Retirement can be a daunting consideration. Will it even be possible for me to retire? Where will I live? Will I have enough money? Will I be able to stop working? Will I want to stop working if I can? What about the friends I leave behind? What will I do with all of the extra time?
Several psychological challenges are inevitable when considering retirement. Here are 8 of the ones most likely to be encountered and how to prepare for them.
1. Apprehension that there won’t be enough money to live on.
We start here because it’s the most fundamental question of all. Unless you were born wealthy, inherited an obscene amount of money, or have a benefactor who will fund your retirement, you’re going to need money if you intend to stop working.
It can be difficult enough to live your desired life even while working and drawing a regular paycheck. How will it be possible to live for years, maybe decades, into the future without a paycheck?
The answer to the challenge should come as no big surprise. The answer is…Prepare. If you’re relatively young and have many years of working ahead of you, it’s not too late to plan effectively for retirement.
If you have the means to, find a reputable and recommended financial advisor who can develop a tailored strategy for you. If you can find an advisor who specializes in retirement planning, so much the better.
Your greatest ally in financial preparation for retirement is time. It’s been said that the 8th wonder of the world is “compound interest.” If you have even a little money you can put aside most months, use the years left in your working life to leverage for the future. Time can make you wealthy. Most of us have enough time if we use it constructively.
The “3 buckets” approach to retirement savings and income is popular for good reason. The National Council on Aging has a comprehensive guide on it which can be accessed by clicking here, but here’s the idea behind it in a condensed form:
The current expense bucket – this money will need to be accessible quickly and easily at all times to cover your regular expenses and unforeseen expenses.
The short-term savings bucket – this money is designed to earn you a predictable income that you can be assured of over time.
The long-term investment bucket – this money has a longer time horizon and may involve more risk depending on your wishes and aims.
As mentioned, speaking to a reputable financial advisor is always recommended to help you make the best decisions about these investment options. As the saying goes, “We don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan.” The key to retiring is planning effectively for it.
2. Ambivalence as to whether retirement is the best option.
Retirement is usually a desired transition in life’s journey. But not everyone wants to retire, needs to retire, or should retire. It’s a very personal decision.
Clint Eastwood is still working on films at 95 years old. It’s unlikely he needs the money. He loves what he does, so he does what he loves. Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investors of all time, is 94 and still working. Yes, he stepped down as CEO, but he continues to go to the office and make a contribution.
Lily Tomlin is 85 and still working. Betty White had a career that spanned 80 years. She continued working right up to her death at age 99.
You may love what you’re doing for a living. You may enjoy your career. You may have little, if any, desire to stop working. Which is just fine. A career or work life that one loves is a precious gift.
But there are two things to consider. First, you may not want to retire, but you may need to retire. You might be faced with health issues that make it impossible to continue working.
Or there could be major shifts in your field of work, making your work less profitable, less desirable, and less needed. It’s difficult to predict the future direction of careers.
If you adequately prepare for retirement, you can always continue working for as long as you like and delay retirement until you’re ready. But if you fail to adequately prepare for retirement, your options will be few, and some of them will not be pleasant.
3. Uncertainty about whether extra time will be a benefit or a curse.
During our working years, we may struggle to find the time to do what we desire after we’ve put in the required hours of work. During our working years, we may spend more than a third of the day preparing for work, getting to work, working, and returning home from work. What will we do with all of that free time when we retire?
Prior to retirement, the idea of having hours of freedom every day to do whatever we like is enticing or even thrilling. We may fantasize about all the things we will do when we no longer have to put in the time at our job.
But the reality is that the dream of free time can become a nightmare if we don’t have something to fill the time we’ve now acquired. Exhaustion and frustration from work will simply be replaced by boredom. Having all the time in the world with nothing to do with the time is not a desirable strategy. It’s pretty close to a curse.
So, before you leave the office for the last time, or attend that retirement party, be sure you have a plan for what you will do with your new gift of time.
Go ahead, print out your bucket list. Choose the places you can finally visit but never had time for in the past. Or think through what a typical day of retirement might look like.
Make big plans that will require your attention and commitment. Talk to people who are enjoying retirement and learn their secrets. And, if you determine that having all that extra time is more promise than delivery, you can always continue to work.
If you don’t need to retire, you don’t have to. But if you want to retire, you’ll need to plan for it, as it probably won’t happen by accident.
4. Fear that life’s purpose and reason for living will be lost.
Some people who retire do indeed lose their purpose and reason for living. But it needn’t be so. One of the great philosophers was credited with saying that there are 3 essentials for happiness in life. They are:
Something to do.
Someone to love.
Something to hope for.
Engaging in activities that are meaningful and purposeful, whether they be hobbies, volunteer service, daily responsibilities, or work, tends to foster happiness and contentment, and fulfillment in life.
Finding and maintaining connections with other people—a life partner, good friends, or family members contributes to our mental health and well-being.
No one needs to turn into Pollyanna, but we all need a steady dose of hope to live our best lives. Hope gets us up in the morning, motivates us during the day, and helps us have restful sleep at night.
These 3 essentials will make excellent companions on your retirement journey. They will keep you from wishing you were back at the office. And you’ll find more than enough to occupy your thoughts and energy during those days of retirement.
5. Dread over losing the structure that a working life provides.
Let’s admit it, work provides a level of structure in our lives. Each day is largely mapped out for us in advance. After all, we know that for about 10 hours each day, our lives will revolve around work. There isn’t much time for wool gathering or distractions.
But when we retire, much of our life structure goes with it. However, it’s not that hard to maintain a healthy and valuable structure even when the inevitable markers are gone.
You’ll want to put some daily routines in place. Hopefully, some of them you can carry over from your working days. Daily routines provide helpful markers. It might be a morning run, an evening walk, an hour at the gym, savoring time over the day’s news without rushing, lingering over your coffee or tea.
You might even plan out typical activities for specific days. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are your workout days. On Tuesdays, you meet friends for lunch. On Thursdays, you take a long walk in the woods and commune with nature. Other days you’ll set aside for important regular tasks like grocery shopping, home maintenance, and keeping in touch with friends and family.
The idea is to have routines you can look forward to and that contribute to a sense of order and purpose in your life. They need not be profound or outsized. They just need to provide some structure when much of it may be lost after you end your working life.
6. Anxiety over mental decline after leaving the working life.
Not all jobs and careers require high levels of thinking. Some do, some don’t. But regardless of the mental demands of your working life, you’ll want to actively engage your mind throughout your retirement.
Learn new skills, travel to new places, explore subjects you never had time to explore when you worked, and take courses either online or at the local community college. If you have the opportunity, offer your services as a consultant at no charge or for a fee. You may have expertise or skills that others would like to acquire, so use your retirement years to tutor, train, or consult.
Spend regular time reading, studying, growing, and challenging your current thinking. It’s never too late to learn something new. It’s never too late to reconsider what you have always thought or always believed. Both can be extremely freeing and fulfilling.
7. Fear over unpredictable changes in physical vitality.
Though physical vitality often lessens after retirement, the decline need not be debilitating. Serious physical decline is not inevitable just because you’re getting older. But it’s indisputable that the retirement years will necessitate a change of pace. We’ll need to dial it back a bit. You won’t be able to have as much on your plate as before. And I’m not talking about food.
Settle for ambitious, yet realistic goals when it comes to your health. Our health will treat us well if we treat it well. Plan for a regular focus on fitness. It’s undeniable that you will either make time for health, or you’ll need to make time for sickness. There are no other options.
So invest in your health and physical vitality. You only have one body, and you will need it to the very end. You’ll want to take care of it so it will serve you all the days of your life.
8. A sense of foreboding that social loneliness will set in after working life is left behind.
Let’s face it, for most people, the work environment provides many social connections. Some of them are good, and some of them are not-so-good. But for most people, there are at least a handful of valuable or even cherished relationships that exist because of our work life.
So when we stop working and retire, what will happen to all of those relationships we have come to value? Will they be lost forever? Can they be replaced? Will loneliness and isolation creep in as a result of the social and relational void we’ve created through retirement?
There’s little doubt that leaving an environment surrounded by people that we’ve known for a long time will require some adjustment. But it need not overly concern the potential retiree.
For example, we can continue to nurture the relationships we’ve acquired from work. It may just take some more effort. It may require that we be more proactive, as we won’t see the same people regularly.
But some relationships from our work life can be easily and harmlessly left behind. We will see them as connections that were meaningful while we worked, but will not carry over to our retirement phase of life. And that’s okay. And it’s okay for each person to decide one way or the other.
But what remains is the need to continue or add social connections. Countless studies reveal that isolation and loneliness are common liabilities of retirement and aging. Most people need these connections, and it’s unlikely that you will be an exception to this principle.
One of the hallmarks of retirement is that we will need to find new avenues to explore in our new life. We will need to take different routes to the same destination. Or even change some destinations. It’s all part of the transition. And it need not create a sense of foreboding. If we are aware of the concern and take steps toward a remedy, we should be fine.
In the final analysis, some social connections will cease forever. Some will be modified to fit our new status. Some of the old connections may actually be enhanced—especially now that we will likely have more discretionary time. And there will be new connections to explore and nurture. These are all components and challenges of our new status as a retired person.
Final thoughts…
These are certainly not all of the psychological challenges when it comes to retirement. But they are among the most likely to be encountered. As with so many other things in life, they tend to work out better with sound planning.
I’ll leave you with the wise words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” So convert your wish to retire someday into a plan. Then follow your plan. If you decide to work until your last breath, that’s fine. But having the option to end your working life is a great goal, and well worth the planning required to reach it.
