Life Planning: HOW TO PREPARE FOR ACTIVE AGEING AND REALIZE YOUR LIFE DREAMS(Revised and Expanded Edition), A Handbook for the Over-50s - Paperback

In 2023, The ASEM Global Ageing Center has developed the first edition of this Handbook and an Activity Card Set, which it hopes will introduce the theory and practice of Life Planning to older people, encouraging them to understand how it can help them lead a fulfilling life in older age.

The Center believes that practicing Life Planning for the second half of life may make older people's lives more positive, and challenge negative attitudes. Hence the Center has developed these educational materials to encourage the over-50s to plan for the rest of their lives and have the possibility of a more fulfilling and satisfying future.

Educating the over-50s in Life Planning not only provides them a means to protect their own human rights, but it is also an individual and societal strategy for dealing with the problems associated with ageing that are among the outstanding phenomena of the 21st century. Life Planning is an individual measure in the sense that it may assist people over 50 to lead the second half of life in a more satisfactory way.

Life Planning is also a societal measure in the sense that society may institutionalize Life Planning education through official and unofficial educational institutes, to enable the members of society (the citizens themselves) to plan the second half of their lives as systematically as possible. Since population ageing is expected to result in high social costs, the institutionalization of education in Life Planning is potentially one way to reduce these social costs.

Life Planning is relevant for all ages, in as much as it can help guide social policy and provide related services. However, it is more particularly needed by those in middle age or the over-50s, rather than by adolescents and young adults.

This Handbook is the revised and expanded edition of the first edition published in 2023. This Handbook is intended for use by instructors who provide information and support on retirement planning, retirement preparation, re-employment preparation after retirement, life planning, and life-long education (adult education), to enable them successfully to teach Life Planning through better understanding of the concept.

Instructors may need to re-phrase the terminology used in this Handbook in accordance with the age and level of education of participants, so they may understand the concepts more easily. The Handbook aims to enable participants in Life Planning education schemes to understand the concept well, realize the importance of planning for a fulfilling older age, make their life plans, and then practice them.