FINDING PURPOSE IN YOUR RETIREMENT
An interview with Kristi Kuhnau and Kris Ehresmann
Discover your Purposeful Retirement
PRESCHOOL AND KINDERGARTEN
Have you ever wondered what your retirement could look like? A life filled with purpose, passion, and fulfillment? SOTV’s annual “Finding Purpose in Your Retirement” event is designed to help you explore just that.
WHY ATTEND?
- Plan for a Secure Future: Learn practical strategies to ensure financial stability in retirement.
- Ignite Your Passion: Discover hidden talents and interests to live a more meaningful life.
- Prioritize Health and Wellness: Explore fitness routines, healthy eating habits, and stress management techniques.
- Strengthen Relationships: Learn how to nurture existing relationships and build new ones.
- Embrace Lifelong Learning: Discover new hobbies, take up courses, or volunteer your time.
- Deepen Your Faith: Explore spiritual growth and how.
WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF PURPOSEFUL RETIREMENT?
KRISTI People who have a purposeful retirement are happier and live longer. They use their passion for what’s important to them together with their gifts and strengths to find this purpose. A purposeful retirement doesn’t just happen. It takes thought, planning and intentional actions.
KRIS I think purposeful retirement is making sure that with the time that you have - when you all of a sudden have more flexibility - you’re doing something that gives you meaning, that serves your faith, and that serves others. And that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and you can’t travel. I think that it’s important that the same thoughtfulness that you gave to planning your career - what am I going to major in in college? Technical skills? Am I going to go [to college]? - all of those things, that you have that same level of thoughtfulness about retirement.
WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR BIGGEST HOPES AND DREAMS SINCE YOU RETIRED?
KRIS My husband and I have done a lot of bicycling with the Purposeful Retirement group. I wanted to make sure that I was biking. I wanted to make sure that I still had something that tickled my brain, and the opportunity that I’ve had with teaching certainly does it. And then travel was a big thing for me - I’m quite obsessed with wanting to travel. Being with my family. All those things were important to me.
TELL ME ABOUT THE FORMAT OF OF THE EVENT, “FINDING PURPOSE IN YOUR RETIREMENT”
KRISTI We’ll start out by giving a little background information and then have a panel of three people that will answer one question each. Our audience appreciates hearing the different stories and perspectives of these panel participants. There will be presentations and time for table discussions with people at our table after each section. There is a skit format for several important topics and An interview with Kristi Kuhnau and Kris Ehresmann then Pastor Julie Wright will share her ideas for furthering your faith in your retirement. The part everybody seems to like uses an activity we call: Social and Activity Portfolio. It helps you see how your life might be balanced (or not) and gives you perspective on what things you might want to focus on when you’re planning for retirement.
AFTER 11 YEARS HOW HAVE YOU SEEN THIS EVENT GROW AND CHANGE? SHOULD SOMEONE ATTEND IF THEY’VE ATTENDED IN THE PAST?
KRISTI If you haven’t been for a couple of years, why not try it again? You will see new people presenting and new ideas shared in new ways and we have new handouts. I think we can always benefit by rethinking how we’re living our lives and especially in retirement, it’s kind of like you’re always reinventing yourself and you’re always reinventing what you want to as time goes by. Getting new ideas and fresh ways to look at [retirement] is important.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE SOMEONE WHO IS APPROACHING RETIREMENT OR SOMEONE WHO IS LOOKING FOR PURPOSE IN THEIR RETIREMENT?
KRISTI Think about what you have liked to do your whole life. What things are you passionate about? Think about how you want to help others, because I think volunteering in any kind of way that you can gives more to yourself than you give to other people, and makes you a happier person. Then take your passions and add them to your gifts and strengths and you will find purpose. All this takes thought and planning, though.
KRIS Make sure that you are cultivating interests in different areas so that, depending on your ability as you age, you can still pursue those things. This is a different phase of life, but you have to be planful. What kind of volunteer activities do you want to do? What kind of physical activities, what kind of lifelong learning? And there’s so many things with the Purposeful Retirement group: pickleball, or bicycling, or the ancestry or Traveling Shepherds. There’s just so many ways that a person can feed those different areas by being engaged with people. And you get to know people and then it’s fun to see them at worship!
WHAT IS ONE THING YOU HOPE ATTENDEES TAKE FROM THIS EVENT?
KRISTI To think ahead and plan because retirement could be as much as a third of your life. Think about all the time you spend planning a vacation. If you can put even a small fraction of that amount of planning into your retirement you will be happier and hopefully you will find purpose in your retirement.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND THIS EVENT?
KRISTI If you’re newer to retirement, it’s maybe more geared to that. Or for [folks already retired] it gets you thinking about a lot of different aspects of your life that you may not have thought about before and how to balance it all.
KRIS If you’re thinking about retirement, I think it would be really useful [to attend]. It gives you things to think about and start planning for and then, once you’ve retired you can go back and think about it again once you have a few things lined up.
ANYTHING YOU WANT TO SHARE ABOUT THE FINDING PURPOSE IN YOUR RETIREMET EVENT OR PURPOSEFUL RETIREMENT IN GENERAL?
KRISTI Come and join! We have a lot of fun and it’s great being part of this community!
KRIS I just really appreciate that Shepherd of the Valley has such a strong support system for people that are going into and in retirement. I was blown away by all that exists, and really grateful for it. I haven’t been retired very long but I really look forward to being able to get involved in some of the other things that are going on with this group because it is a gift. So thank you so much.
WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING ABOUT PURPOSEFUL RETIREMENT’S “FINDING PURPOSE IN YOUR RETIREMENT” EVENT?
“A game changer—it gave me the tools, insights, and expert
suggestions I needed to confidently prepare for this new
chapter of life.”
“I found the information regarding finding activities that fuel
passion rather than doing things because I feel I “should” do
them – very valuable.”
“We have been talking about what we want our retirement to
look like for a while but this gives us a better way to explore
and talk about it.”
“I will evaluate skills/strengths from work and look into how
to use them in retirement.”
“The panelist presentation was very interesting because it
showed how different everyone’s journey has been.”