Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
At the same time though there are people who would have no idea what to do with themselves when they're retired. They want to work as long as possible.
It gives them a reason to get up in the morning, something to do. Its their routine.
To each their own.
|
I feel like on occasion it's worth ensuring a retiree has a good routine though. I hope I'm not fear mongering, but I feel like there's a significantly higher risk of male retirees dying early if they don't have a routine during retirement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
My dad retired early this year and he's at a loss for things to do. I've never seen someone so committed to tracking down slighlty cracked door jambs and chipped fence paint to fix. Personally, I could probably work away at random backlogs for a decade of retirement before I ran out of things to do, but in my dad's case I almost get the sense he misses working.
|
I think it's a combination of the two. Some people barely do anything other than work, so losing work is losing a major part of their identity and social life. Others put only what is needed into work and thus it's not too difficult to remove it from their life.
On a side note: GuaranteedEV, not to pry, but I'd suggest you keep tabs on your dad. That level of boredom is not healthy IMO. You might want to look into a part time job your dad could do (handyman stuff? Hardware store?) or a major project he can work on to pass the hours so he can better ease into retirement. Something that gives a good routine until he can find things to do other than work as a normal routine is a good thing.
When I have the retirement conversation with people, there's many who refuse to retire due to fear of boredom, and those ready to drop all things at the retirement date with no idea what they will do. I've often talked to people about the idea of staggering their vocation from full time to part time prior to making the jump. The reason for this is that there seems to be a lot of men who are newly retired who randomly drop dead from natural causes. If there isn't a specific reason to wake up the next day, the body might literally say there's no reason to wake up tomorrow, period. That's a scary thought. Having a routine for retirement is pretty important IMO.
I don't know the science behind it or if I'm leaning on false info, but I assumed that when you've spent decades of your life wound up and ready to go at another day of work, you're at a certain level of constant fight/flight attitude. But if you end up in a situation where you suddenly relax and no longer have a wound up fight/flight attitude, your body may relax too much and you end up dead via heart attack or stroke or something.
Maybe it's like an additional shock to go from working to full retired in a day. Possibly it's like how hot to immediate cold can shatter a glass baking pan, but hot to room temp, then room temp to cold is no big deal.