Dear LPG, 

With 2 years of being retired behind me, I have come to the conclusion that leaving work for the last time can either make one feel really liberated or really depressed.  The thought of not having to get up, dressed and out at an unearthly time of each weekday morning ever again can be a good thing, but all those retirement cards lined up on the sideboard on that first morning when you have nothing specific to do can be more than a bit depressing.   

Even if you have planned the cruse of a lifetime, that trip to see your long lost relative that lives on the other side of the world or some other exotic post-retirement extravaganza, it will come to an end all too soon, often leaving you with that same anticlimactic feeling in its wake. 

There is something special about feeling useful to someone else which gets lost when you stop having to produce your quota of goods, do a certain amount of work or sell a minimum number of items each day.  Working is predominantly about getting paid but your pension, albeit less than you expected it to be, is all but sorted and you don’t even have that as a definite incentive anymore.  

I admit to spending a few weeks enjoying getting up without an alarm but I soon became bored of that routine, and I think that that is when all that spare thinking time turns into time to worry about how you are going to manage financially and what you are going to do with the rest of your life.   

There are a few ways that your life can go from there depending on if you are going through the process alone.  That does not necessarily mean living alone.  I think that the transition can be harder for the partner whose other half still has a few years to go.   At the end of their working day, they will be telling you how lucky you have it while dinner times consist of your being told about the really busy and involved day that your partner’s has been while you have little to add to such a conversation.  

While the retired ‘new men’ of tomorrow will, among other things, have had more of an opportunity to spend time with the other Dad’s delivering their children to school, find more other men shopping when they are in charge of that duty and worked from home affording more time to know some of their neighbours, those about to retire now are likely to have been so invested in their work that they have few friends to fall back on once that tie is broken.   

Then there are those who have large and more local families.  This can mean school run duties and house sitting while online shopping is delivered amongst other responsibilities.  The rest of the family, will be aware of all that extra time you have to spare and make really good use of it before you have time to take stock.     

Perhaps the most important thing that we who have gone before can do is warn those people who we know are about to take this particular plunge and emphasise the wisdom of making sure that a new retiree carves out a routine for themselves, or at least sticks to the plan that they had made in preparation for this milestone life-event.   

If you are reading this, the chances are that this is all history to you now and I wonder if you think, having passed through the experience and reached the other side, that there is anything you could have done to have improved it.   

Often they won’t have an inkling of what is to come so, if you have a friend or family member who is going to be doing it sometime this year, perhaps you might have a little wisdom to share with them… 

EN, Lewisham  

 

 

EN found some online advice that might help…

 

 

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