It really does take a year ….

But the very best piece of advice I can give anyone – my seventh mad retiree tip – it takes at least a year for you to grow into your new retirement lifestyle.

I had assumed it would take a year or so to get the hang of being “gainfully unemployed”.  Other gainful employees I spoke to assured me of the same.  Though some did suggest 18 months to as long as two years

Well, I’m here to tell you that it really does take at least a year to make the physical, emotional, psychological and financial adjustments necessary to feel comfortable with your new and permanent state of affairs.  It takes a year to develop a new mindset – exactly the same amount of time it did whenever you started a new job.   One full calendar year to fall into patterns, to develop some new, bad habits, to get bored with sleeping in to just past the crack of dawn ….

Of course, how successfully you made the necessary retirement lifestyle and psychological adjustments depends entirely on how you have spent that first year of retirement.  If you went into retirement with your mandatory list, with a carefully and fully researched plan, and social network in place, what you find you have at the end of your first year of retirement is an enormous sense of satisfaction and optimism.  A feeling of having just started to accomplish something worthwhile.   A very profound feeling of fulfillment.  What you now have is twelve months of experience and knowledge you can carry forward into year two and beyond.

All because you had a plan.

If you do not go into retirement with a list, or a plan of any kind – I suspect you will not be nearly as content and happy at the end of your first year.  I suspect you will have spent a lot of time in your pyjamas, in front of the television.   At the end of the day the only retirement resource you have is you.

 

 

 ... next time - motivation and scheduling

(sounds an awful lot like work!)