Dear LPG, 

You hear about the loneliness that often affects pensioners as time goes on, but I wonder if any other younger newly retired, pensioners suffer from this ‘affliction’? 

I am a very young pensioner, not in age, but in as much as I only retired four months ago.  But since that time, I find that my family have assumed that I have all the time in the world at my disposal and I keep getting asked to do things that they have always managed to do without my help in the past. 

I have always tried to display a kind accommodating nature I suppose, which has meant that my working life was the frantic rush which left me fighting to fit everything in that I had to do, was asked to do, and wanted to do in, but every family has a corner-stone and, in my relatively large family collection, I have somehow become the family member that the rest can nearly always rely on.  

The problem is that since my metaphoric ‘gold watch day’ I am being asked to do more and more.  In the past couple of weeks, I have been asked to house sit while my nephew is at work so that his new fridge can be delivered and installed without his having to take an extra day off, I spent a week ‘popping’ in to my younger brother’s house to feed the cats each day while his family took a Christmas break, I love having my grandchildren over but they seem to come unaccompanied and for longer periods of time, much more often these days and that is only the start. 
I am beginning to wonder if I have become stuck in a real–life version of that game where each player has a label stuck on their forehead and everybody except the person whose label it is can see what is written on it while they are supposed to guess what their label says. 

My message is to the recently retired who find themselves in a similar situation.  It has taken me two months to take a look in the mirror and work out that mine obviously says ‘Retired and available’ on it and, while I love to help, I also am really aware that these first ten or so years after retirement have to be the ones when I do all the things that I have not been able to do because work got in the way.  I am not necessarily talking about going on a cruise or to university to gain a new degree (although they are not bad things to do with your retirement).  

I advise a need to nip this in the bud and make sure that your time is balanced so that you spend it helping those around you, but also helping yourself.   We newly retired people need to start as we mean to go on and keep tabs on just how much of our time we are giving to the relatively younger, working members of the family and the friends around us.  I bet they managed very well before our retirement time became theirs.  I suppose it is a balancing act, but they need to hear you answer ‘No’ every now and then.

…just a thought. 

KH, New Cross