Or do you not intend to? Or have you already? Retirement is coming up for me in a few years, so I’m considering my options.
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OK Boomer has entered the chat. Seems most comments are from those looking forward. I left the paycheck life in 2019. Except for 2020 (catching up on every episode of The Office), I’ve been having a measured good time. I have lucky stars to thank. Got married in ’85. Adopted a daughter in ’91. Wife and I inherited a home when my mom died. We spent 30 years saving for retirement instead of paying a mortgage/rent. Was self-employed the whole time in marketing communications. Wife was a mid-level manager in health services, retired 2 years before me. We spent decades living below our means. I threw the towel in at 62. I think being self-employed (and a one-man show) prepared me for my after work life. I wasn’t going to miss the office life and friends because I didn’t have any, in the conventional sense. These days I work in the garden, getting dirt in my fingernails. I teach QiGong and Tai Chi pro-bono to a dedicated senior group at a local park, and I’m getting a similar gig with the city rec services to do the same. I’m a small-time landlord (one-unit granny flat behind the house). I recently transitioned from Mac to Windows (sorry Linux users, I know…) with great success. I drive a 25 year old stick-shift Toyota truck and hope it makes it to 300K. At 66, I exercise almost every day, and while I could be convinced to take a nap in the afternoon, I never do. My wife is a pickleball queen, and we manage to have lives together and apart. We both have pretty good health for oldies. Several of my peers have died recently, and the end of the road looms closer for me than ever before. My life is devoted to staying healthy and paying it forward as long as I can keep it together.
Least ok boomer boomer I’ve ever seen
This was a good read! I’m also lucky in that I’m part of an actual retirement plan through the state, although I am also putting money away as well. I actually plan on working, but not in my current industry. Maybe give different things a try and just focus on enjoying myself.
I want to grow enough killer weed to tank the local economy.
Sounds like a job / work to me
If you enjoy what you’re doing, you won’t have to work a single day in your life.
I did enjoy what I was doing for a long time, but eventually it got old. It’s like loving chocolate cake but then having to eat it every day for 20 years. Eventually you want something else.
What do I want to do when I retire? Pretty much nothing! I want to watch TV shows and soccer games, play video games, sleep in, take naps during the day as I see fit, hang out with my wife, and shit-post online.
But I know that hobbies, side-projects, and socializing are important for delaying cognitive decline and staying active. So I’ll probably, begrudgingly, do some of that shit too.
Still a decade or two before I can even think about retiring though. And things can change. So who knows.
I am retired and you’re describing me, other than the fact that you’d have to pay me to watch soccer. I watch bicycle racing instead. It’s a damn nice life.
Not starve or be homeless.
Monthly briskets, brewing alcohols, fine overcomplicated precision woodworking with exotic wood inlays because “bubinga” is fun to say, road trips for natural features and new taco joints, painting, restore/modicfy cars, and a concerning amount of day-drinking because that is the only way I can get through the day knowing what the world has come to when I can’t distract myself with any of the other things.
Not die. But that’s a tough ask as my current retirement plan is unaliving.
Whatever the fuck I feel like that day. Maybe some gardening, maybe some backpacking, maybe just laying on the couch and fucking around on my phone all day. The best part of this mythical retirement I’m teased with, is that I wouldn’t have any obligations on a day-to-day basis.
The obligations thing is huge. Like literally anything I end up doing - even work - will be because I want to and not because I need to.
Yell at clouds
I will probably spend a full year doing Not A Damn Thing™. After that, who knows. Volunteer somewhere maybe.
Go to Hawaii.
I can’t even conceive of that. I’d sit and rot until I died. I’ll be working in some capacity until death.
The trick is to work for yourself instead of for someone else. This is what hobbies are for obviously those can be difficult to achieve under the current system of work for literally every goddamn fucking hour of your life other than sleep and eating but I assure you there is plenty of fulfillment to be found doing something for yourself and sometimes depending on what it is you find a passion for you can even turn it into a little side hustle job to make some extra money
I’m afraid that I’ve never had a hobby, I don’t derive pleasure from the completion of tasks. Work is the only thing I really do.
Take care of my body so I can enjoy retirement. I hope I find some things that keep me active in the community. I think I would make and enjoy more art.
Travel, play board games, and watch movies.
Travel. Hopefully I am healthy enough and have enough money to go and live in many different places.
Paint and read, and do political organizing or volunteering. Maybe play some guitar if my hands aren’t fucked up with arthritis. Kick it strong with the grandkids. Probably some gaming too, my dad games quite a bit
