Your retirement won't look like your parents'.

• Position: Your Life

Retirement planning often focuses on the need to save for retirement, how to do so, and how to stretch out your retirement dollars. All are worthy subjects, but what exactly are you retiring to? What will your retirement look like? What is your personal vision for retirement? Is it merely to stop working? Travel? Golf? Whatever your vision, it will have financial consequences, which is why it is important not only to save for retirement, but to know what kind of retirement you are saving for, emphasizes the Financial Planning Association, Denver, Colo.

One thing is almost certain: It won't look like your parents' retirement. Some of the changes are already well known. Tomorrow's retirees will need to depend more on their own savings to fund retirement. Comfortable company pensions will be fewer, and retirees won't be able to depend as much on Social Security. Future retirees also will live longer than their parents in retirement. Years ago, a person retired at 65 and was dead within a few years. A man retiring today at age 65 can expect to live at least another 15.9 years, while the life expectancy of a man retiring in 2020 will be 17.6 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. A woman 65 today can expect to live another 19.5 years, and 20.6 years by 2020. On top of that, many workers retire before age 65, meaning even more years in retirement.

What is less well understood about this increased longevity is its implications for retirement. It is not just the fact that you have to find the money to pay for those additional years; it is how you want to live those years. When jobs were more physical and retirement was brief, the rocking chair probably looked pretty good, but most people don't want to spend 20 or more years sitting in a rocking chair. How will they fill those hours? Hobbies? More travel? Return to school? Volunteer work?

Take hobbies, for example. People wrapped up in their work may not have cultivated hobbies or outside interests during their working years. They may find that...