Retirement Happiness Monthly

Avoiding the Retirement Blues

Tue, 24 May 2011 04:02:00 GMT

Retirement can be an exciting time with many people eagerly awaiting the day they can stop working and start to take time for themselves. Yet after retirement as the reality sinks in, retirees can find themselves becoming bored and frustrated with too much free time to fill.

You may begin to yearn for the structure and purpose you had during their working life and find it difficult to satisfactorily fill your day. Days can stretch out before you and with no worthwhile activities to keep you occupied you could, like many retirees, get the retirement blues, or worse, develop depression.

It is normal to experience these feelings as you transition to retirement. Retirement can be a big lifestyle change. But rest assured that with the right help and guidance this period will be a small bump on the road to retirement happiness.

What can you do to avoid the retirement blues?

Avoid the retirement blues by planning ahead! Below is a list of common changes people make as they transition to retirement. While some may appeal to you, others may not. It’s important to find what works for you.

Be adventurous - take risks and live life on the road

We’ve all heard of the grey nomads, they’re part of a growing trend - retirees who find a life on the road both satisfying and economical . This carefree, nomadic lifestyle can often extend beyond a holiday and become part of everyday life. Every year thousands of retirees head off to visit all the places they never had a chance to see – and often they do it in style. Kitted out with a fully equipped caravan or campervan, they venture across Australia meeting like-minded folk, as they sit back and take in this great land of ours.

For most retirees, when considering retirement one of the first things on our list is to travel. Whether you wish to join the grey nomads and explore Australia, take a short camping trip in your own state or take off on a global adventure, you’ve got plenty of free time to fulfil these dreams, money permitting.

Let’s be honest, there’s nothing quite like a travel experience to clear out the cobwebs and give you a new lease on life.

But when the holiday is over, when you’ve spent your vacation money and you’re back in home territory- what then?

Do things that make you smile

With all this free time you are in the perfect position to tailor your new life to absolutely suit yourself. What do you like to do that makes you happy? What makes you smile? Filling your time with activities that you enjoy is one of the most rewarding parts of retirement.

We’re not simply talking about dusting off the knitting needles or taking up scrapbooking – but by all means do that if that’s what put’s a smile on your dial.

First think.

What is it that you’ve always wanted to do but never had the time?

So you want to be a super chef? Hone your cooking skills in a cooking class. Learn to swing dance like it’s 1955 , become a portrait artist and sign up for a painting class, get rugged and join a bushwalking group, be a daredevil and jump out of a plane (with a parachute, of course), like this retiree – the sky’s the limit.

Check out your local paper for courses, clubs or groups that appeal to you or make your own group with other like-minded people.

And perhaps your new find hobby or craft will become a surprising money making venture, which leads to my next suggestion…

Start a business – do what you love and make some cash on your own terms.

Once you’ve retired, you’ll find you have a bit of spare time to focus on yourself. You’re doing the things you love and you’re doing them at your own pace. Yet, after retiring, many retirees decide to start a small business. Whether it’s a hobby turns that out to be lucrative little money maker or it’s a deliberate decision stemming from an idea you’ve been germinating for years, starting a business can be a rewarding way to spend your post-work years.

For many, retirement is the perfect time to start the business you’ve always dreamed of. You can work when you want to, schedule your time around other activities and earn some extra income while you’re at it. Just make sure it doesn’t fill all your time or you won’t be able to enjoy all the other perks of retirement.

Mentoring, Coaching and Volunteering – Using Your Skills To Help The Community

I’m sure many people have been told that once retired you ought to do a little volunteer work to keep yourself busy. In fact statistics have shown that volunteering is mostly taken up by retirees who have already volunteered throughout their working life. We must admit that retiring is not for everyone, yet for some, volunteering can be a very fulfilling way to spend your time.

The out-dated idea of retirees volunteering their time and gossiping away in the local musty op-shop is a thing of the past, there are many type of volunteering positions out there and using what you love to do and your own personal skills could be a great way to spend a few days a week.

With plenty of organisations out there desperately seeking people volunteers with the right skills and enthusiasm, now may be the time to seek a volunteer position.

Keep an eye out for community projects, become a coach or mentor, join conservation projects, help out at animal shelters, give some time to a local community radio station or find charity groups that need your help.

Check out these sites Go Volunteer or Volunteering Australia to see what’s needed in your local area.

We’d love to hear your stories and suggestions for beating the retirement blues, let us know your retirement secrets in the comment section below.

Retirement: Finding Humour in The Everyday

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 05:28:00 GMT

Here at Life After Work we often receive funny emails from fellow retirees. Last week we received an email from our friend Marion in New Zealand. It made us chuckle a fair bit, so we thought we'd share it with you:

"Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.

Well, for example, the other day, my wife Betty and I went into town and visited a shop.

When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and I said, 'Come on, man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?' He ignored us and continued writing the ticket.

I called him an a*hole. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn-out tires. So Betty called him a s** head.

He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first.

Then he started writing more tickets.

This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Just then our bus arrived, and we got on it and went home. We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age."

Thanks Marion. This reminded us of the video we use in live workshops- check it out, it is very funny!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUfIvpzvjwQ

Have you got any retiree jokes lurking about your inbox? Share them with the community in the comments section below or send them into us at lisa@lifeafterwork.net.au and we'll feature them on our blog.

The New Retirement And What It Means For You.

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 02:31:00 GMT

You may have heard people talking about ‘The New Retirement’ lately. There certainly are many books written on the subject.

So, what is this ‘New Retirement’? It’s simple - the retirement landscape has changed.

With over four and a half million baby boomers in Australia reaching the age of retirement things are becoming very different to when your parents retired. Gone are the days of sitting at home watching daytime TV, pruning roses and drawing up a new draft of your will. In fact, this conventional, romanticised idea of retirement is fast becoming history.

"…Boomers will redefine retirement with great energy and creativity working well beyond age 65 and mostly by choice"

The traditional model of a leisure-filled retirement is making way for a new type of retirement; a more active and, for many, a work-filled retirement. As many Australian retirees increasingly postpone retirement, many others downshift to casual or part time work after retirement. Why? Reasons vary from retirees enjoying working or wanting to stay busy to wanting to be a contributing member of society or simply being unable to retire on a comfortable income.

In fact, work is increasingly playing a role in this new retirement, just not the usual nine to five way. As Sherry Cooper, Author or the aptly named ‘The New Retirement’ states:

“…Boomers will redefine retirement with great energy and creativity, working well beyond age 65 and mostly by choice. With the dramatic rise in their longevity, healthy goal-driven boomers will seek purposeful leisure-focusing on regeneration, rejuvenation, and low-stress contributions to society and their own personal wealth.”

Indeed, today’s retirees focus on seeking a balanced and leisurely lifestyle, stimulating and exciting activities, developing new goals and facing the many personal challenges they didn’t have time for during their working life.

Providing the opportunity to reassess, re-evaluate and refocus your life, retirement is no longer about sitting under a crocheted blanket knitting booties for the grandkids, it’s about getting out there, exploring and living for retirement. Whether you’re a few years or a few decades from retirement, you can make this new retirement work for you.

So, how do you plan on enjoying your retirement? Let us know in the comments section below…

Retirement Happiness - Where It All Began

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 07:01:00 GMT

In 1995 I attend the Financial Planning Association’s (FPA’s) annual conference in Melbourne. I was impressed by one plenary speaker in particular. His name was Dr Philip Randal and he was a gerantologist (someone who specialises in the field of ageing).

The main message was that, as financial planners, we needed to consider the whole person when dealing with our clients. Ideally, he suggested, we should have a group of associated professionals working together to assist our clients in the whole wellbeing - not just their financial well being. That meant linking in with doctors, psychologists, ministers and other health professionals. Easier said than done especially in large cities and where clients come from a range of locations. He also highlighted in his speech how many people retire and end up being unhappy, despite having sufficient finances.

This hit a note with me because I had a growing number of retiring clients and could see this happening to some of them.

After the conference, I contacted a psychologist friend on mine to discuss the issues around retiring unhappy. We were both interested in finding ways to help people find happiness after they left work and our research within Australia failed to find anyone or any institution providing any meaningful assistance. Sure, there were plenty of financial institution sponsored workshops offering sessions on travel, health, will making, depression, dying, funeral plans, volunteering, financial plans - not in that order!

We were looking for a program that helped people work on their individual needs so they could plan a meaningful lifestyle for themselves after leaving work permanently. We worked on putting our own program together and met on and off for several years. One evening I got an excited email from my friend to say he had discovered a program on the internet called Re-tire With A Dash. We were able to download a workshop that helped us to identify our individual needs and skills and then we were given the tools to find activities in retirement (or before) that would satisfy these needs and skills.

We were so impressed by the program that we contacted the author, Dr Alan Roadburg in Toronto, Canada and the rest is history. Since 2002 with the help of other interested business partners, we have run many workshops around Australia using Dr Roadburg’s program and the feedback has always been excellent.

Due to other business demands we were unable to focus full attention to developing the program further in Australia until now. In 2010 I retired from my financial planning practice and after a six month break decided to return my focus, but full-time, to this unique retirement lifestyle planning program.

I have never wanted to let it go, despite my other business pressures, because I believed in the principles and philosophy developed by Dr Roadburg over many decades of running and refining workshops in Canada.

So, here I am, launching my own new career of helping others to launch into their own unique Life After Work.