Live 8-week courseLast updated: November 2026Published by Rarified Life
Preferment is a retirement coaching course from Rarified Life: eight weekly live sessions with author Anne van Leynseele that help high achievers redesign life after work around values, purpose, and meaningful activity.
Rarified Life built Preferment as an active alternative to conventional retirement. The course works through the Preferment book chapter by chapter across six modules, from Identity to Launch, with homework between sessions. The best way in is to understand the framework first, then look at the course itself.
Start by understanding the idea behind the course before you look at the schedule or the price. A retirement coaching course only helps if its way of thinking fits you, so this site walks you through Preferment in three steps.
Learn why Rarified Life treats life after work as an ascension rather than an ending, and what it means to build days around values and purpose.
See how Introduction, Identity, Motivation, Alignment, Accountability, and Launch build on one another.
Read how the weekly live sessions, the book, and the homework fit together, and what the published price includes.
Definition
Preferment is a research-informed framework and platform from Rarified Life that helps people, especially high achievers approaching or in retirement, redesign life after work around personal values, purpose, and meaningful activities. Rather than treating retirement as the end of a career, Preferment treats it as a deliberate next chapter. Anne van Leynseele, who wrote the book the framework is built on, teaches it through a live course.
By the numbers
These are the figures Rarified Life publishes on its course listing.
Price: the listing shows $6,000.00, and its investment section states $3,000. See Preferment course price and what is included.
Preferment is an 8 week retirement course built around one live session each week with Anne van Leynseele. Each session works through a chapter of her book, Preferment, which doubles as the course workbook. Between sessions you complete the homework built into the book: real exercises that turn the week's idea into decisions about your own days.
Rarified Life describes the course as a structured path rather than a self-help pep talk, with each week building on the last. You do not need a five-year plan to begin. The course opens with where you are right now and ends with naming your mission for the next chapter.
See how the 8 week retirement course works or read about each of the six modules.
"I spent a few years wandering around like a goldfish in a bowl. Preferment changed all that! I thought work defined me, but I discovered I am so much more."
Preferment fits people who want a structured, live path through the purpose side of retirement. Per session coaching suits people who want one-to-one attention, and a financial planner suits money questions. The table compares all three on the same criteria.
| Criterion | Preferment course | Per-session retirement coach | Financial planner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main focus | Identity, motivation, values, daily structure, and a named mission | Identity, purpose, and relationships, not just money (published overview) | Savings, income, and investments |
| Format | 8 weekly live sessions, a book, and homework | Individual sessions | Meetings with a planner |
| Structure | Fixed six-module curriculum | Varies by coach | Varies by firm |
| Published price | $6,000.00 listed; $3,000 stated as the investment | $150 to $300 per session (published overview) | Not covered in the facts used on this site |
Coaching rates and focus from Retirement Coaching: An Emerging Niche for 2026.
A retirement life coach course usually means training to become a coach yourself. Preferment is different: it is a course for your own retirement, taught by the author of the framework. If you want to coach others, a certification program is the right category; if you want to redesign your own life after work, Preferment is built for that.
Anne van Leynseele teaches every live session. She built and sold a production company in Los Angeles film and television, advised Fortune 100 companies on digital strategy across three continents, served as an Attorney Advisor in the Obama Administration, and helped write the legal framework for recreational cannabis in Washington State.
Today she co-owns an award-winning chocolate farm on the Big Island of Hawaii and wrote the book the course is built on. Rarified Life sums it up this way: she has lived four reinventions and shows you how to run your own.
"Growth is a journey inward as much as forward, where every step reveals a part of you that was always meant to shine."
We compared Preferment with per-session coaching and financial planning on four criteria: main focus, format, structure, and published price. Preferment details come from the Rarified Life course listing. Coaching rates come from a published industry overview, cited above. Where we had no supplied figure, the table says so rather than estimating.
Published by Rarified Life, the business behind Preferment. Rarified Life wrote this comparison, and it is not an independent review.
Preferment is Rarified Life's research-informed framework for redesigning life after work around your personal values, purpose, and meaningful activities. It is presented as an active alternative to conventional retirement, aimed especially at high achievers who are approaching retirement or already in it. The framework is taught through a book of the same name and a live 8-week course.
More in the FAQ: What is Preferment?The Preferment course runs for eight weeks, with one live session each week, for eight live sessions in total, each led by Anne van Leynseele. Between sessions, participants complete homework exercises built into the Preferment book, so the work continues between calls rather than stopping when a session ends.
More in the FAQ: How long is the Preferment course?The course listing on rarifiedlife.com shows a price of $6,000.00, while the investment section of the same page states $3,000 for the eight weekly live sessions, the book, and the guided homework. Because the two figures differ, confirm the current price on the listing before you enroll. This site reports both exactly as published.
More in the FAQ: How much does the Preferment course cost?Preferment is built for driven people and high achievers who are approaching retirement or already in it, especially those whose identity has been closely tied to their work. Rarified Life's free presentation is aimed at accomplished women in their 50s and 60s, while the course page describes driven people who are done treating retirement like an ending.
More in the FAQ: Who is the Preferment course for?No. Preferment focuses on the non-financial side of retirement: identity, motivation, values, daily structure, and purpose. Rarified Life's own materials argue that a meeting with a financial planner alone does not prepare you for how you will actually spend your days. Many people will want Preferment alongside, not instead of, advice from a licensed financial professional.
More in the FAQ: Is Preferment financial planning?A certification trains you to coach other people, while Preferment is a course for your own transition. For example, the Retirement Life Coach Certification on retirementlifeplan.com is listed at $1,250 and approved by the International Coaching Federation for 15 hours of continuing coach education. Preferment carries no coaching credential.
More in the FAQ: How is Preferment different from a retirement life coach certification?