The Good and Bad things about Being Retired

Being retired for most people takes some getting used to. I would say even when I was forced to retire because of a health condition at age 50 it still took me about 5 years to fully adjust to it. And even then there are further types of adjustments as your health gets better or worse and friends or relatives die along the way or your financial condition changes for whatever the reason.

So, the two biggest things to be concerned about is "Money" and "Health". Basically, if you don't have enough money you don't have enough health to survive retirement and often people who don't have enough money to retire or can't psychologically or physically survive retirement don't survive past about 5 years.

So, if you are a workaholic type of personality you might not survive very long in retirement unless you either start a new business, keep your old business and work part time on it somehow. For example, my wife is only semi-retired because she is running whatever businesses we need to run to keep our finances going so we can send kids to college, pay the taxes on more than one home and travel several times a year to places both inside and every year or so Outside of the U.S. usually by plane. OUR favorite travel destination is either Hawaii or Mt. Shasta for me. Since I live in Northern California on the coast I can visit Mt. Shasta at least 4 to 5 times a year with my truck to go skiing, 4 wheel driving or trailering my motorcycle up to ride all the dirt roads in Siskiyou county or beyond. But, of course the weather has to be warm enough to do this to be happy about it. Otherwise, I pack my skis and ski with one or more friends there during the winters (this year the Ski lifts didn't open) so I haven't really had a good ski yet but hope to go cross country skiing because the snow level
from the highest cam at Mt. Shasta Ski park still shows a lot of snow above about 7000 or 8000 feet on the mountain and even into June people might still ski from 9000 feet to 10,000 feet or above likely on mountaineering metal edged skis. I switched during the 80s away from non-metal edged cross country skis because I slid off some icy slopes and almost died a couple of times. So, even if you are cross country or mountaineering skiing as long as you have  metal edges on your skis you usually can keep from sliding 100 to 500 feet or more to your death. Because if you are above tree line there is nothing to stop you until you might be moving 50 to 70 miles an hour until you hit something if you don't have metal edged skis in really icy conditions. You don't always know when you are going to hit ice because you can't always tell by looking at it and since it isn't groomed by a ski lift this is always a risk for an unwary skier.


So, anyway back to the subject. The best part of being retired for me is the freedom to get up when I want, got to bed when I want (if I don't have a schedule or appointments like doctors, dentists, business meetings, or travel schedules to meet). But, having the freedom to stay up late if I wish, sleep in late and wake up when God wakes me up and often write what he wants me to share with you is a good thing every day I can do it.

Another one of the best things about retirement is spending enough time on the john so you aren't rushed they way you are when forcing yourself to run out the door and get to work and be unhappy with what you are doing and meeting people you usually don't like very much at work. (This is also one of the reasons I chose after 28 to 30 to own businesses rather than work for anyone else so I could set my own hours, days I worked and didn't work etc. and whether I paid myself a salary or only worked profit and loss from the business and didn't pay myself a salary or by the hour anymore.

So, retirement takes a lot of getting used to and in some ways you never stop adapting to it as it changes over the years.

When I first was forced to retire because of a then undiagnosed heart virus it was something very unusual for me at first. My life had always been sort of a struggle for me because of whooping cough and Blunt trauma childhood epilepsy. So, having my struggle sort of end was both a good thing and I also felt like I was falling through space and I was never going to ever hit the ground until I died or something and even then I might not even know it. So, being retired can be sort of unsettling to a person if you are used to a life of struggle (psychologically speaking) of feeling a little angry and put upon by parents, your job, your career, your education etc.

So, when all of a sudden, nothing really is asked of you much you might feel like a person adrift in a boat and it might be a sort of sensory deprivation experiment that you might not survive unless you are a very self directed and creative person like I tend to be.

So, alcohol or drugs problems might increase for people who are workaholics who cannot be alone or have nothing required for them to do almost every day.

Also, for people who are used to someone telling them what to think and what to do all the time this also might be difficult to actually have to come up with stuff all the time for you to do and to think and to experience.

So, the saying "If I don't create it it just isn't going to happen at all!" comes into play like maybe never before in your life.

IF you don't create your retirement as something you actually want to experience then you likely won't be around to experience it. This is the real truth about retirement. And this is too much for some people to be able to survive this for more than 2 to 5 years.

I'm a good person to listen to about this because I'm in my mid 60s and have already been retired since I was 50. So, I actually have stood the test of time and could theoretically last into my 100s. I'm psychologically prepared for that. However, whether I'll physically make it or not is all by God's Grace. So, I'm at peace either way.