Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Retirement Version 4.0

2013-06-15T14:29:30-07:00

(Photo details: Bainbridge Island, Washington-June 2013)

I spent most of my working years hatching a plan to exit from the workplace all together. In 2000, I got so impatient with the plan that I swerved for the turnoff to an earlier retirement, even though that meant it could only be a part-time retirement at that point. I figured semi-retirement immediately trumped full-time retirement someday off in the future.

Retirement Version 1.0

Luckily, my employer was receptive to my plan. We hired a new, full-time controller and I stepped aside to a part-time position handling just the tax and employee benefits portion of my former job.

But semi-retirement didn’t resemble real retirement as much as I had hoped. For one thing, Doug wasn’t retired yet and I was kind of lonely on my days off. The way I had structured it was to take Mondays and Wednesdays off so I would seldom have to work two days in a row. That way almost every day would seem like a Friday. Instead it kind of felt like every non-work day was a Sunday, if you know what I mean.

For the most part, I used my Mondays and Wednesdays to take care of errands so that Doug and I could just enjoy the weekends together. While I did enjoy a slightly better work-life balance, I didn’t really have a lot more time to delve into new interests. And as it turned out, I felt compelled to keep work projects on track on my days “off,” so I didn’t really feel retired even on the days I wasn’t at the office.

The final nail in my semi-retirement happened about a year later when the company that Doug worked for went belly up. Which meant of a sudden he was retired, or unemployed as we thought at the time. But we couldn’t afford for both of us to be retired yet, so I asked my employer if I could come back full-time. Not only did they jump at the request, they offered me the CFO position, which I held for six years until I was able to retire for real.

Retirement Version 2.0

On March 1, 2008, I re-entered retirement, but this time it was all retirement all the time. No loneliness this time because I was joining Doug’s retirement. No pushing work projects along because I was no longer connected to a job, not even part-time. And now errands were something to procrastinate, not something to accomplish with any urgency.

Retirement 2.0 felt like I had all the time in the world. As a consequence, I struggled with getting anything done at all. Because with all the time in the world, you might as well get around to it tomorrow, whatever it happens to be. I was surprised that my house and garden were not in the shape I thought they should be in now that I didn’t have a job to distract me from those tasks. I was also surprised that I wasn’t in better shape myself. Basically I just spent more time doing the things I was already squeezing in while I was working, it just took me longer to get those things done. You know, since there’s no reason to hurry anymore.

While my house, garden, and body were in no better shape than when I was working, Retirement Version 2.0 was great for travel. We joined friends on their vacations, took advantage of last-minute travel deals, and used our house as currency for home-exchange vacations. We were on the road more than we were at home those first few years of full-time retirement.

Just as we were starting to tire of all the travel, I was enticed to take on a part-time consulting gig.

Retirement Version 3.0

Not only did I never expect to want to work again after I retired, I certainly never expected to actually enjoy working in retirement. Taking on that part-time consulting gig was one of the best decisions I made in retirement. In fact, I think that experience is one of the reasons Retirement Version 4.0 has been the best version so far. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I didn’t miss working at all when I wasn’t doing it. When I was retired full-time, all I could really remember of my former work life were the negative parts. I couldn’t really remember any of the good parts until I started working again part-time. I loved working as part of a team that appreciated me. I enjoyed tackling new challenges that I never really had at my former job. And, in the end, it gave me a greater appreciation for retirement.

Because toward the end of that gig, I started to feel like my life was racing by without me. Like it was slipping away. I started remembering all the parts of retirement that I had previously taken for granted. I missed the abundance of time, the absence of hurry, and sleep that was uninterrupted by thoughts of work at three o’clock in the morning. I remembered all the things I wanted to be doing that I hadn’t made time for in Retirement 2.0, like learning to play the piano and volunteering.

Retirement Version 4.0

Which brings me to the fourth version of my retirement, the best one yet. The one where I know not to worry if I don’t accomplish anything in particular on any given day. The one where I finally take piano lessons and spend hours lost in practice. The one where I finally managed to lose 10 pounds (and just in time for my 50^th birthday later this year!) The one where I will probably get another dog when the time is right. And the one where I know there will be other versions ahead, and if history is any guide, they will just keep getting better and better.

Related Posts:

Retirement Do-Over

Will I Ever Work Again?

This Time Around

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Finding a New Identity in Retirement

2013-05-23T19:29:38-07:00

One of the tricky adjustments in retirement is figuring out your new identity. I call it the cocktail party dilemma. You meet someone new at a cocktail party, and one of the first questions they ask you is what you do. And by “do,” they usually mean your job, not “do” like piano and blogging, unless of course you play at nightclubs or blog for the Huffington Post.

While I wasn’t really too attached to my accountant identity, it was a thread with which to weave a conversation. And even though that conversation might eventually stretch into non-work related topics, that starter was useful fuel in launching most cocktail party chatter.

After I retired, I found that telling people I was retired didn’t have the same effect of propelling the conversation forward. I think that retiring right into a huge recession might have had something to do with that. Perhaps some people thought “retired” was a euphemism for out of work, and were concerned about how to tiptoe around that possibility. Other people responded by asking what I did all day, usually accompanied with the assertion that they would die of boredom if they retired. And to be fair, when you list out what you can recall that you actually “do” all day, it does sound kind of boring.

But Bob Lowry recently made me realize that I now have solid credentials for a new identity. After five years of retirement, at the next cocktail party I attend, I think I can safely call myself a professional retiree. Not only have I spent all these years blogging here about retirement, I’ve blogged about it for U.S. News & World Report, as well as a few other finance blogs. I’ve enjoyed contributing content to magazines and blogs, and to a book called “65 Things to Do When You Retire.”

In my role as professional retiree, I was interviewed for Laura Vanderkam’s book, “All the Money in the World,” and for one of her Fortune magazine articles, and then most recently for a post at Free Money Finance. I was even on the radio a couple of times.

But back to Bob Lowry. He just published an eBook, “Living a Satisfying Retirement,” in which he interviews a bunch of retirees about our experiences in retirement. Although as far as actual identities go, ours are all changed in the book. But if you’re a regular reader of the blogs listed in the back of the book, you’ll find it pretty easy to figure out who’s who. And since I’m embracing my new identity as a professional retiree, I’ll save you the guessing: I’m “Shirley L.”

It’s a great read even for a “professional” like myself. There are so many responses that I can totally relate to, like “Gail P’s” least favorite part of retirement, “Still only having 24 hours in a day. That was a big surprise to me and I still feel cheated.”

I love “Roger W’s” advice to new retirees to “Go with the flow. Don’t think that you can, or have to figure it all out ahead of time. You will become a different person in retirement than you ever imagined, but the amazing thing is that the person you become will be pretty much up to you.”

And while it was almost unanimous that people did not miss working, it was almost as unanimous that folks missed some of the day-to-day relationships of the workplace as well as “the camaraderie,” as “Doug N.” puts it.

Bob also included some not-yet-retirees in his book. I was surprised to read that for most pre-retirees, their target retirement date has not been affected by the recession, although financial concerns did loom fairly large. And I’m happy to read the last question, “What is the one question you’d like a retired person to answer for you?” because it gives me plenty of new ideas to blog about!

Discovering Who I Am Without Work

Reflections on My First Year of Retirement (Part Two: Loss of Identity)

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How You Know that You've Found Your Passion

2013-05-19T12:19:47-07:00

I was in Hawaii last week, don’t ask, it rained almost the whole time. It was still fun because we were there with fun friends. We all made the best of it. But part of me did wonder why I was spending so much money to be somewhere else when the weather was so much better back at home.

It used to be that the only part of traveling that I didn’t like was that I missed my doggy back home. I worried about her. Oh and guilt, I had much of that too, worry and guilt. Toward the end of those past trips, I got more and more anxious to get back home to make sure she was ok. I was always so happy to see that everything was fine when I got home. Although after greeting me joyfully, she would catch herself and move to ignoring me for several hours just to remind me how mad she was that we left her. I did mention the guilt, right? Those Beagles are clever.

I have to admit that trips have been much more enjoyable over the last several years since we haven’t had a furry friend back home to worry about. Even though our days back home outnumber those on the road, this has been my biggest hurdle to adopting another dog.

But on this trip, I had another yearning for home, even before it started raining. I missed my piano. Really, I had piano withdrawals. So I downloaded “Music Theory for Dummies” onto my iPad so I could still do something that felt like learning the piano. That made it worse. I just wanted to practice everything I was learning about building chords. To hear what some of the minor scales sounded like on the piano, I used Garage Band on my computer. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been practicing about three or four hours a day. It’s all I want to do.

So now I’m thinking that my passion for travel has been overtaken by my passion for piano. And if I’m not as hot on travel anymore, if I just want to be home with my piano, then maybe it’s ok to get a dog too.

I guess I'll have more time to reflect on which passions pull hardest when we spend a month in New York this summer. But in the meantime, a reader sent me this picture of his best friend. I know, who could resist that face, right? So yes, it is making me seriously consider his advice to just "get the puppy!"

Related Posts:

What's on Your Bucket List?

What Five Things Make You Most Happy (and Why Aren't You Doing Them?)

Enjoying Retirement with Doggies

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(Photo credit: Thanks to Kirk B. for the temptation!)

What's on Your Bucket List?

2013-05-10T10:20:56-07:00

Before I retired, I admit I pretty much only pictured myself being involved in two activities, one being travel and the other being not working.

I never really had a bucket list, you know, one of those lists of things I wanted to be sure to get through before I died. Even on the travel part, it’s not like I have a list of places I have to see before I die. I figure I won’t get to them all anyway, so I’ll just go to the place that appeals to me at the moment. Maybe because someone’s offered me a home exchange, maybe because I see a great deal on the internet, or maybe because friends ask us to tag along. In any case, I’m ok with leaving much of the world unexplored.

But I think travel and not working commonly top the list of activities many soon-to-be-retirees focus on, that and maybe golf.

A few months ago, I read an article about a financial planner that goes through a bucket list approach for his retirement planning clients. His view is that if he can get his clients to really picture how they want to be spending their time in retirement, he can help them figure out how much money they would need to make that life a reality. It sounds like his clients are a lot like me. It’s hard for an advisor to help clients figure out how much they need for retirement when their primary goal is just to not work.

So he starts by asking clients to picture how they would like to live their lives if they knew they only had 20 years left to live, then five years, then one year. Twenty years seems like enough time to get really good at the piano and travel leisurely as the opportunity arises. So I’ve got that covered. If I knew I only had five years to live, I would definitely want a dog in my life. I keep thinking about it, but since I feel like I have more like 50 years left, I keep putting that one off. But it’s a good thing to keep in the back of my mind. I’m sure I’ll have a dog waking me up in the morning in the not-too-distant future.

If I only had one year left though, I probably wouldn’t spend a whole lot of time traveling. Instead, I’d probably try to spend as much time with friends and family as possible. Maybe I’d be more inclined to travel if it involved traveling with friends or family.

It’s a pretty interesting exercise to think about your bucket list in this fashion, breaking it down to specific time periods. Looks like the only thing I’m missing from my bucket list is a canine companion. But I’m hoping there’s still plenty of time for that. So right now I’m on my way to Hawaii, excited to spend some quality time with fun-loving friends.

Related Posts:

Retirement Resolutions

Retirement Resolutions that Didn't Make the Cut

Retirement Planning: It's Not All About the Money

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(Photo details: Mauna Lani, Hawaii)

Going Broke Safely

2013-05-04T11:29:05-07:00

I finally got around to watching my recording of “The Retirement Gamble” on PBS’s Frontline. It confirmed what I already thought about actively managed mutual funds being a rip-off for people like me, and probably most people, who just have no idea how to select which of the sliver of mutual funds will outperform the market indexes.

I’m not even sure there exists a person that can consistently do that. Besides that challenge, even if you are lucky enough to choose the outperforming fund, it has to way-outperform the index to make up for the cumulative expense hit from the fund's operating fees. So why pay exorbitant fees that will erode the value of your investments when you can pay one-tenth the cost and simply match the market?

In any case, the show did a good job of explaining why actively managed mutual funds are a generally a bad deal. Vanguard’s granddaddy, John Bogle has been saying this for years, and he got a chance to make his point loud and clear on this program.

But as the wise Steve Vernon asks in his recent piece for CBS MoneyWatch, while the show did a great job of exposing this issue, the real question is, what will you do about it?

If your answer is to steer clear of Wall Street all together and stash all your retirement funds in the safety of cash, well there’s a name for that. I just heard it last weekend in an investing seminar. It’s called “going broke safely.” Unless your pile of cash is huge, you’re just not going to be able to keep up with inflation’s bite over the long haul.

Even worse than that approach is throwing up your hands and saving nothing in response. Vernon says that the majority of workers who participate in 401(k) plans aren’t even contributing enough to receive the free money of their employer’s match. And that’s just the folks that are participating, what about the workers that aren’t participating at all?

This is the real retirement gamble, as Vernon points out:

This points to a much bigger problem for our collective retirement security: People just aren't saving enough for retirement. Your employer may offer a plan with the best funds in the world, but if you haven't saved enough money, it won't matter because you won't have a secure retirement. On the other hand, if you have enough money even in a crummy 401(k) plan, you have a good shot at a secure retirement. Once you retire from your employer, you can always roll over your accounts to a financial institution that offers investments with low fees and good investment performance history.

Excessive mutual fund fees are just one of the culprits eroding our retirement security. Some people profiled in the show had invested all of their 401(k) in their company’s stock. The show's reporter had dipped into his retirement to fund his kids’ educations. Many of the folks just didn’t feel up to the daunting task of investigating their investment options.

Seems to me, despite the many flaws of our 401(k) system of retirement, we are really our own worst enemy. And that part, we can do something about.

Related Posts:

How Not to Bet on the Stock Market

Balancing Risk and Reward

Buy Low, Sell High

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(Photo details: Wynn/Encore Las Vegas)

The Cheesecake Diet

2013-05-02T22:19:46-07:00

I’ve lost eight pounds since the beginning of the year. When people ask me how I did it, I can’t really explain it. The truth is I am always trying to lose a few pounds. This is just the first time it’s ever really worked. And the only thing I can think of that I’ve done differently than all my other attempts to lose weight was to add cheesecake to my diet.

My former boss’s wife (his current wife, my former boss, in case that didn’t come out right) makes the best cheesecake. When I had lunch with him a few months ago, he gave me a couple slices to take home, and I made it last an entire week. I wouldn’t let Doug have any of it. I would eat about three bites a day, I loved it so much, I wanted it to last forever.

I finally asked her for her recipe so I could make it for a dinner party I was hosting. Then I brought another one to a dinner party the following week, and then to another one the week after that. When the stream of dinner parties dried up, I decided what the heck, I just want to have this cheesecake in my house all the time. So I made it just for us (with a whole cheesecake in my possession, I also allowed Doug to have some.) Whenever it runs out now, I just make another.

Honestly, I’ve made nine cheesecakes this year and lost eight pounds. Coincidence? Who knows but I’m not messing with the formula.

And lest you be worried about my cholesterol, I got all my tests back from my little skirmish with my doctors: all my blood work is normal, my blood pressure is normal (except in the doctor’s office of course), and it turns out I already went through menopause without even knowing it. So maybe I’ve accidentally discovered the antidote to menopausal weight gain too!

Here’s the recipe in case I’ve made you hungry:

Debbie’s Cheesecake

Crust

16 graham crackers (crushed)

½ cube butter (softened)

Mix together and press to the bottom of a springform pan.

Bake for 5 minutes at 350 degrees.

Filling

3-8oz packages of cream cheese (soft at room temperature)

3 eggs (beaten until thick)

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Blend cream cheese with electric mixer until soft and creamy. Add beaten eggs, sugar, and vanilla and blend with mixer until smooth and creamy.

Pour mixture onto crust and bake about 25 minutes at 300 degrees, until the middle doesn’t wiggle when you shake it. Let cool for at least 20-25 minutes before adding topping.

Topping

1 pint sour cream

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla

Blend and dollop on top of cooled cheesecake. Spread lightly with spatula. Bake 5 minutes at 300 degrees. Best when chilled overnight.

Retirement Calories

Don't Blame the Fat Lady

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Improvising Retirement

2013-04-16T21:59:39-07:00

Oh my poor neglected blog. I've been obsessed with my new hobby, at the expense of my old one. I’m spending every spare moment at the piano. I wake up in the middle of the night humming songs in my head. In some ways, playing the piano is much easier than blogging. With piano, you just play the notes that are already printed on the page. With blogging, it’s up to you to figure out what to put on that blank page.

But last week it was that already printed page of my piano book that frustrated me. I was learning “At Last,” a song which should be full of soul, think Etta James. The simple arrangement in my beginner piano book was competing with the Etta James version playing in my head. I tried to play what was playing in my head instead of what was written on the page, but my piano skills just aren’t advanced enough yet to achieve that sound. So all I achieved was frustration.

I explained this to my piano teacher last week at my therapy session, I mean my piano lesson. His diagnosis was that I’m ready to start learning how to improvise. He sent me home with the bare bones version of “Autumn Leaves.” It’s a page from what is known as a “fake book,” something I had only just recently learned about from my piano-playing uncle, aka, play-a-hymn-any-hymn-Jim. Jim spent his childhood piano career accompanying parishioners at Sunday morning services. He was the son of a preacher man, my grandpa.

My uncle gave up the piano several years ago when his arthritis made it impossible to keep it up. But before that, he would entertain his fellow Rotarians with old standards at their weekly meetings. Before he gave up his beautiful baby grand piano, he asked my cousins and me whether any of us wanted it. I regret to report that we all turned him down. So he gave it to the music department at U.C. Berkeley. How I wish I could play that decision over again.

Anyway, he did keep his mountains of piano books and sheet music. I just popped over there last week and combed through his stash. In the piles of paper were these fake books. I only took one of them because I didn’t really understand what they were and I couldn’t make any sense them. The songs are really just skeletons—the melody notes, chord notations, and lyrics. It’s up to the musician to improvise exactly how to play it.

So now I understand. And I’m having so much fun learning how to fill in the blanks, adding what’s in my head to what’s on the page. Just as much fun as I had when I first started writing what’s in my head onto the blank page, or blank blog screen as the case may be.

When I retired, I had no idea how much I would enjoy blogging or how much of my time would revolve around writing. I knew I wanted to pick up the piano again, but I never thought it would take me five years to get to it. And after I retired, I certainly didn't think I’d ever be interested working in my old field again, even part-time. But now I know that retirement is part advance planning and part live improvisation. And if you're comfortable with improvising, you're going to have a lot more fun.

(Several readers have made the great suggestion that I include a little description of the photos that I include in my blog posts. The photo above is Rasheed and the Jazz Collective at Washington Square Park in New York City's Greenwich Village.)

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Where Do You Want to Retire?

2013-03-21T21:36:04-07:00

I love living vicariously through Kathleen Peddicord’s retire abroad posts at U.S. News. I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks it would be fun to ditch suburbia and retire overseas, spending the rest of your days exploring the world.

I used to have a fantasy about selling our house after we retired, and using the proceeds to finance year-long rentals in various locations, both in the U.S. and abroad. Or mix those up with some six-month stints, spending the winters on sunny tropical beaches and the summers in some vibrant, fast-paced cities. My favorite travel is the living-there kind, getting to know a place at a very slow pace. I prefer that to the frantic pace of trips squeezed into the two-week allotments of my past.

Besides the complications and logistics of such a jet-setting lifestyle, my biggest barrier to this dream was that my husband Doug did not share it. At least I thought he was the big obstacle.

But this weekend we hosted our annual rib night, a gathering of 12 of our pig-loving friends, well 11 pig lovers, and one who prefers chicken. This year's party included a special treat when one of our guests surprised his wife of 20 years with a diamond anniversary ring. He tied it to the stem of her wine glass with a purple velvet ribbon. Even when there are no diamonds involved, it’s one of those traditions we look forward to each year. And it always ends in karaoke singing until the sober people, also known as the designated drivers, can’t stand it any longer.

Last week we took one of our favorite couples down to watch a Sharks game. And a few evenings before that, we dined at my parents’ house and played a few rounds of poker. This weekend Doug’s family is driving up from LA to visit for a few days.

The point is, Doug isn’t really standing in the way of me and the retirement of my dreams. This is the retirement of my dreams—getting together with friends and family as much as possible. Going on my weekly walk and my weekly lunch date with two of my best girlfriends. These are the parts of retirement I enjoy the most. If we retired somewhere far away, or a series of far away places, I’d miss all this. Sure, we’d meet new people. But I’ve spent a lifetime forming bonds with the people I already know. I don’t want to give that up.

There’s nothing like being with friends who have known you for decades, especially over pork products. And sure, your family would come visit you in London, or Paris, or New York, but it wouldn’t be the same as driving a half an hour away for dinner or hopping on a quick flight to LA for a couple nights. I’m not sure if retirement would be worth it to me if there were a big hole in the space where my friends and family now fit in.

Related Posts:

Where to Live in Retirement

In Praise of the Staycation

Aging in Place and Watching Your Trees Grow

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Picturing Retirement: No Regrets

2013-03-01T10:18:58-08:00

Photo Friday: Today is the first day of my sixth year of retirement. And finally, after five years of retirement, I have made arrangements to start piano lessons next Wednesday. That way, five years from now I won't have to say, "I wish I could play jazz piano." What will I wish I did five years ago, five years from now? Well it won't be piano lessons.

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(To submit your picture of retirement, email me a photo and how you would like it credited.)

What Five Things Make You Most Happy (And Why Aren't You Doing Them)?

Believing in the Dream

Are You a Failure at Retirement?

2013-02-27T09:03:02-08:00

Ok, now that we’ve talked about what literally gets us out of bed in the morning, alarms, annoying dogs, boot camp, and of course having to pee, let’s talk about what gets you out of bed in that way that RJ was referring to when he commented that “new challenges” get him out of bed. Or as Steve, Suzanne, and the other Steve agreed, having control over their days, planning them out exactly as they want to live them.

It may be hard for some of us to understand why someone doesn’t really want to retire. And it may be hard for others to understand why some of us do want to retire. But the one I’m trying to reach right now, is the one that really does want to retire, but then doesn’t actually like it when he gets there.

As I mentioned in my last post, most retirement planning literature focuses exclusively on the math part of the equation. How much money do you need? How should you invest it? And then once you get to retirement, how much of it can you afford to spend? But what about the how to live your life part?

I read a couple really good books on the subject before I retired, How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free and What Color is your Parachute? For Retirement. I made all the lists. Lists of activities I would take up in retirement, tasks I wanted to accomplish, organizations I wanted to volunteer for, and ideas on how I might structure my days.

My list of activities included trying skiing again, making my own clothes, and playing the piano. My to-do list included painting all the rooms of my house, cleaning out my closets, and finally getting some old photos in albums. My volunteer calling would be with doggies.

Now, five years later, I haven’t tried skiing, I’ve made only one skirt, and I finally just called a piano teacher yesterday to set up lessons. I’ve made a very small dent in the painting, closets, and photo albums. My current volunteer job has nothing to do with dogs, and I only started it a few months ago. And I avoid structuring my days as much as possible.

So my point is, all is not lost if you failed to plan for this before you retired. Chances are you’ll feel differently after you retire anyway. And the good news is you have plenty of time to figure it out after you retire. You may even want to enjoy a few months of just relishing the fact that you are not working anymore before you figure it out. Go ahead and relish, like I said, you have plenty of time.

But eventually, you’re going to need some reason to get out of bed in the morning, and now I mean that in a way that means more than just to get your coffee. I mean that in a “new challenges” kind of way, as our wise commenter RJ mentioned.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Take some classes. When I retired five years ago, my going-away present was an Apple MacBook. Up to that point I was a PC gal. So I took weekly classes at the Apple store to learn how to use my new machine.

After that, I took a memoir writing class, a magazine writing class, a blog writing class, and some creative non-fiction writing classes. I took a class about angel investing and another on photography. And as I mentioned, I’ll be starting piano lessons soon. Explore as many topics as you might be interested in.

Try a new hobby. I took all those writing classes because I started a blog after I retired. I read Blogging for Dummies and then I set up a blog. I barely knew what a blog was before I retired. Now it’s my favorite way to spend time.

Return to some old hobbies. It took me awhile, but I finally got back to yoga. I join Doug on his bike rides from time to time. And while I don't do much sewing, I found I loved knitting. I can only make baby blankets so far, but luckily quite a few of my friends had babies over the last five years.

Pick up a part-time or volunteer job. I know it sounds counter-intuitive for retirement, but I really enjoyed my part-time retirement job. Mine was in my old field, but maybe there’s something you’ve always wanted to try that wasn’t what you did for a living. I’ve often thought it would be fun to work in the tasting room of a winery or in a doggy daycare. I figure since the doggies there already have owners, it would be safer than volunteering at the shelter. Too tempting, and I’m not ready for another dog quite yet!

Travel. It doesn’t have to be expensive. When you’re retired you can take advantage of last-minute deals you might not have had the flexibility for when you were working. I save money by exchanging my home on vacations. It’s a little more challenging to set up, but since I’m retired, I have the time to devote to it. Kind of makes me feel like I have second homes all over the world. And if you travel to another country, you can take on the challenge of brushing up on a foreign language before you go.

Train for a physical challenge. Most of the year I get moderate exercise just about every day. But every August, we bike in a community fund-raising ride. It’s only 31 miles, but it gets me out on a bike pretty regularly before ride day to get ready.

For you fitness junkies, maybe following Tamara’s lead training for marathons is more up your alley. Having a physical goal not only gives you a challenge to wake up to, you’ll get healthier in the process.

I don't mean to minimize those wonderful retirement activities like napping, reading, and enjoying more time with friends and family. But finding your own reason to jump, or meander, out of bed each morning is key to creating a retirement that you’ll love for decades to come.

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Maybe Don’t Try So Hard

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