Slide Into Retirement

Probably the most difficult thing to do in retirement is to allocate your free time. I know that I have discussed this before but I am finding that it is the most important aspect of retirement.

Vanderbilt once said that inherited money is to initiative that cocaine is to morality. But for our purposes we will just use the first part of this little ditty and say 'too much free time is bad for initiative'. For someone that has been working for 40 years in a structured environment and then dropped into an environment that has no structure, that person had better be prepared to make a new life.

I am finding that there is a powerful urge to do nothing every day. I have a lot of things to keep me busy right from the get go but there are certain things that have to come first, like maintenance of the house and cars as well as the tractors for cutting the grass and tending the garden. Not to mention several new projects that I have started but not finished, as well as others that Barb and I have in the planning stage. When will those get done, she asks? hmmm

This all sounds routine and a little bazaar but it gets to be a big deal when it has to be done on a regular basis. When I was working, I did only the bare necessities and everything showed the neglect. Now I have the opportunity to make a difference in every project that I start because I can keep on it until it's done. Sadly it doesn't happen this very often.

We all have these preconceived ideas of how retirement should go, reading a good book in the afternoon and vacations to Mexico or some place that you have always wanted to go. Well that's fine and you should do these things but when you have completed the cruise and read a few books it will start to get old and you will find that you need structure to help get you through the day.

What it is then is you need to be productive. You have to add structure to your life on your own. No one can do it for you. Well, your wife will if she is retired as well because she doesn't want you turning into some kind of blob in front of the TV or worse, getting in her way as she goes through her routine for getting things done.

You have to have some kind of plan each day to get you started and then keep you going through out the day. Every day.

I know that I have posted on this in the past but it is really important for everyone to get a handle on this before they actually get to a point in time where they wake up one day and say, what am I going to do to day?

Plan ahead - years ahead for what you want to do with your self for the next twenty five years. It will save a lot of head scratching and stress. In retirement? Stress? Oh yah - Still I wouldn't give it up to go back to work, maybe if I had to but otherwise, no way - I love my freedom of movement and the challenge of making a new way of living a real life on my own.