I do Kiwanis. But there are plenty of others out there. It gets you out of the house and involved with people. And thinking about how you can contribute. I think keeping active is the key.
At the local community college during in-service one year they had a session where they had a bunch of retired employees come back and share a bit about their retirement experience and things to do to prepare.
The take-aways were:
Retirement is hard on those who have no interests unrelated to work. Those are the people who tend to spend time at home doing nothing other than driving their spouse crazy (if the spouse is also retired or not working).
Retirement often doesn’t have to be nothing to suddenly all; some people get part-time jobs or step down to a part-time position to transition into retirement.
Developing hobbies or interests not tied directly to work helps. Especially develop some interest that gets you out of the house on occasion for social contact.
For the first few years of my retirement I was active in my church, in its VBS in the summer as well as filling the seat pockets (contact cards, offering envelopes, etc.), serving coffee at one of the rest areas on I-5, and volunteer at a couple of food banks. Covid had put a crimp on my activities for a while, and now my wife and I volunteer at another food bank three days a week and most recently we have planted a small vegetable garden in our back yard, so that will also keep us busy.
I have never paid much attention to so-called experts who claim to know everything about everyone and how they should live. I’ve always done what worked for me – not what some “expert” said I should do.
I’ve been retired for over 20 years. So has my wife. Our retirement was caused by some of life’s unexpected events, but we’ve done fine, anyway. We still love where we live and we still love each other. In other words, we’re still basically happy.
Does life stay all peachy and wonderful all the time in retirement? No – of course not. But you learn to cope and deal and do what you can, just as you did before you retired.
Some days I stay really busy and volunteer.
Some days I just stay home and loll around.
Some days I work in the community garden for hours.
Some days I wake up really early and other days I don’t.
Some days I dehydrate or can food and some days I make bread.
Some days I declutter to donate so that my mind and living space is more clear.
The great thing is that most days I don’t have an appointment
or need an alarm clock and that is real freedom. I love where
I live and am so glad I downsized. A positive thing about the
“shutdown” is that I learned to can, dehydrate, start a garden
and make bread. I may not have done that had things remained normal.
I am looking to make a silver lining out of a sow’s ear.
I don’t think I’ve been in any of those stages. I “sort of retired” 20 years ago when I was laid off and found a part time job I liked. Then worked a part time seasonal job for several years until Covid when I decided I didn’t want to work from home either. Spent about 15 years doing marathons and half marathons. Spent the last 7ish years of widowhood on deferred maintenance of the house. Still some to go on that, but mostly working on the landscaping this year. No more lawn, converting to native plants to support native pollinators. Volunteer at the local library a couple of hours a week. Have a pretty solid group of friends that I spend time with. Have enough income to do what I want and enough retirement savings that my money guy says I won’t run out of money in my lifetime. Life is good and I’m probably as happy as I’ve ever been.
Your life sounds fantastic. So happy you won’t run out of money.
Changing the landscaping to pollinating plants sounds great.
I have a guy than mows my front and back lawns twice a month but
I like the idea of replanting to get rid of the grass.
Changing the landscaping to pollinating plants sounds great.
This is probably my most important activity right now and a long term project. I converted the parking strip to natives a couple of years ago. Dumped arborist wood chips on the front and back yards last fall to decompose over the winter. Looked for some help with hardscaping in the early spring and ended up doing it myself when the responses seemed to be the “take advantage of the old lady” verity. Put in a walk way along the driveway. Broke up an old concrete walkway on the other side of the yard. Dug out a rain garden and have someone coming Monday to disconnect the downspouts on the front of the house.About half the yard is now planted and I will get a lot more in the ground next week. It still looks messy right now, but should be glorious by next spring.
Sorry. I wasn’t clear. I dug out part of the yard to form a rain garden. So, smallish ditches to direct water from the downspouts and a depression to collect the water where it can soak into the ground rather than going in to the sewer systems. I’ll get a break on the city water/sewage bill for doing so.
We (DH and I) are the lucky ones, and wish everyone could feel as good about their retirement.
We live in a retirement community (about 40 minutes from grandchildren), with health care attached if and when we need it.
We have a 2.5 bedroom 2 bath apartment with large balcony for plants, plus our own small garden bed.(Full of tomato plants promising a big harvest)
Three restaurants downstairs
Two swimming pools
Bocce, miniature golf, fitness room
Cinema downstairs with daily movies
800 other people on the property for new friends, dinner friends, exercise friends etc etc
I have my:
Chinese class
Water aerobics class
Choir
Chinese choir (when we have it)
Book Club
Readers’ Theater
Sherlock Holmes Club
Volunteer teaching English as second language to employees
Tender Loving Care Coordinator (Helping other residents with mail, shopping etc)
Song writing for any occasion (official or not)
Walkie Talkies ( early morning 1-2 miles with friends)
Time to be with my husband, especially over PBS News, Jeopardy, cosy evenings…
And I can lounge in bed whenever I want…
DH is now Chair of the Resident Council as well as still pro bono for some former clients in the real world so his mind is still very sharp…
I have two friends in my former community and both husbands are scared of retiring and being “bored”…Their wives are sort of dreading the new lifestyle…
I feel very guilty being so lucky at a time when homelessness here, and war in Ukraine, mean others are so unhappy…so I do try to help in small ways. Our community raised $107,000 for children in Ukraine and so far not all the money has been counted…
May others on this board enjoy life as much as we do…
It is a small bedroom, so advertised as a 3-bedroom apartment, but that room didn’t have built in closets when we arrived ( we were first owners) and I believe without closets it is NOT always considered a bedroom…maybe I should have said “den”, not 1/2 bedroom.
We had it made into DH’s office with lots of built-in desk space and many cabinets, file drawers etc, but it can still hold a twin bed for a grandson as well…
Hope that muddled explanation clarifies the arrangement for you, Howie!
“It is a small bedroom, so advertised as a 3-bedroom apartment, but that room didn’t have built in closets when we arrived ( we were first owners) and I believe without closets it is NOT always considered a bedroom…”
To be a legal ‘bedroom’ it must have an exit other than the entry into the room - such as a window at least 2x2 feet (Or your local code).
How do they do those mini-apartments - I think they are popular in Japan - where there is barely room to lay down?
Japan very likely has different laws than you would find in the US as it pertains to lodging.
I never recognized that there were “illegal” bedrooms.
Yep. Most people would never encounter such but it was a common enough issue in college towns for off campus lodging. We had to have an annual inspection for our frat house and there was one room that we were no longer allowed to rent because it lacked a second way out during a fire.
“And here this is why I thought we bought bureaus, shiftarobes, bachelor’s stands, and such.”
200-300 years ago, most ‘bedrooms’ didn’t have closets. Yeah, you’d have a piece of furniture or two for clothes…large chests of draws, shelves for clothes, a metal coat rack/hanger…
There were loads of houses built up to the 1920s and beyond.
some had closets added later…
Now, code in most places requires a closet for a room to be called a ‘bedroom’ in most places - and you need a window or other exit…
My mom used to be a realtor (Michigan) when visiting us once she went through a newly built house nearby. Builder said “this is my new 3 bedroom 2 bath model.” Mom walked through and came back and said “It’s a two bedroom. That room doesn’t have a closet, ergo it’s not legally a bedroom “. Builder ran in and was acting panicked as she left…
