Coaching for the retirement you actually want

Retirement coaching is structured, guided support for the personal side of leaving a long career. Where a financial plan answers whether the money will last, retirement coaching answers what the time is for: who you are without a job title, what motivates you now, and how your days will actually be spent.

Rarified Life approaches retirement coaching with a single idea: ditch retirement and try Preferment instead. The word means advancement. Rather than treating the end of a career as an ending, the Preferment framework treats it as a step up, and works through it in a fixed sequence of six modules with homework between each session. Read the full guide to retirement coaching.

The numbers below come from published sources and describe retirement in general, not Rarified Life clients.

• 28% of retirees experience depression, with a 40% spike in self-reported depression during the first years after retiring, according to a meta-analysis cited by Life Coaching Certification.
• Retirement coaching demand has seen a 30% uptick as baby boomers retire, with coaches addressing identity, purpose and relationships, not just money (same source).
• Just 14% of Americans were confident in their ability to retire comfortably, per EBRI data cited in a Financial Planning Association journal article (Helman, Copeland, and VanDerhei 2012).

The Rarified Life course itself is defined by its own fixed figures: 8 weeks, 8 live sessions with Anne van Leynseele, and 6 modules. See all sourced retirement statistics.

Every Rarified Life participant moves through the same six modules in order. Each one builds on the last, and the homework built into the Preferment book is done between sessions.

1. 1

   Introduction

   Where you are right now, and why the old model of retirement was never built for someone like you.

2. 2

   Identity

   Separating who you are from what you did for a living.

3. 3

   Motivation

   Finding what actually moves you, now that a paycheck is not the reason.

4. 4

   Alignment

   Matching your values and strengths to how you will actually spend your days.

5. 5

   Accountability

   Building the structure that turns intention into a lived routine.

6. 6

   Launch

   Naming your mission for this next chapter, and stepping into it.

Explore the Preferment framework in depth

You need a financial planner for money decisions and a retirement coach for life decisions. Most people planning a good retirement benefit from both, at different times.

Compare a retirement coach, financial planner, therapist and going it alone

A retirement life coach focuses on your whole life after work: purpose, energy, health habits, relationships and identity. At Rarified Life that work happens in the Preferment live course, which is built for driven people who spent decades building a career and a reputation and are done treating retirement like an ending.

You do not need a five-year plan to start. The course includes eight weekly live sessions with Anne, the Preferment book as your companion text and workbook, and homework that turns reading into a plan. See what the 8-week course includes or read how to choose a retirement life coach.

Anne van Leynseele founded Rarified Life and wrote Preferment, the book the course is built on. She built and sold a production company in Los Angeles film and television, advised Fortune 100 companies on digital strategy across three continents, served as an Attorney Advisor in the Obama Administration, and helped write the legal framework for recreational cannabis in Washington State. Today she co-owns an award-winning chocolate farm on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Read more about Rarified Life and Anne