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As I finish this article, I’m sitting in an Airbnb in an older community undergoing a renaissance, nestled between a small mountain and my family’s favorite little city. Atop the mountain, my daughter is attending a three-day “get acquainted” gathering at the college perched there, while my wife and I hang out and practice being a couple again.
Across the room, my wife is catching up on her reading. Freedom from home or family duties feels like a vacation to her, even if we’re not running to and fro to catch the sights. Meanwhile, indulging in semi-dedicated writing time foreshadows my vision of retirement. Paired with gardening, my other hobby, I hope writing provides a balance to the busy retirement I expect to experience. Currently, my writing is relegated to early-morning, late -evening or odd stretches of time snatched from my busy schedule.
I say “semi-dedicated” because my wife and I have an itinerary that intermingles short hikes and good food with down time in the Airbnb. That’s an easy mix to throw together, since it’s just a brief walk to strike a trail leading up the mountain, while a cluster of restaurants close by promise a tasty menu. There’s no set schedule, so I’m following my plan to fire up the keyboard when my wife is otherwise occupied
Until recently, retirement planning for my wife and me meant fretting over our investment mix and running the numbers to be certain there’s money to pay the bills after our work days are over for good. But we’ve learned money is not the only scarce resource to work out a plan for. Once we’re satisfied our pile of treasure is high enough to quit working–should we choose to do so–how should we spend our new-found free time?
Our list of possible pursuits is lengthy. For starters, there are my hobbies I mentioned earlier, and I’ve written about my wife’s love of travel. The picture of our retirement lifestyle is still a little fuzzy, however, and we’ve yet to put in the planning to bring to the details into sharper focus. It turns out we’re not alone.
A recent study out of Canada found that while many folks describe retirement goals that include lifestyle activities such as travel, hobbies, community service and volunteering, less than half had done the work of planning for these activities. By contrast, nearly 7/10 participants in the study report engaging in “some financial planning.” This can be significant, since failing to plan for a fulfilling life during retirement leads to feeling unsatisfied, even when people figure they are financially prepared, according to the research.
To be honest, our lives are a bit too busy to feel unsatisfied by a paucity of planning for our retirement lifestyle. We can’t imagine a lack of things to keep us busy, even after we give up the chunk of time presently devoted to work. Still, we think it’s not too early to engage in some field research of our own.
Hence, while our daughter is on top of the mountain making friends and scoping out her new digs, we’re spending our three days at the foot of it, imagining we’re retired and practicing how we might spend our time.
Here’s my question for the retirement veterans among us: How well did you plan your retirement time beforehand, and how is it turning out?
I had a great plan and then life happened, I ended up “retiring” about six years earlier than planned. I’m sure I’ll figure out a way to spend the time, my wife still has a few years to go. Perhaps it’s time to acquire some new vices…
My wife and I are both planners with her taking the clear lead on our travel planning. She always has our travel planned a couple years out, with detailed plans/reservations pretty much always 1 year ahead. In our case, we started seriously discussing how we wanted our retirement to go about 5 years before we retired. The big unknown for us was how much and what kind of travel we’d want to actually do during retirement. With an eye to answering that question, we focused on trying different travel options during annual vacations to figure that out. That approach helped us figure out what we wanted to do before we actually retired, and it helped up better budget for those activities. When we finally retired, other than not going to work, we had pretty much already transitioned some key elements (like travel) into how we wanted to live during the initial go go years of retirement. We simply had more free time and hence could further continue the transition we had started a few years before. We were lucky that we were in a position to do this and I realize a lot of folks aren’t, but it worked for us. We’re both pretty happy with how our retirement is progressing so far.
We did a bit of planning, but our actual retirement bears little resemblance to it. We assumed we would retire and move somewhere else tbd, and that we would then travel some from there, and had done the financial planning to support that. As it turned out, when we decided to retire we still hadn’t decided where to live, and so fell into being nomadic. We certainly would never have planned for that while working, but it’s worked for us.
We considered the possibility of some kind of encore career, but that seems much less likely now.
You and Rick Conner both mention the financial planning that gave you choice in how you spend your time. Seems obvious, but it’s significant.
Ed, best of luck to your daughter.Your post reminds me of the John Lennon quote: “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”. Retirement too! We did almost no detailed planning of our retirement lifestyle. We knew we wanted to spend as much time as possible with our family and friends, and discussed travel and volunteering. We wanted to be active and healthy. Writing was not even a consideration, but has become an important part of my retirement. We now live somewhere I never would have expected, but we are enjoying exploring a new place.
The one constant in our retirement seems to be change. I think we need to be open to change, but make conscious choices about what actions we decide to take. Having adequate financial resources helps us maintain some control of the choices available to us.
Rick, you’ve done a great job of chronicling your retirement activities here on HD, and they’re instructive. I like to have a plan, as detailed as possible, to settle my mind that I have direction. Then, I can relax and feel I have the freedom to vary that plan, knowing that there’s a path to return to. At the moment, I’m trying to lay that path.
Thanks for the well-wishes for my daughter!
Never gave it a thought Ed, everything just happened. A month after I began phased retirement we were off to Russia for three weeks and travel has been a big part of our retirement.
Family and grandchildren and their activities are still many hours a month.
Somehow every day is filled and a day with nothing to do is welcomed. Unfortunately, these days much time is filled with medical visits, but still time for golf, and mahjong for Connie. Lots of reading and in my case writing. I start my days very much as you described. My iPad is my best friend and often window to the world.
Ed, one suggestion. In retirement never delay for the future what goals you may have, places to visit, things to do. We can’t stop time. I used to think the go go, slow go and no go years were things I could avoid, especially the no go years, but I have learned otherwise.
While I don’t accept total no-go yet, we are pretty close. I’m trying to adjust. I miss travel and this year so far we have not even made it to our place on the Cape.
Dick, you enjoy stirring the pot here on HD, but those bold words are thoughtful, and good advice. I’ll try to heed them, and hope we can both accept the inevitable with grace. I’m also hoping you get an opportunity for a trip to the place you love.
I would say the visions we held for retirement are holding steady and turning out well. There’s no way we could have predicted retiring at the start of the pandemic, but it was the hand we were dealt. We’ve maintained our social engagements (maybe even increased), pursued our hobbies, and exercised. We enjoy our alone time (I leave her alone and she leaves me alone). I find there are numerous tasks around the house that need to be addressed, but most of them are not critical and can wait until the time is right (or they become critical). We’ve traveled, volunteered, talked, read, hosted or visited grandkids. The garden is currently full of tomatoes, okra, and peppers. Life is good.
Those are encouraging words, Jeff. It sounds like you’re finding the fun you anticipated. One of the articles I found in my quick search for this piece quoted an older man who had started a new career after forced retirement as a science professor. He said he “didn’t want a dull life,” and was happy working. But I know life needs a balance, and I’m working on honing my leisure skills. I’m thinking the secret for me is to follow Jonathan’s mantra of “First, do what you have to do.”