Thoughts on Retirement

It’s NOT All About the Money

Having surfed the internet for a long while now I can confirm most of the content produced in relation to retirement is about getting the finances right before you take the leap. That is an understandable perspective and is justified given the vagaries of the economy over the past couple of decades.

I’m an old-fashioned sort of guy in many ways and like a lot of people of my generation I never got involved in stocks and shares or speculation of any kind. I saved when I could, paid my contributions to my work pension scheme, and kept my fingers crossed. I’m not recommending that as a strategy, but it was how I did it.

At times in the years running up to my anticipated retirement I was so sure I would be strapped for cash that I started stocking up on items I was certain I wouldn’t be able to afford. Hilariously they were all “luxuries” related to how I anticipated I would be spending my time post-retirement. They included art materials, DVDs, books, etc. In other words, the kind of things I was spending my spare cash on anyway!

Thankfully my often-jaundiced view of my financial stability in my third age was extremely pessimistic and I had no need to become a hobby prepper after all. Four years in and I’m still using the stockpile of “essential” items, with no sign of them running out anytime soon. I could point out given inflation and the often-ridiculous price increases in the period since I began to stash stuff away, maybe I was smarter than I gave myself credit for, but it was just a fluke.

So, all that well-meaning financial content just frustrated me when all I wanted was to read about people who headed down the rocky road to retirement ahead of me and, hopefully, survived, if not thrived.

Early Retirement

The fact that I could and did retire early – I took the leap at 60 – was an amazing privilege.

Since I was just an ordinary public servant, working in education management for thirty years or so, I will always be thankful for the pension I accumulated. It’s not riches by any means but it allows me to live without having to deny myself the things I need and allows me to have most of the things I want (even if that’s a dwindling list at my age).

Having said that, early retirement can be a double-edged sword. You’re embarking on a completely different kind of life – I even relocated 300km away from where I lived and worked my whole life, and your time means something completely different too.

When I was casually talking about the anticipated joys of retirement saying it would be the first time in my entire life that I was answerable to nobody (we all like to ignore the fact that our other half has always been our Real Boss), my son chipped in with – “if you don’t count your increasing interaction with medical services and doctors’ orders”. Little did we know at that stage, but that’s a post for a later date.

Another aspect of early retirement I certainly hadn’t contemplated was how I would feel now that I no longer was a contributing member of a society where employment defines you. I hadn’t weighed up the emotional impact of a sudden lack of purpose, when my work had loomed so large for most of my adult life

Perceptions of retirement

When we’re younger and working 60-hour weeks, we all have perceptions of what living the retired life will be like: no morning alarm clock, no being told what to do or where to be, no pressure to perform and chase promotion or distinction, nothing but days of leisure following wherever the mood takes you. A permanent holiday.

This is mostly true, but holidays are great because they’re a break from the norm. They might change though if they were to become the new norm. Psychologically, I believe, what we crave is a change from the routine of life and not another rigid routine comprised of what was the kind of things we did to escape the previous way of day-to-day living, even if it’s self-imposed and filled with leisure activities.

You can see it when you notice the other trope of retirement living – the permanent travel and adventure retirees.

The brave souls who hit the road (or runway) for extended periods of time, to travel the world and experience life as they never knew it. I’ve followed a lot of these, usually couples, on blogs and social media and ultimately the wanderlust wears off, or they end up settling back down to “normal” life, often due to health-related reasons. Resulting in a delayed introduction to the average post-retirement life and they almost never want to continue sharing that life with the world.

I’m not denigrating those who finally get to travel unencumbered by work commitments, more power to them, I’m just pointing out they almost never see their participation in the average retired existence as notable, as having value in and of itself.

Purpose

I’m aware of the role of purpose in how successful post-retirement might be and let’s face it younger people no longer value people for their age and experience – certainly not in western “developed” countries. There was a time when keeping your older relatives around meant you got to benefit from their life experience when difficulties arose – particularly when dealing with illness or parenting. That proximity is no longer needed thanks to the internet knowing everything and living in every pocket or purse. A bit like when so many young and middle-aged people will lose their jobs when AI becomes their equivalent of smart phone redundancy. Maybe that will bring us all back together in a world hug of people without purpose.

On a serious note, lack of purpose is a killer. And finding a new, genuine purpose is not an easy task. Having a purpose in life can mean the difference between fulfilment and struggling to find a reason to get out of bed. Especially for someone who identified so closely with their career that it was almost indistinguishable from their identity – something I sometimes think I succumbed to over time.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that I might not ever find my new purpose because it needs to be a genuine contribution to something positive and not just a distraction to get me through the day/week/month/remainder of my life.

Perception of time

In conversation with my 78-year-old sister recently we both marveled at how once you sink into your third age that the days crawl, but the years fly by.

Less sleep and little demands on your time (and in our case less ability to travel) makes for long days with hours of finding things you’re still capable of doing to fill the time. I know older people who manage to squeeze so much into their days that they run around “doing”, like cheetahs with their tails on fire. I also know a lot of the “doing” is unnecessary gap filling. Doing for the sake of doing. Good for them, but that’s not for me thanks.

Having time available to you is great, but the inevitable restrictions age imposes on your physicality and health, is the deciding factor as to whether that time is a blessing or a curse.

People

I’m an introvert by nature.

That may come as a surprise to people I worked with but it’s true, nonetheless. I always have been, and I always will be. My work required me to appear more comfortable with people than I ever was, and experience married with necessity meant I developed a work persona that was unlike the ‘real’ me.

Specifically, since my job required me to manage people and everything that demands from you, I always valued time alone more than time with others. That’s a generality I know, it doesn’t include time I spent with my family for instance, but it did include time I spent with friends. Unsurprisingly, given time is finite, that resulted in friendships being the things I sacrificed when 24 hours a day just wasn’t enough.

I read somewhere that after your thirties it becomes extremely difficult to make genuine friends, as opposed to gathering acquaintances. Believe me, that’s true. If you don’t want to experience loneliness post-retirement, nurture your relationships with real friends. Of course, being an introvert, the “conditions” that I would need to apply to any new friendships would be so ridiculous that it makes the whole notion pointless. Just as well I can cope with my own company (mostly). And thankfully my better half gets me and doesn’t let my introverted ways hinder her “normal’ gregariousness.

Comparison

Finally, for now, I’ll finish up on the toxicity of comparison. I feel this will be something that future generations will grapple with even more than Boomers or Gen Xers. It’s another form of FOMO I suppose.

The worst thing one can do when we retire is to look at other retirees and start comparing lives. Often our perception of what their life is like is skewed and it’s their life. They travelled a different road to get there, and it will lead them somewhere you may never want to go.

Comparison is poisonous at any age but coupled with any sense of time running out can lead to depression and all sorts of other mental health issues. Be the best version of you you can manage to be.