Make your Senior Years a Golden Dream

Thirty-five years of working for “the man” and the feet are going up. 

I am outta here! Life plan? No kidding, it’s retirement. 

The money is just about enough…the debts are nil…..I’ve done fairly well….. give me my parachute!

Getting to the magic age when we can say goodbye to our 9-5 job and enjoy our freedom is a big golden dream that carries many folks through employment thick and thin. Lawyer, manager, caretaker or caregiver…the vision carries us on.

As we work our hours and pay our retirement and pension plans, we look forward to this like a desert hiker looks forward to a glass of water. Schemes and dreams as we build the means and endless panting blather to whoever will listen. 

The plan is solid…..we think, without realizing that we are just focusing on the financial part of retirement and forgetting what we really need is a life plan.

How is retirement like?

Having fun yet?

Are you enjoying your retirement?

The dream is thinning like a New England fog. A massive billboard comes up on the Life Highway with an Uncle Sam like finger-pointing at our forehead saying “YOU ARE BORED”.

OK…something part-time so I don’t have to stare at the dog 24/7. Not so easy. 

We can hardly find jobs even at the burger-flipping level because there are so many young ones in line ahead. 

Even volunteer jobs are tough to find as students compete to complete their community involvement points required by most schools. 

Try to get an extra street to canvass in the annual Stroke and Heart door to door and the granny mafia will attack with umbrellas.

Some have gone online, opened a blog and are doing very well.  (Thank goodness for WordPress and its ilk). Others build trains, fly miniature planes, paint and sculpt or just become pests as an unwanted neighbourhood watch peeking out their windows.

Each of us has a different experience. I have friends who are very happy working in their garden, doing crafts, becoming full-time grandparents and washing their cars.

Some have gone online, opened a blog and are doing very well. Others build trains, fly miniature planes, paint and sculpt or just become pests as an unwanted neighbourhood watch peeking out their windows.

Did you have a life plan for retirement? Below are some of the varied answers we get:

Yes, I planned very well my life after retiring from my job

No, I just wanted out, I did not even bother to think about it

I had dreams of things I wanted to do but did not really plan for it

I had ideas but that’s all

Bismarck, the master planner of 65 as the key retirement age didn’t talk much about life planning as he assumed we would all be dead at 67. (He was right in the late 19th century). A lifetime of bad food, dangerous jobs and quixotic health care usually didn’t result in a long leisurely retirement.

The world then was a bad Dickens novel with brutish and short as key descriptors of life. This does not seem to be true now when people are still healthy when they retire and hang on for 2 decades or more before eternity.

The first day…..the first month….maybe the first six months……”man…this is livin'” After a year in retirement, when we have read books till we Kindle Callused and played golf/tennis/tai chi till the image palled. 

When you have visited all the places on your bucket list and listened to Bach until your eyes were crossed…. so many retirees, yourself included, realize that the books look blurred, the games are slow motion and the travel budget is competing with the insurance bills. Hmmmmmm.