It’s never too early to start thinking about retirement.

That doesn’t mean fantasizing about how you’ll spend your last 20 or 30 — or more — years playing pickleball or traveling to those exotic places you’ve always dreamed about.

Rather, it means sitting down — preferably with a professional — and developing a strategy that will enable you to maintain the lifestyle you’ve grown accustomed to while working, or at least coming reasonably close.

It also means figuring out how to replace the satisfaction, self-worth and connections that one can develop during a long career or vocation.

In other words, while the dollars and cents certainly are an important part of one’s retirement strategy, there’s an emotional aspect that one must also consider before leaving the workplace. That’s because moving on from that workplace can be downright stressful.

In fact, a survey published by the American Institute of Stress found retirement ranked No. 10 on the list of the top 43 stressful events in one’s life, based on an instrument called the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory.

Cynthia Marshall, who retired earlier this year from the Community College of Beaver County but still does part-time counseling, said it doesn’t matter if you loved your job or hated it, retirement is still a transition “and it’s a major one.”

Marshall began planning for her transition five years before stepping away from her faculty position, doing some postdoctoral work so she could do part-time counseling during retirement.

“I knew I didn’t want to work full time, but I wanted to continue to give back,” she said. “I wanted to have that value. I think if you have had a certain status or value, you have to think about, ‘OK, where am I going to get that feeling’ if you still want that. Where is that going to come from?”

There are other factors to consider as well that don’t fall into the financial bucket, Marshall said.

“Three to five years before retirement, you should begin to either connect with or think about whether you have friends outside the workplace,” she said. “Workplace friendships fade. Do you have a social community that’s unrelated to your workplace? The people you work with — you lose those attachments and they lose those attachments to you.”

While it can be a challenge for some to make meaningful friends late in life, Marshall said it’s perfectly fine to forge relationships with people you might only do one or two types of things with. “We don’t have to make heart-to-heart friends all the time,” she said. “Maybe you only see them when you help out at Meals on Wheels. But we do still have to connect. That’s very important.”

Marshall said it’s also important not to rely too much one particular person — for example, a spouse or life partner — when making the transition to retirement.

“You have to make sure you have a full life and honor your partner, but your partner can’t be the entire reason for your existence,” she said. “That doesn’t work. They’re a partner. And you will be so much more interesting to your partner if you live a full life.”

Part of that means getting involved in something, whether that’s a part-time job or volunteer work or visiting with people you didn’t have the time to see while you were working. One of Marshall’s friends, for example, retired from her position as an economics professor and now works one day a week in a dress shop. Another friend retired and became a Master Gardener.

“You have to find out what your (personal) interests are because your work interest will fade,” she said. “And it’s supposed to fade. That’s part of the deal.”

Even those who make their living dispensing financial advice to those planning for retirement or who have already retired acknowledge the need for retirees to find something meaningful to fill the emotional void that can come with retirement.

Curt D. Knotick, a financial adviser and one of the owners and co-founder of Accurate Solutions Group, said even if he can show someone they are positioned well enough financially to be able to retire, until they’ve figured out “what to do with the 2,000 hours a year they used to work, they’re not ready.”

“It’s that big of a deal,” Knotick said. “You still need structure in your life. Just because you’re retired and can get up at noon and do nothing all day doesn’t mean that you should.”

At the risk of sounding sexist, Knotick said, he’s found that women seem to grasp that aspect better than his male clients.

“Women understand they need to fill eight to 10 hours a day with some purpose, some vision, and they see the need for social interaction and developing a network of people,” he said. “That’s as important as the financial aspect. We’ve seen people struggle with that. And we’ve seen other people excel because they just transition to a different stage of life. They’re no longer working their vocation, but they still have a passion for something, whether it’s volunteer work or spending a lot of time with family that they couldn’t spend time with before.”

Although the emotional considerations certainly play a large part in determining whether one is ready to retire, the financial considerations loom just as large, and in most cases even larger. And there’s a lot that goes into those financial considerations.

Ethan J. Lane of Accurate Solutions Group said his retirement blueprint includes five key areas — income planning, investment planning, tax-efficient strategies, health care planning and legacy planning.

First and foremost, Lane said, it’s important to look at income planning. The main issue is, even if you’ve carved out a comfortable living that has enabled you to put money away for retirement, it’s still quite an adjustment when that weekly or biweekly auto-deposit stops showing up in your checking account.

“People are used to having 30 years of a paycheck and then they retire and need to replace that paycheck from what they have saved,” Lane said. “Folks want to ask, ‘Do I have enough money saved for retirement,’ but they haven’t considered their income number, which we consider more important. That will dictate whether they have saved enough money for retirement.”

Collin Randall, of Bennett Associates Wealth Management, said most of his clients come to him before they’ve decided to retire, so they have a good idea of what they will need to have socked away before making that decision to stop working.

“But to flip the switch from being a saver to being a spender after they’re used to always contributing to watching that nest egg grow is one of the hardest challenges about retiring,” he said.

Joseph Motisi, an associate financial adviser with Armco Credit Union, agreed that it’s a bit of a psychological barrier for people to start living without that paycheck they’ve gotten used to receiving. That’s why it’s so important to work with a financial adviser well before retirement, to carve out the necessary financial strategies — not only when it comes to saving but utilizing what you’ve saved.

“People think a lot about putting money away, but a lot goes into developing a strategy of how to distribute it so you have what you put away for a very long time,” he said.

Essentially, Motisi said, you don’t want to outlive your money.

Howie Pentony, founder and lead adviser of Pentony Capital Management, said the key is to take out no more than the retirement account generates.

“If it generates 10% a year and you’re taking out 4%, you’ll never run out of money,” he said. “That’s what people are afraid of — running out of money.

“You just have to use common sense and limit your withdrawals.”

Pentony said trying to determine if a person has enough money to retire isn’t a complicated process.

“It’s really simple,” he said. “Figure out how much money you need to live on every month, how much you can get to from your Social Security and retirement income, and then we can tell you whether you can retire.”

Telling someone they don’t have enough money to retire is not an easy message to deliver, but Pentony and others have had to make that call.

“You never want to hurt someone’s feelings or let them down,” said Steve Sabo of Executive Financial Group. “But the last thing I want to do is tell people they can retire when they don’t have enough money.

“They’re doing the hard work and saving money for retirement, and it’s my job to put something together that works in retirement. But there are times we have to tell people with what we’re putting together, it just doesn’t make sense to retire at this point. Otherwise, they have to change their lifestyle drastically and they might not have enough money in an emergency.

“It’s a tough conversation, but we feel it’s important, and we need to have it with them. We don’t want to tell people to do something because it will help our business but it’s going to hurt them. We’d rather be truthful with someone.”

In such cases, the person either needs to postpone their retirement or learn to live on less. In the latter case, they might take on a part-time job to supplement their income. In any event, that’s why it’s vital to find someone to discuss the financial ramifications of retirement well before the decision is made to quit working.

Randall said the worst scenario is when someone already has retired and then comes in to get a sense of what their retirement savings can provide. That person might have been living on $100,000 per year while working, but their retirement savings can only provide 70% of that.

“Those are difficult conversations to have,” he said. “But if you come in before you make any decision on retirement, you can play out different scenarios. For example, if you work another four or five years, you can be living on 85% instead of 70%. At least you can give them that knowledge and peace of mind before they make any decision. You can arm them with the knowledge to make that decision.”

Sabo said he and others take all of their interactions with clients very seriously because they all know the stakes are about as high as they can get.

“People’s retirements are in our hands,” he said. “Their lives and fates are in our hands. They have worked hard and it doesn’t matter how much they have. Our job is to make whatever you have work for you and make it last — make sure it’s there when you need it. We have to be careful and make sure you do everything for the client you can. They’re counting on you to be there for them. We have to put our therapist hat on a lot.”

Motisi said while it’s important to meet with a financial adviser to talk about retirement strategy, the key is to keep talking. One visit won’t do the trick because people’s situations, not to mention the economy and the market, aren’t static.

Motisi recommends annual reviews — that way, he can adjust and reconfigure the retirement plan. “If someone doesn’t want to talk and then 20 years later complains about the market, there’s not much I can do,” he said. “But if you meet regularly, you see how the world is and react accordingly. It’s best to have that ongoing relationship, and meeting annually is key. That’s the only way we can do it. I can’t predict what’s going to happen, but I can look at what is happening and adjust the course if needed.”

— Article by Frank Garland, file photos