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Many of us go through our working lives buying into the idea that retirement means permanently punching out from a career and heading off into the sunset (preferably poolside).The reality, however, is that the numbers of retirees re-entering the workforce is on the rise; according to a recent survey, as of March 2022, 3.2% of workers who were retired a year earlier are now employed. Why? The desire to go back to work may come from a number of reasons: to feel connected to others, to remain active or pocket additional income, for example — or a combination of those factors. To help you figure out whether unretirement is right for you, we asked un-retirees and experts to share their advice and experiences.<img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/web_GettyImages-915664860.jpg" alt="grandfather playing soccer with his grandkids " class="right_image" /><h2>Easing into unretirement</h2>Some people make the shift gradually. Sam Beasley, who retired at age 51, is one of them: After realizing he was too young and energetic to spend all his time puttering around the house, he began volunteering, and ultimately found his calling as a speaker, consultant and author. These days, Beasley and his wife run several businesses in California and Washington, and he also teaches seminars on financial and emotional well-being.For a life change like this, communication as a couple is key. Talk with your partner about each other's expectations for unretirement. Do you want to spend time with your children or grandchildren? Fit travel and <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/well-being/well-being/hobbies-for-a-happier-you">new hobbies</a> into your lifestyle? It's a good idea to determine how will you set boundaries so that your work doesn't infringe on your personal time.<img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/web_GettyImages-1094184512.jpg" alt="older man working in a wood shop" class="right_image" />Keep in mind that the earliest you can receive Social Security benefits is age 62, and benefits are reduced when tapped prior to reaching your full retirement age. You'll need to be sure your unretirement income is enough to allow you to delay taking withdrawals from savings or receiving Social Security.Another consideration: How will returning to, or staying in, the workforce longer impact your ability to continue saving on a tax-advantaged basis? "Continuing to earn an income allows you to add to your retirement savings," Farrell says, and an advantage is that interest-earning funds can compound longer. Additionally, "you're supporting yourself off the income generated by your savings for a shorter period."With Americans' life expectancies on the rise, that's good news. According to the Social Security Administration, 65-year-olds today will live an average of about 18 to 20 more years.Life expectancy may also influence how you approach your asset allocation. "Working longer allows you to take a bit more risk with your portfolio," Farrell says. According to Farrell's view, "With an income still coming into the household, you have somewhat greater risk capacity than the person who is living solely off their accumulated savings."Remember, your appetite for taking that risk will likely change over time. You may feel market losses more keenly if you're holding a larger portion of your portfolio in stocks versus bonds or if you're approaching the end of your unretirement. Finally, providing yourself as much time as possible to plan for unretirement can help ensure you're financially and emotionally equipped for it when the moment arrives.

Is Unretirement Your Next Career Move? 

The knack to managing work deadlines, jam-packed family schedules and passion projects is a true balancing act.But there is no end to the clever ways people pull it off.Like Julie Schumacher, her husband, Brett Burwell and their 7-year-old daughter of Oak Park, IL, who embark on what they call a "working sabbatical" every summer to appease their personal wanderlust.Julie, a freelance writer, and Brett, a web developer, are both self-employed, and have the flexibility to immerse their family in another culture during summer break. The months-long trips and "working sabbaticals" have taken them to Iceland; Washington, DC; Normandy; San Francisco; New Zealand and Vienna. This year, they're heading to Cape Town, South Africa.<img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/WEB_image25 copy.jpg" alt="Julie Schumacher, her husband, Brett Burwell, and their 7-year-old daughter" class="right_image" />Julie and Brett talk about why their family has made travel a priority, and how they've juggled career and financial decisions to ensure that these big life-enhancing trips happen every year.<h2>Defining a family mission statement</h2>Julie: I've always had a deep desire to see as much of the world as possible: ancient cities, modern marvels, hidden corners and wide vistas. I want to see and do as much as I can, and Brett agrees.The immersion into new cultures, new cuisines, new landscapes and new languages is something we really value. Now, as parents, we're committed to giving our daughter a global education. As a family, you could say that our mission statement is to travel.We set that mission statement into motion a few years ago. A friend offered up his apartment in San Francisco one year. A neighbor reached out about a family in New Zealand looking to do a house swap another year. After the third or fourth time, we started actively pursuing the trips and coming up with a plan and a process to carry them out.Brett: These trips are massive shifts in the routines of our day-to-day lives. But after doing this for a handful of years, we've found that those shifts are a central part of what we enjoy and value so much about our time away. <img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/WEB_image37 copy.jpg" alt="child on parent's shoulder holding rainbow flag" class="right_image" /><h2>Making the sabbatical work</h2>Julie: Thankfully, we've picked up some cost-cutting tricks along the way. For instance, a plane ticket to Cape Town for a weekend is the same cost as going for a month. Because we book longer trips, we have wiggle room as to when we arrive and depart. We can fly out on a Tuesday, if it's cheaper. We can stay an extra day if it saves us extra money.Also, we rent out our house while we're away and use that money to pay for our housing on the road — almost like a one-to-one transfer. We learned that most places become more affordable the longer you stay. It's economical for owners not to have to constantly turn over their place. If you rent for 28 days or more, the cancellation is more severe, but they offer significant discounts, upwards of 30 to 40%.Brett: We've also picked up some tips for traveling with a young child. A well-researched and organized online map can be your best friend while traveling with a kiddo. It's super useful to know where the closest playground, kid-centric tourist spot and ice cream shop is.<h2>Embracing all the constraints</h2>Julie: Our flexible work schedules and freedom to be remote is what enables us to take these amazing trips. Of course, we dream of the day we can take a real, deadline-free sabbatical, and since we're with our daughter, that's its own creative constraint — in the best possible way. We try to keep to her routine and tuck her into bed at a reasonable hour each night.So we have the opportunity to work at night, and we take it. When we're in Cape Town, we'll work from around 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., which is noon to 6 p.m. (Central Standard Time).Dining out is a small thing if you're on a week-long vacation, but a month of eating out quickly adds up. Because we're renting an apartment or house, we buy groceries and cook in. When we go on adventures, we pack a lunch. It's a simple way to save but a smart one.Brett: Going to the grocery store in a foreign country is one of my favorite activities. There's something about sharing such a mundane and universal experience with the locals that provides a lovely sense of place. We definitely try to incorporate local ingredients, recipes and delicacies into our cooking where we can. Being able to bring those recipes or ingredients back is a fun way to carry home little bits of our trip.Julie: Overall, these trips are the best and hardest thing to plan for. It's this incredible experience that we have as a family. My daughter refers to herself as a traveler. She talks about trips that we've taken and gets excited about future travels. This is the best investment we can make in helping her discover a wider world and her place in it.Brett: We come home from the trips feeling recharged, more deeply connected and packed full of wonderful memories. We're a better, stronger, healthier little family as a result.

Balancing Act: Meeting Life and Financial Goals

Everyone&rsquo;s idea of what they want for retirement might look different, but there&rsquo;s one question that&rsquo;s universal: How do I make my vision a reality?
It starts with a smart <a href="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/lam/articles/milestones/retirement/the-new-retirement" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link-source="tiny">financial plan for retirement</a>, of course, but what&rsquo;s also helpful is to bring your aspirations into sharper focus. Experts say that creating a vision board, or a collage of inspirational images and words that represent your retiree goals, can be an effective bridge to get you from here to there.
<img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/v1/media/lifeandmoney/akpublic/storage/retrieveMediaFile/667da871ff2b486104d5f980" alt="Woman pinning a photo of a rural road on a cork board">
<h2>Set your intentions</h2>
A good first step is identifying potential <a title="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifeandmoney.citi.com%2Flam%2Farticles%2Fmilestones%2Fretirement%2Fthe-new-retirement&amp;data=05%7C02%7Claura.house%40publicisoneteam.com%7Cffe982b9b29d4469ed8808dc79d688b0%7Cd52c9ea17c214" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifeandmoney.citi.com%2Flam%2Farticles%2Fmilestones%2Fretirement%2Fthe-new-retirement&amp;data=05%7C02%7Claura.house%40publicisoneteam.com%7Cffe982b9b29d4469ed8808dc79d688b0%7Cd52c9ea17c2147b182a333a74b1f74b8%7C0%7C0%7C638519209523175669%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=iWn7Z0sLxCChJe0KIQFBzx8LXDyiCL3sFstQvSsl0g8%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link-source="tiny">retirement wants and needs</a>, says Zan&eacute; Roebuck, cofounder of the lifestyle planner and journal company The Inspired Stories (theinspiredstories.com). These can be big things, like international travel, and smaller ones, like reading classic novels or getting through a must-watch movie list. You&rsquo;ll want to get specific, Roebuck says. &ldquo;Random, pretty images won&rsquo;t do the trick.&rdquo;
A helpful prompt, according to lifestyle designer and coach Melissa Colleret, is this fill-in-the-blank question: "Wouldn't it be cool if _____?" The focus<s> </s>should be on values and experiences, not material items, she suggests, and you can break it down by thinking of&nbsp;<a title="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifeandmoney.citi.com%2Flam%2Farticles%2Ftravel%2Fdestinations%2Fwhere-to-travel-next-seth-kugel&amp;data=05%7C02%7Claura.house%40publicisoneteam.com%7Cffe982b9b29d4469ed8808dc79d688b0%7Cd5" href="https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifeandmoney.citi.com%2Flam%2Farticles%2Ftravel%2Fdestinations%2Fwhere-to-travel-next-seth-kugel&amp;data=05%7C02%7Claura.house%40publicisoneteam.com%7Cffe982b9b29d4469ed8808dc79d688b0%7Cd52c9ea17c2147b182a333a74b1f74b8%7C0%7C0%7C638519209523186251%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=PubXKusvpsOG6MNickz27Vhz8IXVaXgE8K%2BkaqE6ciw%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-link-source="tiny">experiences you want to have</a>, things you want to learn or ways of contributing to your loved ones and community.
<h2>Get crafty</h2>
If you&rsquo;re creating a physical board rather than a digital one, you&rsquo;ll need a large piece of paper, posterboard or corkboard as the base, magazine pages or<s> </s>downloaded images, scissors, and pins or tape. The idea is to lay out the images and words on the poster like a puzzle.
Look for pictures that represent how you want to feel or qualities you want to possess &mdash; even a photo of someone you admire can work, for example. Add images and words that represent the "big picture," Roebuck says, or goals you want to accomplish in your lifetime. You can focus on
key areas or core values that are important to you, like relationships, health and financial freedom, Colleret says, and consider adding a "vision statement" or a summary of what your board represents. Regularly seeing these inspiring phrases and images, and continuously adding to your vision board, can help keep you motivated on your path to a happy retirement.

Collecting images that represent your ideal retirement lifestyle can help you set and achieve savings goals – here’s how to do it. 

Create a Vision Board for a Picture-Perfect Retirement

When people joke that they will never retire, sometimes there is actually some truth to it. It might be because they truly enjoy their career and want to work as long as possible, but it could also be that, financially, they feel they have no alternative but to keep slogging away. And because you don't want that to be you, you need a smart retirement saving strategy.It's safe to say the days of a traditional retirement (the kind where you would be given a retirement party, and then be supported by a fat pension along with your Social Security check) are long gone. Planning for a successful retirement now is more of a do-it-yourself endeavor.In fact, we often don't choose our retirement date; circumstances, or fate, do. (According to a 2022 report from the Federal Reserve, for example, 45% of recent retirees in 2021 said that health problems, caring for family members and lack of work contributed to their decisions to stop working.)If you're looking for ways to ensure you can stop working down the road and continue to live well, consider these strategies for jumpstarting your retirement plan.<img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/future-of-retirement_body-1_1410234656.jpg" alt="A couple with two men enjoys cooking at home" class="right_image" /><h2 style="margin-bottom: 11px;">Have a conversation (or two) with yourself</h2>Certainly, at some point, you may want to hire a professional to give you guidance, but if you're not there yet, you can look at retirement planning as a DIY project. That means you (or you and a spouse or life partner) may want to play the role of both your own financial advisor and the client, asking and answering some key questions:<ul><li>How do you envision your life when you're retired? Do you have expensive hobbies you'll want to continue, like boating or buying antiques? Or do you imagine your retirement being a happy one if you can afford a decent streaming service?</li><li>Do you hope to live a simple, uncomplicated life in your current home, or do you plan to, say, travel around the world or have a cottage on a beach somewhere?</li><li>Are you hoping to leave a lot of money in the bank for your descendants, or are you fine with spending every dime you earned?</li></ul>It's a lot to think about, notes Andre Jean-Pierre, a financial advisor and founder of Aces Advisors, LLC, in New York City. "The art of financial planning includes managing lifestyles, expectations and emotions."<h2 style="margin-bottom: 11px;">Be an early bird</h2>Simply put, the more time you have to save, the more money you're going to eventually have. A bigger runway to retirement lets you harness the power of compound interest and the stock market. For instance, if at the beginning of the year 2000, you invested $5,000 in the S&P 500, a popular stock market index, by the end of 2022, you'd earn $21,229.37, assuming you reinvested all dividends and did nothing else. If between 2000 and 2022, you were also socking away more money into retirement accounts and interest-bearing savings accounts, you would, of course, have even more. But of course, please remember that past performance is not indicative of future results.<img src="https://www.lifeandmoney.citi.com/rcs/lifeandmoney/storage/public/future-of-retirement_body-2_513943834_0.jpg" alt="A man pushes a woman out on a kayak" class="right_image" /><h2>Pace yourself</h2>One of the best ways to stay on track with your retirement goals is to make sure you're setting realistic amounts of money to put away. "Any plan you establish should be comfortable enough to continue for the long haul," says Jean-Pierre. "This is an underrated truth in retirement savings: Consistency over time trumps speed." That's because, if you're too ambitious in what you put toward retirement and have nothing left over for your bills or vacations or whatever else is important to you, "you will more than likely quit before reaching your goal, he adds. "An important part of all planning is for the plan to be realistically livable."<h2 style="margin-bottom: 11px;">Use every angle</h2>Saving for the future can be a challenge, whether you're living paycheck to paycheck and having enough trouble just paying your bills or you're saving up for a house or have kids in college. We often have to "make tough choices" when it comes to bills, says Rui Yao, a certified financial planner and a professor at the University of Missouri, which is why financial planning is an important step in finding a balance between financing your present and future. And while this may be a do-it-yourself project, it doesn't have to be a do-it-yourself-completely-alone project."On a positive note," says Yao, "U.S. tax laws and often employers incentivize retirement savings by providing tax deductions, tax credits and matching contributions," all of which can give your savings a significant boost.Meanwhile, you can probably do more on your own than you might think. Looking over their budget, most people can find some spots where they can make cuts, Yao points out, and the money they divert from unnecessary expenses into retirement and savings can be surprisingly meaningful. "Small amounts add up," she says. And that's especially true over time. After all, the sooner you get started, the more likely it is that someday when you make a crack about never retiring, you really will be joking.— With additional reporting from Geoff Williams and the Life and Money by Citi editors.