YOU BET!" I am writing this in my son's basement, on the way to Texas. After 11 years in Vermont, a place I often said you "couldn't pry me out of with a crow bar," we are leaving. We are moving to Huntsville, TX, a town where I was publisher of the newspaper and my wife was student legal advisor at Sam Houston State University? Why?

BLAME IT ON PLANNING. For the past three years we have been meeting with a financial advisor and planning our pre-tirement life and then retirement. I turn 60 this Fall and plan on working full-time until I am 70. Even though I don't have a pension, we have done OK in terms of savings compared with most baby boomers. Assuming a productive next 10 years, we can retire with relative comfort. But, not in Vermont. That's what planning told us.

A BIG PART of that planning has been setting goals around how we wanted to live, what we wanted to do it retirement. The more we looked at those goals and ran the numbers, the worse it looked for Vermont. Without going into all the story, Vermont has become a haven for multi-millionaires. The cost of housing and life in general has sky-rocketed in the 11 years we've been there. Given uncertainties over what health care in particular could cost us over 30 more years of life, Vermont was starting to look like life on the edge, something you don't want when you are past your working years.

SO, AS A PARTof our exit plan, we began setting up options. Going back to our storyboard model, the Issue was retiring in a place that would maximize our finances without compromising a decent lifestyle. Our Project Objectives were to have a plan in place as soon as possible and execute it on schedule. The "Deliverables" for our various discussions were many, but all had to do with making decisions followed by implementation plans.

THE MORE WE talked the more we learned about what we really wanted. For instance, neither of us were excited about "starting over." We also knew that someday skiing would end, so we wanted a year-round climate. We wanted to live in a golf community. That led us back to Hunstville, which had all that, including good friends. Our daughter lives in Colorado so we could sub out New England skiing for three or four trips a season to the Rockies. Cost of living was a huge issue. We learned that in Texas we could own a new house for half to two-thirds what a house would cost in Vermont and many other places. In the end, we could move and have a nice chunk of money left from the sale of our Vermont home to put into retirement investments. So, we made the decision, after careful planning. Everyone should have an "exit plan" and even if you are just out of school and starting life, you should be doing a retirement plan, no matter how far away that seems now. And, the planning techniques you use in business apply in your personal life. They work! We made the decison to list our house in late April and in August, we will be in our new home in Texas. It's been a smooth, hassle-free process, thanks to planning.

IF YOU ARE interested in knowing more about creating a customer/client/patient experience in your organization, or improving your planning and meeting processes, give us a call toll-free at 888.795-0306 or email us at rich@solutionsmap.com.

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A request

We are compiling a "little shop of horrors" in terms of meeting experiences. Will you share your own? What is the worst meeting you ever have been a part of, and why? What's the worst thing YOU ever did in planning or running a meeting that you'd be willing to share? We use these in our teaching, sometimes they spur "tips or hints" for this section and they could even make their way into a book.

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Thanks!