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Wade Pfau has an interesting article on RetirementResearch.com about the non-financial aspects of retirement and the various stages.
In it he states, “Mid-retirement often reveals the cracks beneath the surface. Six months to a year in, many retirees face the “most dangerous day,” when the novelty wears off and the emptiness of unscheduled time sets in. Without purpose or structure, days can feel repetitive. This is when boredom or unease can set in, sometimes leading to unhealthy patterns.”
Since this never happened to me, I was wondering if others found it a challenge. I never thought of retirement as a novelty, but rather the next phase of a journey anticipated for decades and for most of us unavoidable in any case.
My view is that our personalities don’t change just because we retire. I also think some people create unrealistic expectations for retirement and thus set themselves up for a letdown.
Are these real concerns?
Missing work and perhaps status with it?
Fewer friends because others still work?
Spending 24 hours more or less every day with a spouse or partner?
Finding things to do or feeling the need to do so?
Frankly, I look forward to a little boredom, days with nothing to do, days without a doctors appointment or car repair, or shopping or sometimes even golfing.
Of course, I have been at this retirement thing a long time and according to Pfau we are in the “Late Retirement: Facing Decline and Legacy.” stage.
Now that is depressing. I’d rather fancy “take life one day at a time” and shorten your planning horizon. 😎
Well, I’m about 4.5 months in, so maybe I don’t quite qualify for this discussion yet, but here are a few things I’ve noticed so far.
After 15 years sometimes I still have the urge to be doing something as I used to work 12 hours day or more and was always busy. Other times I am happy to do nothing and those times are more and more frequent.
We’re all different, and I understand how some of the issues on the list can arise for people, but happy to say I’m four years into retirement with no issues or complaints.
I refuse to say I’m retired, but given my limited work hours, any outside observer would say I’ve packed it in. Workwise, anyway. Certainly not lifewise. I sang in competition last weekend (barbershop), act in local theater whenever I can pass an audition, referee adult soccer, deliver for Meals On Wheels, and hit the gym maybe twice a week. Travel has been deferred by a family illness, but we’ll get to that when the time comes.
Yet with all that, I feel a bit lazy, and more than a bit guilty when I’m just camped in front of the TV watching a game. Wonder if I’ll ever get past that.
Of yes you will. No guilt necessary. Know why I am sure? Aging. If you lived in a 55+ community where the average age is about 75 as I do you would see what time does to us all. 😱 heck if you were 82 as I am you would feel normal not guilty.
I began planning for an eventual retirement and knew what I wanted to do in my retirement. I enrolled my spouse in this adventure. Initially she was skeptical but after 10 years of intermittent mini-adventures she was convinced. At one point she acknowledged “this will transform our lives.” It did.
I had what some would describe as an intense life. Running a high-tech business, functioning as the senior systems engineer and a full plate of volunteering, too.
I shifted to a “phased retirement” at age 67 but didn’t fully retire until age 76. I decompressed at a pace I wanted. Then I spent several years dealing with a fatal disease, which is ongoing.
I do miss some aspects of my work, and the volunteering. But there was so much more to do, and so much more available. The only thing we have is time. This summer we went on a 7,000 mile road trip (we’ve totaled 75,000 miles in the time since I began my phased retirement).
I always wanted to go out with a pop, like one of those tungsten light bulbs.
One can make the unreasonable, reasonable. No regrets here.
I still am working, but my schedule permits me to play golf every day, and it’s amazing how many retired guys have their entire lives centered around the club. My buddies are there every day, whether they golf or not, and they seem to be having a pretty good time. The funny thing I’ve seen is when a member leaves the club, people are surprised that I still talk to that person. “You still talk to Rich?” Yeah man, we played golf with this dude every week for three years. Why wouldn’t I keep talking to him? It’s as if there is no life outside the club.
I hope that doesn’t happen to me when I retire.
Retired 5 years ago and I did have some issues around the 6 month mark. Not to the point that lead to unhealthy patterns. On the contrary,I spent a lot more time exercising and hiking. There was a bit of boredom here and there from unscheduled time. One of my surprising realizations was that I missed the social aspect of working. I did have a lot of work friends and a lot of good times at the office. About the 1 year mark, all that had fallen by the wayside and it’s been a breeze since.
It’s a bit sad how people you worked with and perhaps thought of as friends quickly fall by the wayside. I worked with the same people over 40 years and after retiring there was no interest in contact. Some of my business contacts who I mistakenly viewed as casual friends, just stopped answering e-mails. I likely overestimated the relationship.
5 years and 4 months into retirement, and all is going well. I do some part-time work for a funeral home (I can say “yes” or “no” to working), we follow our grandchildren’s activities, I’m in a couple church groups, I do a lot with local and statewide Lions organization, and we are doing quite a bit of traveling. With all that, I do enjoy the occasional “do nothing” day.
Very interesting Dave. My father, in his retirement, did part time work for a friend who owned a funeral home. He would help at the funerals, etc. and get a $50 bill for his few hours of work. He really enjoyed it. Before the War, my Dad was training to be a mortician and so it seemed to me he always felt comfortable around funeral homes. Just after the war ended in Japan, my father arrived as a Chief Pharmacist’s Mate aboard the brand new USS Sanctuary hospital ship. He spent time in Nagasaki, and then primarily helped card for the many POWs that were sent to the Sanctuary for desperately needed care. While on the transit back to the U. S., several souls died on board and rather than bury them at sea, my father was asked to embalm them (as they knew he had the skills). My father said the ship had brand new, never used embalming equipment and he was able to take care of these poor fellows.
Wow, Patrick, your father and my grandfather traveled closely parallel tracks at the end of the war. My grandfather was the medical commander of USAHS Marigold, the first hospital ship in the Pacific and the first to reach Japan after the surrender. Family legend and anecdotal accounts have my grandfather and a couple of sailors loading up two jeeps with medical supplies and racing through the streets of Tokyo to those POW camps — before the Japanese public even knew of the surrender. Fortunately, there were no camp guards remaining.
After several weeks of treating and evacuating POWs, the Marigold remained at anchor in Tokyo until November 1945 on my grandfather’s orders (supported by the brass) to serve as the only available medical facility for Japanese survivors, mostly children and elderly, in the flattened city.
Active, involved and fun and sometimes just quiet and maybe alone. That’s the ticket.
Three years in and still loving retirement. I worked full time until the age of 71, though, so I have waited a long time for this. Two of the things that are keeping me busy:
The funny thing is, as light a commitment as teaching one class 1.5 hours one day a week is, I still look forward to and appreciate my holiday and summer breaks! Just like when I was in school or working full time!
What I’ve enjoyed probably the most about retirement is the absence of work related stress. I always felt a certain amount of stress, and at times a great deal of stress due to the various occupations I had. I’d much rather deal with a little boredom, a day without much to do, than be worried about some serious matter I can’t completely control. I enjoy watching Sunday Night Football and not worrying about Monday. I enjoy not answering to an alarm clock. I enjoy planning travel, especially to places I’ve never been before. So for me, retirement has been a blessing.
It’s been twenty five years this month (well, a few years less if you count part time work) and I have never missed work.
For over fifteen years I replaced work with travel: planning trips, taking trips and writing and talking about trips. Then I spent a year or so dealing with health issues after my rheumatoid arthritis came out of remission. I spent the Covid years home alone with my computers and books, and since I’m an introvert it was fine. After moving to a CCRC two years ago I’m staying busy and making new friends.
I never identified myself with my job. I think it’s a lot more difficult to move on if you do that.
Ditto on not identifying myself with my job.
When I was an active duty officer, I probably did identify myself more with my job. But after 15 years in the corporate world, I’ve mostly gotten over the nostalgia for that time. As for that last job, from which I transitioned to “retired,” definitely not.
I have no idea what most people from that time are doing. I don’t even look at LinkedIn unless I get an email notification that someone wrote me directly.
I agree, for those who do identify themselves with their job, it’s probably very different.
“Work to live, don’t live to work.”
Absolutely. Also, carpe diem.
If 6 months in is mid-retirement I’m concerned.
Otherwise it’s just commonsense isn’t it? There are pitfalls new retirees can fall into like not having thought about what they want to do and assuming they’d pick up hobbies they’d never had interest in before. Or overscheduling themselves with volunteer, family or part time roles. Or even for the first time in their lives having to spend 24/7 with a spouse.
Doesn’t mean everyone will hit these problems but it seems to me to be a very important part of retirement planning. To have self examined enough to know how to deal with such issues. And to have aligned plans with others. No good expecting to retire to 3x golf per week and a day of volunteering pkus long vacations when adult kids have you earmarked for free childcare.
I was tossed to the curb while in the thick of a major house renovation, so my days had structure and much to do. It took months to finish that so I had quite some time to ponder returning to work vs pulling the plug. By the time I decided, there was plenty of interesting living to do without a workplace and a job. Nearly three years in, I’m happy with the decision and never bored. Somehow found balance between alone and together time with my spouse. I don’t know what retirement experts call this, I call it ‘fun’.
I’m a bit more than five years into retirement, and it’s been a blast. If there are cracks in the surface, I skated right over them. 🙂
I still have occasional face-to-face meetups with local former coworkers, and monitor some activities of remote former coworkers via Linked In. When they start talking about work, my eyes glaze over – I’m so done with that part of my life.
This is the first year I’ve experienced both high highs and low lows. Nothing that serious with the lows, but definitely time consuming and worrisome at the time. But, I’m still exercising, pursuing interesting projects, and still volunteering. The reading tutoring program for at-risk kids starts up soon. For some reason, that’s something I look forward to. I feel like it puts an extra skip in my step.
I admire people who volunteer. I just have not been able to make the commitment.
Two years into retirement, I haven’t really struggled much with the concerns you listed. I can’t say I’ve seen the big letdown in my retired friends either. I was a little wary about the work identity issue for myself. Working part-time has been a nice transition for me, but I’m ratcheting down the hours (5 last week) and identify more closely with the fully retired now.
I just found this post and others from the weekly Humble Dollar email recap. I thought you had stopped posting anything since I hadn’t seen anything on X since September 25th. You may have a lot of members missing out on activity if they use X like I do to see new posts.
I still post to X, Facebook and Threads as well.
Interesting. I checked Facebook and the latest article I see there is from August 16th. Would it be possible to share Humble Dollar links for X and Facebook? I appreciate the help.
I just click on the share buttons at the top of this page.
shorten your planning horizon, and don’t buy green bananas!
In my short, unsuccessful stint at becoming a financial advisor, I used to ask people what they planned on doing during retirement. Many people did not exhibit any obvious passion for their retirement plans. I could tell when someone hadn’t given the question much thought, just pulling words out of thin air; travel, fishing….. I wonder, are these folks more likely to experience a let down?
I think the more that your sense of personal identity is associated with your work, the more difficult it is for you to adapt to retirement.
Good point, some identify themselves by the work they do.
I really think it depends on the person. I gave no thought to what I would do. I had no plans. And, thankfully no disappointments or regrets 15 years later.
My opinion, but I think finances play a factor in all of the retirement journey, what you can and cannot do, stress at times, keeping up with friends, etc.
Oh dear. I’m seven months in. I’m obviously heading toward the dreaded day. I better start divesting myself of all the enjoyable and meaningful activities I’ve incorporated into my retirement lifestyle so I’m not too busy when the most dangerous day arrives. I’d hate to be impolite and miss it by being too darn busy!
What? You don’t accept all the expert research on face value? 🤔
I don’t accept what I see in the mirror on face value, never mind academic retirement insight. 😁
I wish people on social media would learn to do that. It seems most people are willing to accept anything they read no matter how absurd it may be.
Strangely enough, yesterday, I found myself telling my 10-year-old grandson to think and use his common sense. This was after he informed me he’d heard on YouTube that NASA had found footballs on Mars.🙄🙄🙄
What, that’s not true?
😂 😂