After the positive responses and congratulations on my Retirement thread, the idea came to me that there should be a thread that helps everyone prepare for the eventuality of retirement.
There were many great ideas, comments and great suggestions that came out of the conversation. What I would like to do is put this here as a repository for information for anyone who is:
Ready to retire
Close to retirement
Beginning to plan for retirement
One of the things I came to find out is that no matter how much I had thought I was prepared for retirement, there were still things I had not pondered or prepared for.
So this thread is for all your questions, comments, advice to help others that are close to retirement.
I mean....this board is about a year and a half away from being around for a quarter of a century, and many of us who have been around are there already.
Originally Posted by TrebMaxx:
I just submitted my papers. One month and 7 days to go.
Bravo! I spent my retirement day, pressure washing my fence then chilled with a few grand kids. You just can't beat retired life. Good luck to you. [Reply]
Quick serious comment that has not been addressed yet, but I feel the need to bring up to all of us.
On Tuesday I went to lunch with a local buddy of mine who retired about a year ago. I thought it a bit odd that he would just call me out of the blue and ask to have lunch, but I thought maybe he was trying to get started again on our regular lunch meets we used to have.
I could tell by looking at him something was wrong....he didn't have his normal jovial persona and his face looked worn.
Long story short...he is struggling mentally with his self worth and his place now that he is retired. He feels like he is no longer contributing positively like he did when he was working....for some reason a job and a paycheck was his emotional identity and after a year of doing, as he put it, "selfish things only for me", he had gotten down on himself.
I listened....just talked when he needed me to. Man did stuff come out that I could tell he needed to vent. Then I took him to meet the Counselor from our church and introduce them to each other. Our guy handed him his card and said...."when you need to talk, call me." Nothing more...just his way of saying come talk to me when you need to. (Our church has many people my age who are in retirement or getting there and developed an outreach program just for that group)
To sum up...if you have friends you see that are struggling like mine was, make sure to keep in touch with them. We will all eventually have times that we struggle in retirement and it's no shame to admit it. [Reply]
My memory loss has gotten a lot worse the last couple of months and I had to to give up control of Arrowhead Kingdom. I'm making mistakes that I have no idea why I did that. I've got a great leadership crew to take over. They'll take it places I never could of. So it looks like it will survive post BRC.
That's the first time I've really felt "old". I figured I could spend more time on our international surge in retirement. Alas, it was not to be.
I am loving retirement though. I enjoyed my work but it was stressful. Don't miss it yet. [Reply]
