There is Life After Retirement

The following is a staff writer post from Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, where she covers spending, savings, and the fun stuff along the way.

According to these survey results from Trilogy by Shea Homes, retiring baby boomers are truly enjoying life after retirement. Past generations may have found it difficult to transition from work to time off, but the majority of the boomers surveyed had no such problem:

The majority of boomers say retirement is not an end phase, but rather, a new and exciting chapter of life. 51.37% say “it’s a time for re-invention and self-discovery”, followed by “different than it used to be” (15.14%), “playtime” (8.12%), “over-rated” (5.77%), “an opportunity to give-back” (5.77%), “over-due” (5.38%), “obsolete” (4.32%), and “a chance to work from home” (3.08%).
Boomers are out to make a difference. 23.93% say their church, synagogue or place of worship is their favorite cause, followed closely by environmental and animal causes with 23.59%.
When asked what they collect, they weren’t thinking of trinkets. 53.58% say it’s family memories, followed by recipes (38.68%), Facebook friends (37.39%) and pictures of their grandkids (33.73%).
Boomers look forward to traveling (58.82%), having a balanced lifestyle (50.89%), being more active (46.18%), and having more “me” time (45.94%) in retirement – in that order. Pursuing new interests and hobbies (42.82%), living near people with similar interests (35.94%), having lots of activities to choose from(35.08%), spending less time spent in rush hour(27.34%) ranked next.
When it comes to living a healthy lifestyle, maintaining a mind-body balance, engaging in healthy relationships and continually learning were ranked most important.

Although I personally do not find these results all that surprising, I do think that past generations did not transition as easily. I’ve heard too many stories of depressed retirees that either felt like they lost their purpose or simply couldn’t adjust to the new amount of free time in their daily lives.

I do not think I will have that difficulty. I see retirement as the ultimate goal so I can pursue my hobbies, volunteer even more, and enjoy more time with my friends and family.

Filling in the 50 hours a week that my job sucks away via work and commuting would not be a problem at all. If I was to hazard a guess, at least 5 of those hours would be spent sleeping in to at least 8am. I’d spend another 25 hours on blogging and blog-related activities. The last 15 hours would be given happily to volunteer work for either the Houston SPCA or Meals on Wheels.

Retirement was invented for people like me.

If you are retired, did you find it difficult to accept? If you haven’t retired yet, what category do you think you will fall into? How would you fill your time?