Most retirement planning emphasizes financial considerations. How can I plan for the way I'll live after I leave work? -- David, Miami, Fla.

Many of us get so caught up in the financial aspects of preparing for retirement that we forget the reason we do all that saving, investing and planning in the first place: to have a meaningful and satisfying post-career life.

So "lifestyle" retirement planning is every bit as important as crunching the numbers, even if it doesn't always get the same attention.

If anything, lifestyle and financial retirement planning complement each other. After all, you can't really know how big a nest egg you'll need without having an idea of how you want to live in retirement. And the kind of life you'll be able to lead will depend in large part on how successful you are at accumulating savings.

It's essential to factor lifestyle considerations into your financial planning, especially in the ten years or so leading up to retirement. Here are four ways to do that:

1. Envision your future. As you enter the home stretch to retirement, you'll need to address big questions like whether to continue living in your current area or move to a new city or town like one of the 25 profiled in MONEY's Best Places to Retire.

But you'll want to focus on small-picture issues too, even down to how you'll actually spend the hours of each day once your work routine no longer provides the structure for your day.

One way to sharpen your vision of the future is to rev up a tool like T. Rowe Price's Ready-2-Retire. Among other things, this tool allows you to pick different retirement activities (travel, pursuing creative interests, going back to school, etc.) and then prioritize them based on how important each is to you.

How I'm easing into retirement

For a deeper dive, you may want to attend one of the growing number of pre-retirement seminars that can help you manage the transition from the work-a-day to retirement. For example, the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement in Asheville, N.C., offers two three-day "Paths to Creative Retirement" workshops each year where participants explore options for retirement and figure out which are the best fit with their goals and values.

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Retirement lifestyle