Thank you for those replying; I really appreciate the wealth of knowledge. However I'm a little confused. I always hear you should retire to something, and not simply because you hate your job or dislike working. That's what I'm trying to do here; have a plan to retire towards something. And now I'm being told having this plan is not a good idea.
Kind of...
But not really.
The advice to retire "to" something, really just means that you won't find happiness just by removing your job from your life. It means that your life still needs to be full in order to be satisfying and happy.
That basically means that you have to focus on building your best life *now* and then continuing it on in retirement.
What it doesn't mean is that you won't be happy if you don't micro manage what your future looks like.
If you already have a rich, full, and happy life now, then you literally don't have to plan anything. Your future will naturally be just as rich, and happy and full. Congratulations, you actually can't avoid it.
If you are dissatisfied with life now, then now is the time to start resolving that, and not waiting until retirement where that dissatisfaction will just be waiting there for you.
I personally dislike the advice that you need to retire "to something" because it makes it sound like you need to have a clear plan of what activities you want to do in your retirement.
Personally, I think that's total nonsense.
I have absolutely no clue what I will do in my retirement, and I'm retiring from my career in a few months. I have notions, I have projects I may pursue, I have tons and tons of options, but I feel absolutely zero need to know what will fill my time for the next decades.
Why? Because I've already retired "to" something in a sense. My life is already full, it's already satisfying, I already trust that whatever I choose to do moving forward that I'll be living my best life.
For me, the saddest future will be one where everything is exactly as I expect it to be, because that will mean that no big exciting surprises come along, and that would be really lame.