Resources For Your Retirement Journey
Preparing for retirement—or navigating it—doesn't have to be something you figure out alone.
This page brings together the tools, exercises, and resources that will help you understand yourself, assess your readiness, and move through this transition with clarity and confidence.
Whether you're months away from retirement, weeks into it, or already struggling in the early months, you'll find practical resources here to support every phase of your journey.
Book 1 - The Workbook
Your Companion to the Book
The Hidden Side of Retirement Workbook is a comprehensive guide filled with assessments, exercises, and day-by-day templates referenced throughout the book. This is where you actually do the work—the self-reflection, the planning,
the honest evaluation of your readiness.
What You'll Find Inside:
Toolkit #1
The Retirement Readiness Assessment Suite
Three powerful assessments that cut through the overthinking and get to the heart of where you actually stand:
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The Three-Minute Gut Check (identity, morning feeling, Sunday night anxiety)
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The Five Pillars of Readiness (Financial, Identity, Social, Purpose, Relationship)
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The Reality Check Questions (daily life, meaning, relationships, flexibility, health)
These assessments focus on getting honest data about where you're strong and where you need to focus before retirement hits.
Toolkit #2
The Retirement Test Drive Manual
Five test drives you can do while still employed to practice retirement and discover what actually works for you:
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The Weekend Test Run (try retirement for two days)
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The Mock Schedule Exercise (test different levels of structure)
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Visualization Exercises (imagine your ideal day, your legacy, your resources)
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The Preretirement Sabbatical (the gold standard—take 2-4 weeks off consecutively)
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The Relationship Stress Test (practice 24/7 togetherness with your spouse)
These exercises show you what sounds good in theory but feels terrible in practice—and what you thought would be hard but actually energizes you.
Toolkit #3
Days 1-31 Survival
Templates
Day-by-day guidance for the first month of retirement—the shock and awe phase. Each day has a specific protocol for what to do, what to expect, and how to survive the emotional chaos that hits when you stop working.
Toolkit #4
Days 31-60 Survival
Templates
Week-by-week guidance for Month Two, when the honeymoon is completely over, and reality hits hard. This is when most people struggle the most. You'll find protocols for the panic, the boredom, the identity wobble, and the relationship reality checks.
Toolkit #5
Days 61-90 Survival
Templates
The final month of the critical first 90 days. Watch as integration begins, purpose appears (in lowercase), and confidence starts to emerge. Includes emergency day templates for panic days, depression days, rage days, and numb days.
The Role Audit
Exercise
A powerful exercise for discovering who you are beyond your job title. List 20 roles you play in life, circle the ones that continue into retirement, and you've identified your core identity—the parts that no employer can eliminate with a phone call.
How to Use This Workbook
This is a workbook you actively engage with. Write in it. Mark it up. Be honest. Use it before retirement if you're planning ahead, or use it now if you're already retired and struggling. The assessments and exercises work whether you're preparing or recovering.
Real Talk with Cheryl
The Blog
I write once a month about what retirement is actually like, not the Pinterest version, but the real version. The identity questions, the friendship shifts, the purpose puzzle, the marriage adjustments. The things nobody wants to talk about but everyone's experiencing.
No scripts, no filters, no pretending everything's fine. Just honest words from a woman who's been through it.