life?
- What would you want people to say about you?
Some clients find it useful to write their own obituary, or to ask themselves what they’d wish they had done differently on their very last day. It may sound heavy to write about your own death, but thinking about your own demise can help bring things into sharp focus.
Approach #3: The two-question method
If we want to look at it from another angle, we will use the Kinder Life Planning two-question method:
- Imagine you have five years left to live – what do you do with them?
- Imagine you have one day left to live – what do you do then?
You can try it right now, if you want. Set aside these bigger questions for a moment and just ask yourself: What does my ideal week look like when nothing is demanding my time?
When I do exercises like this with my clients, I hear things like “coffee on the porch with my spouse every morning” or “having people over for dinner once a month.” Those seem like small details, but they have immense value. Those are the things worth building a financial plan around.
These are the questions our planning process is built around. We get to financial questions, too, but mostly those come later. If you work your way through questions like these first, you’ll find that when the time comes to address the money questions, they’re much easier – and more exciting! – to answer. That’s the power of starting with meaning.
Financial planning isn’t about figuring out how to spend your money. It’s about knowing yourself well enough that your money – and your time, and your energy – can serve something that actually matters to you.
That’s what we’re going to figure out together.
This article is an excerpt from Kim’s book, which will be released in early 2027. Click here to subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss the next installment!
