How do you plan to spend your retirement?
I basically was forced to retire from my job in the fall of 2007. I thought I had successfully transferred to another office in my company only to find that consolidation was going to happen and the office I had transferred to needed to cut staff, not expand it. I worked for six months and then was told there was no more work for me. I was three months short of having fifteen years of "qualified" employment. But as it turned out I was over 55 years of age, I had more than 12 years in service, and so early retirement was possible. Yay, horray, I was able to collect all that was in my retirement account over a three year period. Which was good, as it turns out, because in the fall of 2009 my mother reached a point where she couldn't live in her house alone and so my husband and I moved in with her and I was her primary caregiver until she passed in the fall of 2011. My point in all this is that my retirement was not really planned. As a matter of fact I moved from living in Florida, the destination of most retirees, to living in Northeast Ohio.
The reason for my question and the thoughts I am going to share is that I find myself associating with quite a few people who are retired and I have been observing what they do with their time. Now, these are not people who retired to Florida. I think in some ways people who head off to someplace new to them handle retirement differently then people who stay right where they have always lived. My observations are about people who worked in northeast Ohio and are now retired in northeast Ohio but I assume these ideas are transferable.
I have come across three "retirement" plans among these people. One is the "I worked hard all my life and I am going to do what I want to do" plan, another is the "I always wanted to help people and now that I am retired I am able to do that" plan, and the "I have no particular plan and do some things I feel obligated to do, do some things I want to do, and find myself so busy I wonder how I had time to work" plan. I don't run in to a lot of people who travel a lot although there are also people who seem to have a bucket list that they are trying to accomplish as quickly as possible. I do know one woman who has taken up weaving, fly fishing, traveling, and possibly attending every possible reunion of old friends, family, and school mates that she can possibly find. I get exhausted just listening to her schedule.
I did not plan my retirement, so stumbled into taking care of my Mom. As a residual of that I now find myself doing things that my Mom used to do. Don't get me wrong I enjoy these things. I knit prayer shawls and other needed items with a group from my church, I knit sweaters, hats, and scarves for a shop that supports the senior center I go to, I attend exercise classes at the same senior center, and I volunteer at the desk at the senior center. I have just started helping out with Angel Rides at my church. My husband still works, and my feeling as a "stay at home wife" which I have been off and on in our 42 years of marriage is that my biggest job is to make home a place my husband wants to return from work too. When we both worked fulltime, it was harder to do that, but now that I am in charge of my time I can work at it a little more. Unfortunately I get tired of planning meals and cleaning house in a way that I did not when we were younger and the whole "stay at home wife" thing was newer. Don't get me wrong, I still try to plan meals that he really loves, and desserts that make him happy, but not every night. Now that we are trying to sell my mother's house a side benefit is that the house is at least always picked up, if not totally clean.
I am not sure that I have gone where I thought I was heading. I suppose the one thought that I had was that I am not off doing things just to make me happy. I have an element of trying to be helpful, of service, so to speak AND that is what we are truly headed for in the next chapter of our lives. We are moving to be close to one of our kids. The one with the grandchildren. We are doing this for two reasons. First, we want to be able to be of help to them. We want to be close enough that they can count on us when they need us. But, the second reason is just as important. As I dealt with the slow slippage of my mother as her dementia increased, I learned that I want to already be established as a part of one of my children's life before I get that way. I want their help in taking care of me in those early stages of memory loss. I don't want my husband to have to deal with that all on his own. We packed our bags and moved 1000 miles to offer that help to my mother (because we could) but I want my children to not have to change their lives to be able to help me. I am hoping that we can establish some sort of a mutual coming together as an extended family and that it will be a good thing for all of us. It is an experiment that hopefully turns out the way we hope, but we won't know until we are into it. Pray for us all, we may need it. TTFN.
The reason for my question and the thoughts I am going to share is that I find myself associating with quite a few people who are retired and I have been observing what they do with their time. Now, these are not people who retired to Florida. I think in some ways people who head off to someplace new to them handle retirement differently then people who stay right where they have always lived. My observations are about people who worked in northeast Ohio and are now retired in northeast Ohio but I assume these ideas are transferable.
I have come across three "retirement" plans among these people. One is the "I worked hard all my life and I am going to do what I want to do" plan, another is the "I always wanted to help people and now that I am retired I am able to do that" plan, and the "I have no particular plan and do some things I feel obligated to do, do some things I want to do, and find myself so busy I wonder how I had time to work" plan. I don't run in to a lot of people who travel a lot although there are also people who seem to have a bucket list that they are trying to accomplish as quickly as possible. I do know one woman who has taken up weaving, fly fishing, traveling, and possibly attending every possible reunion of old friends, family, and school mates that she can possibly find. I get exhausted just listening to her schedule.
I did not plan my retirement, so stumbled into taking care of my Mom. As a residual of that I now find myself doing things that my Mom used to do. Don't get me wrong I enjoy these things. I knit prayer shawls and other needed items with a group from my church, I knit sweaters, hats, and scarves for a shop that supports the senior center I go to, I attend exercise classes at the same senior center, and I volunteer at the desk at the senior center. I have just started helping out with Angel Rides at my church. My husband still works, and my feeling as a "stay at home wife" which I have been off and on in our 42 years of marriage is that my biggest job is to make home a place my husband wants to return from work too. When we both worked fulltime, it was harder to do that, but now that I am in charge of my time I can work at it a little more. Unfortunately I get tired of planning meals and cleaning house in a way that I did not when we were younger and the whole "stay at home wife" thing was newer. Don't get me wrong, I still try to plan meals that he really loves, and desserts that make him happy, but not every night. Now that we are trying to sell my mother's house a side benefit is that the house is at least always picked up, if not totally clean.
I am not sure that I have gone where I thought I was heading. I suppose the one thought that I had was that I am not off doing things just to make me happy. I have an element of trying to be helpful, of service, so to speak AND that is what we are truly headed for in the next chapter of our lives. We are moving to be close to one of our kids. The one with the grandchildren. We are doing this for two reasons. First, we want to be able to be of help to them. We want to be close enough that they can count on us when they need us. But, the second reason is just as important. As I dealt with the slow slippage of my mother as her dementia increased, I learned that I want to already be established as a part of one of my children's life before I get that way. I want their help in taking care of me in those early stages of memory loss. I don't want my husband to have to deal with that all on his own. We packed our bags and moved 1000 miles to offer that help to my mother (because we could) but I want my children to not have to change their lives to be able to help me. I am hoping that we can establish some sort of a mutual coming together as an extended family and that it will be a good thing for all of us. It is an experiment that hopefully turns out the way we hope, but we won't know until we are into it. Pray for us all, we may need it. TTFN.