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Mark Rollins: How to Succeed at Retirement

It sounds contradictory, but retirement isn’t easy.

Mark Rollins wants to smooth the way with the business he and his wife Jody started: Retirement Transformed.

Most people approaching retirement age, Mark notes, focus on financial planning. He and Jody, both of whom retired from corporate positions, believe people need to broaden their scope, to think about life planning.

That planning is critical, Mark points out, because, given longer life expectancy, retirement can be a period of three decades or more.

And, he adds, those decades can be the most meaningful in a person’s life if approached with understanding and preparation.

“This stage of your life can be greater than anything you have done before; we try to get people to realize that,” he says, pointing out it is the time to turn lifetime dreams, like the goal of someday writing a book, into realities.

Still, retirees first have to get through the initial readjustments. Mark notes that retirement means loss in some critical life areas: not only loss of a job, but loss of the sense of purpose, the sense of belonging, the status and the friends who were part of that world.

“You have to reinvent yourself,” he says.

That reinvention begins, Mark explains, by making a personal assessment of key areas of existence: physical wellness, mental wellness, and relationships with friends, family and even life partners, in whose company retirees now finding themselves spending much more time.

“What happens when your wife says I love you but not for lunch,” Jody asks, emphasizing the reassessment of togetherness retirement can bring.

To answer the challenges of retirement, Mark advocates a four-step process: reflect, envision, plan, and act. “That is the road map to success,” Mark says. “You define strengths and change perceptions.”

Mark emphasizes that retirees can discover new focus and create a fresh sense of community through volunteer work. He also points to the benefits of acting as a mentor. Mark contacted the University of Hartford, from which he graduated, to volunteer to mentor students. Jody, who had been an All-American lacrosse player at Drew University, chose to mentor a young student athlete.

Mentoring gives people what Mark feels is one of the great gifts of retirement, what they call wisdom-sharing, the opportunity to pass on a lifetime of experience to a new generation.

Mark first started giving serious consideration to how to retire when he looked at his father, an insurance executive, who had moved to Florida when he stopped working, “Golf, drinks, lunch, a nap and then the same thing the next day,” he recalls of his father’s life.

Mark, now himself retired from the insurance agency that his family had owned for four generations, vowed his own retirement would be different.

But at first it wasn’t. He and Jody travelled, travelled like mad he said, to Europe, to Costa Rica, to Bora Bora in French Polynesia. And that was not all. He said that ate too much, socialized too much and were leading what he described as a sedentary, semi-healthy existence.

“We needed to create a better lifestyle,” he says. Mark searched the Internet for meaningful retirement ideas; he found little and began to create a plan for him and Jody. Soon friends began to ask him for retirement suggestions, which ultimately led to the creation of Retirement Transformed.

Both in house in Essex and the couple’s winter home in Florida, they have studios where they make a free weekly YouTube broadcast. Programs have titles like Making Sure You Create Quality Time, What Are the Challenges of Retiring Before Your Spouse and Downsizing Your Home in Retirement.

In addition, they do retirement and lifestyle suggestions daily on Instagram and there are Retirement Transformed videos available on the company’s Facebook page as well as periodic on-line seminars on retirement techniques.

“We work very hard at it every day. It is very rewarding when you hear from people, from people all over that the program has helped them,” Mark notes.

There is a catch, nonetheless: will helping other people to retire turn Mark back into a full-time worker once again?

Mark insists he will not work more than 30 hours a week, but if he finds that he is putting in a full five-day, 40-hour schedule, there is a Retirement Transformed program available they could turn to for help: Top Fears Holding You Back from Retirement.

For more information about Retirement Transformed, visit facebook.com/groups/retirementtransformed, youtube.com/c/RetirementTransformed, instagram.com/retirementtransformed, or email info@retirementtransformed.com