Local Authors Share Secrets to a Successful Retirement

When Marilyn Bushey’s husband was ready to retire, he wanted to live by the water. So, the couple relocated from Dallas to nearby Lake Lewisville.

“We enjoy that very much,” Bushey told Dallas Express. “We’re in a condo complex with other people that are around our age. Our friend group and some of our family members are here.”    

Bushey, 74, is originally from Louisiana but prefers living in Dallas. “It’s because of the vibrancy of the city,” she said. “The pace is quick. It’s fun. It’s exciting. Even though when you retire, the pace is not as quick as it used to be, there’s still plenty that you can do and take advantage of.”    

Bushey authored a book about retirement with Gail McDonald called “Retirement Your Way: The No Stress Roadmap for Designing Your Next Chapter and Loving Your Future.”    

“Almost everyone rejects the word retirement,” co-author McDonald told Dallas Express. “I don’t consider myself retired and I don’t think Marilyn does either. This is a time when we can continue working or not and still be in the next chapter. So, we tend to use the term next chapter rather than retirement. It’s about finding your balance.”   

The average retirement age is 65 for men and 63 for women, according to U.S. Census retirement statistics, and about 28 million people retired in the third quarter of 2020.    

“Some people are more traditional whereas others do a lot of volunteering,” McDonald said in an interview. “Some people will get intensely into learning and going back to school. Others gradually cut back or they boomerang, which involves leaving work, retiring, and then going back to work. Some people totally reinvent themselves by starting a business or becoming a director on a board of directors. They go on to just start a whole new profession.”   

McDonald, 73, chose to live her’ next chapter’ in Dallas because of the opportunities to be athletic like bike riding, hiking, golf, and tennis.

“There are tons of options around volunteering, which is so important,” McDonald said. “Marilyn and I are both personally involved with different charities. You can contribute in whatever way best meets your talent. There are also tons of ways to go back to school or learn. Dallas has a thriving, entrepreneurial world where you can start a new business and there are companies you can go back to work for.”    

Although McDonald lives in Dallas, she and her husband spend summers in California with one set of their grandchildren.

“A lot of people in our age group go where their grandchildren are,” she said. “My husband and I have two daughters and four grandchildren. One set is in Dallas. The other set is in San Jose, California, and we have elected to purchase a vacation home in the Lake Tahoe area to enable ourselves to be closer to the California family. So, for us, it’s very much driven around friends and family and we have a lot of friends in Dallas. We have a lifestyle here that we enjoy.”   

While Dallas and Fort Worth ranked in the bottom half of WalletHub’s 2021 Best Places to Retire at 106 and 100, respectively, there are advantages to choosing to retire in the DFW metroplex area.

“The positives about retiring in Dallas or Fort Worth include the lack of an estate or inheritance tax, age-friendly communities, and the high number of bingo halls per capita,” said Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst.   

Orlando, Florida, landed the top spot, followed by Charleston, South Carolina, Scottsdale, Arizona, Tampa, Florida, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. “Orlando doesn’t have an estate or inheritance tax, and it has the presence of age-friendly communities,” Gonzalez told Dallas Express. “The city has the most fishing facilities and public golf courses per capita.”   

According to Gonzalez, to rank higher on the list of 182 Best Retirement Cities, Dallas and Fort Worth would need to become more affordable and improve the quality of their healthcare services.

“They have high taxes, low air quality, and a low share of the population aged 65 and over at around 10%,” she added. “A large percentage of that elderly population is living in poverty at more than 14% in Dallas, and most of them have poor transit access — 86% in Fort Worth. Both cities have small numbers of nurses, physical therapists, substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors as well as healthcare and home-care facilities per capita.”    

Regardless of the city that retirees choose to live in, Bushey and McDonald advise their readers to consider the following three points when deciding on a lifestyle:    

People have many more lifestyle choices than they expect.  

“We interviewed over 60 people and did quite a bit of research and one of our conclusions was that many people, because of their basic assumptions, are limiting their thinking and their point of view about what the options are at this time of life,” McDonald said. “The busy stuff is really fun in the beginning but as you settle into retirement, you want to choose some things that really support your vision and your purpose in life.”    

The retirement journey is a more emotional time than most people expect.  

“For many people, it’s this fear of losing their identity because we are so attached to our work and there’s another whole emotional component that happens connected to that and connected to other things,” McDonald said. “It’s a big transition in life and for most of us, it’s not clear how we’re going to walk through the transition. It raises fear and concern about the unknown and what will it look like as we move into the stage of life.”    

Eliminate limiting beliefs.

 “What we recommend to people is to step back and let go of your assumptions about what you should or shouldn’t be doing,” McDonald added. “Allow yourself to dream around what your sweet spot is going forward. We present some options others have done to help trigger thoughts about that but the point is we’re each on our own in this journey.”