New Horizons - A New Way of Thinking

Torchiana’s recently launched New Horizons™ program is the culmination of many years of observation, consulting with soon-to-be retirees, and collaboration with experts on changing trends in retirement thinking. Gone is the notion of retirement meaning abandonment of career or abandonment of active daily living. Rather, our focus with New Horizons is on life planning, and how to make one's mature years the best that they can be. 

Understanding Who You Are, Where You Are

One of the most beneficial aspects of New Horizons is the adaptation of the life planning exercise to the individual. The program puts individuals in touch with who they are with respect to their careers, health and well-being, personal development, family and relationships, and other topics - and not strictly with respect to finances. So as not to overwhelm program participants with the number of factors to consider, the program begins with an assessment that allows participants and their coaches to focus on the aspects of planning that is most important to the person of the person is least knowledgeable about.

The value of the assessment goes well beyond knowing where to start, according to one of Torchiana’s many certified retirement coaches – Laura de Jong. "We have found that it is critical for couples to engage in serious and detailed discussions around their personal and joint goals for the next phase of their lives.” According to a Fidelity Investments survey, 82 percent of the near-retirement-aged couples they polled didn’t even agree on when to retire, whether to continue with part-time employment, or how to spend their new leisure hours. Trying to do a financial assessment is fruitless until those decisions are made and agreed upon. For this reason, Torchiana strongly encourages employers to include spouses when they provide retirement planning benefits to employees.

Not Just a Plan But a Better Approach to Planning

We often think about retirement planning as something people do in their late fifties and early sixties, but that is not always the case. New Horizons became a very valuable planning tool for one of our outplacement candidates in her late forties. A merger caused her to lose her job as a scientist at a bay area bio-tech firm. Once the initial shock of her job loss wore off, she realized that she was in the very fortunate position of being financially able to no longer need to work for a paycheck. In fact, her husband had retired from the working world several years earlier. Like many people who have put their careers in the center of their lives, the real challenge for our client was to create a life with a different focus. Our approach of combining a calibrated assessment with professional consulting allowed her to create a new “portfolio” life which included continuing to keep her scientific credentials current through work with a professional organization, working as a volunteer in a community setting on creating a science program for teens that she was passionate about, spending more time with family and friends, and just generally slowing down, smelling the roses and creating a simpler life. She and her husband also used the New Horizons framework to rethink their relationship and which things they wanted to do together and where their interest diverged. By resisting the urge to just jump into another job, New Horizons helped this client think about her life in a whole new way and create a rewarding future.

The Foundations of New Horizons

We partnered with Dr. Richard Johnson, Ph.D. to develop and deliver the New Horizons program.
Dr. Johnson is a nationally recognized spokesperson in the field of retirement and adult development, former president of the American Association for Adult Development and Aging, and has written and lectured extensively in those fields for two decades. The LifeOptions Profile© that is used as the New Horizons assessment tool was developed based on more than twenty years of retirement research by Dr. Johnson.

To understand more about New Horizons benefits and program options, please contact Mike Frecerro at 925-973-3155.