What are you going to do with the rest of your life? The kids are gone. The house is quiet. And at the office, the new boss is younger than you are! Someone mentions the R-word - retirement ... But how? How do you master the art of re-invention?

Abigail Trafford, My Time, Making the Most of the Bonus Decades after Fifty

The R-word, retirement: Are you ready? Put the question to people of a certain age and the majority will say "Yes," although often with a qualifier.

"Well, I'd have to do some kind of work," is the way a friend put it recently. "I need to be involved. I can't imagine sitting around."

This rather traditional view of retirement is aptly portrayed in the 2002 movie, About Schmidt. In the early scenes of this dark comedy, a hapless, 60-something Warren Schmidt stoically walks away from his own retirement party to sit alone at the bar and silently lament the end of his career. His identity is so tied up in his work that he can't imagine life in the Winnebago parked in his driveway.

While some people continue to see retirement as a tragic ending, more often than not today it's met with excitement.

"I feel liberated," says Gail Robinson Gow, who in just a few weeks will sign off on a lengthy career and sign on to a life of travel, community service, artistic endeavours and Canadian's favourite pastime, golfing.

Retirement dreams are often about independence and freedom more than they are about work, says Hamilton retirement coach, Gordon Neufeld.

"People like to work," he says. "It's the structure of their work they don't like. It's the pressure and their inability to self-manage their time around work. That's a key thing.

"As one person said, 'I've been working 35 years, do I have to ask if I can take a Friday afternoon off?' "

Robinson Gow admits that she may continue to work down the road, but in an entirely different way. "I'd like to devise a way I could travel and earn some money to support the habit," she says.

"Maybe teaching English as a second language, something completely unlike what I do."

What Robinson Gow does now is accounting, specializing in corporate taxation. And she's something of a rarity in today's workplace: an employee who can credit more than 38 years of service to the same company, a major multinational firm.

At 58, a few years shy of the median retirement age of 61, she is also an anomaly in her own workplace. Her employer has been growing exponentially, she says, and at the same time downsizing its people.

"I'd be shocked if there is anyone working in my company who is 58, they have downsized so much."

Nevertheless, the decision to retire was "emotional and traumatic," Robinson Gow says. "I do feel married to my job. Divorcing a company after than long is a hard thing to do."

Key to her decision, she adds, was its financial viability.

"Even though I'm a financial person, I honestly had no idea if I could afford to retire," she confides. "I'd had the odd financial projection, but I'd put it in a drawer to look at later. My job was so busy and stressed that I seldom had time for myself."

Thinking about tomorrow is particularly difficult when you're working 80 hours a week, observers Neufeld, the driving force behind a retirement planning program, The Best-Half (http://www.best-half.com).

And while financial uncertainty is generally top of mind, he says, there are other considerations, as well.

"Many people are really lost when it comes to figuring out what they are going to do with themselves after they leave full-time work and a career," Neufeld observes. "They don't often plan and simply hope that circumstances or serendipity will make it all work somehow."

To retire successfully, he believes, people often need to re-invent themselves.

Abigail Trafford calls it the ''art of re-invention" in her book, My Time (Basic Books), and suggests that it begins inside your head as you begin to consider the two or three decades you have left on planet Earth and try to decide what you really want to do with them.

Neufeld says the re-invention process evolves through progressive steps, starting with an assessment of the various possibilities open to you. It's formalized by a decision about the sort of legacy you'd like to leave.

And it's executed by planning - not just financial planning but lifestyle planning, as well. The final ingredient, he says, is a personal commitment to take action to make your plans a reality.

In other words, winding down a career can require as much self-reflection, planning and preparation as getting one off the ground.

Does following a step-by-step process like this alleviate the stress of retirement?

Not entirely, says Robinson Gow. "I know what I want to do and I know I can afford it. It's just where I'm going to get the money from and when. That's what's uncertain. I don't like uncertainty and I guess that's why that's on my mind.

"Not a bad kind of stress to have," she acknowledges.

Tip of the week: The stages of retirement

There are five stages of retirement, according to a study conducted for Ameriprise Financial Inc.:

Stage one: Imagination (up to 15 years before actual retirement).
Stage two: Anticipation (about 5 years prior to retirement).
Stage three: Liberation (retirement day and the following year).
Stage four: Reorientation (2-15 years after retirement).
Stage five: Reconciliation (16 or more years after retirement).
WWW.AMERIPRISE.COM/AMP/GLOBAL/SITELETS/DREAMBOOK/STUDY.ASP