From Work to What’s Next: Designing a Life You Don’t Want to Retire From challenges the outdated retirement fantasy of endless leisure and offers a radically different approach: designing a next chapter filled with purpose, meaning and intention. Written by husband-and-wife financial advisors Sarah K. Charles and Jim Charles, this book combines decades of professional expertise with raw personal experience to guide readers through one of life’s biggest transitions. Moving beyond traditional retirement planning that focuses solely on numbers, the authors address the emotional, psychological and practical realities of stepping away from work. Learn how to step into something far more fulfilling.
This isn’t your typical retirement book filled with generic checklists and vague platitudes. It’s an honest, warmly written guide that treats readers as whole people, not just portfolios. From navigating identity shifts and health care planning to tax strategy and legacy building, the Charleses+ blend financial wisdom with genuine empathy, plain language and a fierce commitment to transparency. Whether you’re thriving at work but starting to wonder what’s next, actively planning your transition or already adjusting to a new rhythm, this book offers the clarity, tools and confidence to create a life that feels expansive, meaningful and unmistakably your own.
The book covers the following topics:
- What’s Next for my life? Reinventing identity beyond work, understanding the invisible income work provides and the purpose pivot from productivity to contribution.
- How does What’s Next shape the legacy I leave? Health care as the foundation of autonomy, estate planning without land mines (including SECURE Act navigation) and living your legacy now rather than just leaving one later
- Will my money support What’s Next? Spending by design using financial ikigai, dynamic income planning with guardrails and smart tax strategy for the long game
- How do I step into What’s Next? Exposing what traditional financial advice gets wrong, mindset shifts that matter and stage-based (not age-based) playbooks for living What’s Next
Why should people thinking about retirement read this book?
This book is for anyone who senses that retirement should be about more than just “not working” but doesn’t quite know what that “more” looks like. It’s for the executive wondering who she’ll be without the title, the couple discovering they have different visions for what comes next, the person who’s worked hard and saved diligently but feels paralyzed about actually using that money. It’s for those who want to design a life of intention rather than default to someone else’s script.
You should read this book if you’re done with oversimplified advice that ignores the human parts of major life transitions. If you want guidance that respects your intelligence, speaks in plain language and treats your next chapter as something to be designed with care and purpose, this is for you.
Single most important takeaway:
Retirement isn’t just about not working. It’s about living wide awake with meaning, presence and possibility at the center of it all. You’re not stepping away. You’re stepping in.
Meet Sarah K. Charles
Sarah is a financial planner, author and professional myth-buster. She believes money advice should sound like a conversation not a lecture. After two decades in finance and her own hard-won money awakening, she co-founded Sanctuary Financial Planning with her husband, Jim, to help people align money with meaning through clarity and plain language. A sought-after speaker, Sarah blends research, real talk and humor to make the messy psychology of money feel clear, human and deeply empowering. She helps audiences rethink how they live, spend and pursue what matters most.
Reflection is part of change and growth. Check out these journals, so you can write about what’s happening as you consider your next steps.
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