Halfway Serious Articles

Unsolicited advice on how not to fowl up one of the most important parts of your life

  R-E-T-I-R-E-D

 Yes, it's the dreaded R word. That touchy subject virtually no one wants to discuss until it's too late. Here is the underlying problem. Through the magic of our dreams, by the time we reach retirement age most of us have already fixed in our minds exactly how our golden years are going to unfold. No, sir. We don’t need help from anyone, thank you.

 What’s there to discuss about retirement, anyway?  All you need is continued good health, and enough money in the bank to guarantee yourself a comfortable lifestyle.

 Up until now the subject of retirement has been a nebulous thing, centered mostly on saving money or buying insurance. You pay your premiums, deposit a few dollars in the 401K each week and go on with your life.

 Now, like a spitting cobra, the prospect of trading your life’s work for one of leisure stares you squarely in the face. The time has come to shift from dreams to reality. 

Will you be prepared?

  For openers, there are some good reasons to prepare yourself mentally for retirement. A 1999 study by National Council On the Aging (NCOA) Gerontologists revealed that on average, retirees with a poor mental attitude die some 5-7 years before those who go into retirement thinking they'll be happy. 

This gaunt fact alone seems to place retirement right up there with smoking and heart disease as a good way to shorten one’s lifespan.

   While it never hurts to be a millionaire on gold watch day, it is equally important to be mentally prepared. 

To use a faddish phrase, retirement is a true paradigm shift in lifestyle. In many ways the transition can be so abrupt that you’ll need to act fast to set a counterbalance, or risk losing control of your life.

 A field study of older North Americans by David Counts, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada)  points us in that general direction.  Mr. Counts states, 'Through our fieldwork, we have determined there are three keys to living a successful retirement. You need to have:

 To help you get started in retirement on a sound footing, the following tips may help with your transition to a new way of life:  

Socialization

 What about my friends at work? Will I lose them?

 The work environment fosters a form of forced socialization, where some people interact with you in a positive way not necessarily because they consider you as a friend, but because they know you're going to be sitting in that chair again tomorrow.

 For some people it's a lot easier to pretend to be a friend than to be noticeably rude, which could get them fired.

 In other cases it may be that your work friends don't dislike you personally, but have taken the golden opportunity of your retirement to sever social bonds for other reasons (perhaps not all of the noises you make in the lunchroom are actual eating noises).

 At any rate, be prepared for some co-workers you thought were good friends to almost instantly forget that you exist. It happens.

  This phenomenon also appears in earlier stages of life such as marriage, high school and college; and so shouldn't be something new. Although the situation can at first appear traumatic, the solution is simple. 

Get out there in your new state of mind and make other friends. 

Since your new and improved replacement friends will not have been acquired under the onerous forced socialization rule, you'll have a much better shot at finding friendship happiness.

Social Maintenance

 Grampy is grouchy much of the time because he has become dissatisfied with the way his long anticipated retirement has unfolded.

  It hasn’t exactly turned out according to his dreams. Grampy, a lifelong fisherman, has a problem. Last month state workers drained the big lake that fronts his expensive new retirement home. The lake had become polluted with industrial waste. 

To make matters worse, most of his new neighbors are much younger than Grampy. He says they’re snooty and arrogant. He doesn’t like them very much.

 Grampy no longer has a life because he is now missing two of the three basic ingredients that are absolutely necessary for survival in retirement:

 Unlike Grampy, you should be prepared to handle this situation on the fly. Be ready at all times to adjust your lifestyle, mental attitude and even your place of residence to maintain your retirement ship on an even keel.  

 Practically speaking, there’s not much time to waste in being negative and stubborn about your mistakes. Unlike a committee-driven work life, you must always keep in mind:

 The First Law of Diminishing Returns 

Nothing is going to get better until you do something to make it better.  

 Domestic Tranquility 

  Bill’s largest single retirement battle skirmish was fought on the home front. Besides suddenly finding himself with tons of free time in which to cram nothing, he also had to cope with a high-energy working spouse.

 His wife Marsha, who is a year younger than himself, has no plans for retirement. She enjoys working and thrives on her work.

 So the first few months of Bill’s cherished leisure were spent trying frantically to keep pace with someone who works like a maniac. 

 A massive honey-do list materialized on the whiteboard next to the kitchen telephone. 

 He repaired, painted, stained, remodeled, scrubbed, shampooed, landscaped and reupholstered everything that did not move. He purchased a chainsaw to accomplish item #78:

  78. Make backyard bigger

  While household maintenance is a practical money saving endeavor, retirement should not (and must not) be an endless succession of chores.

 In most cases, you are simply trading your previous boring job for several new boring jobs. It usually doesn't work.    

Rice Bowl Alert

  Retirement is not the time to spend an inordinate amount of your waking hours protecting financial investments from harm. Retirement is all about enjoying the fruits of one's life of labor.

  If you find it necessary to spend more than a few minutes each week managing your retirement fund, you're not retired. 

 At this point in your life you should not enter into any form of high-risk investment that requires constant management.  

Enjoy what you have.  Better still, write a few checks.   

 Greener Pastures

 Mercy! Those first few weeks of retirement were heady and exhilarating. Mary no longer had to force herself to get up at 4 AM and stumble over the cat to dress in the dark, or face a kamikaze run to the office only to be intimidated by folks who seemed only to care about protecting their careers. 

  As Mary looked at it then while the matter was fresh in her mind, she vowed not to consider turning back for any reason. Yet, she knew that in reality every major decision one makes in life somehow relates to money.

 We need the money. We'll do anything for the money. 

 On second thought she said, "To heck with money! Even though I'm not prepared for this, I'm going to give it a shot. I can always eat cat food. I hear it tastes like chicken. Have you heard that, too?”

 So the question remains: How much money do you really need to live a comfortable retirement lifestyle? The obvious answer is as much as possible.

 Unfortunately, many retirees tend to underestimate the true cost of retirement. Other folks simply have never had the opportunity to save enough money to adequately fund their leisure years. If you’re in this situation, you’ve two basic choices: 

 Seriously, you have but one choice. You’ll have to go back to work. However, depending on your age, there is a tidy solution for this problem that works for some people.

 Why not enjoy retirement for about 18-24 months? That's long enough to experience the benefits (travel, volunteering, etc), and enough time to promote a general feeling that you're living a worthy life. After the initial 18-24 month period, casually look for a full-time job.

 When you find a position that suits you (it may take several months) work at it for exactly one year. No more and no less.

 During that time you’ll need to stash away every dollar you can lay your hands on.  After your tour of duty is over, you're ready to re-retire.

 Remember that no matter what the federal laws mandate, you’re now over the age of fifty. If you want to find a fulltime job fast, don’t expect (or demand) high-paying work.

 The obvious advantage in this scheme is that you won’t need to struggle with a permanent part time job that can put a hitch in your retirement git-a-long, and effectively erase all opportunities to travel and have fun.

 Of course, there's always the pain of struggling back and forth through the dreaded shift between  work and retirement. 

However, it beats eating you know what.

 Time Management

 Probably the last phrase a new retiree wants to hear is one that contains the words time management. After all, isn’t that the main reason you retire in the first place, so you don't have to constantly manage your time?

 A strange thing about the human body is that it has a built-in internal clock that always wants to keep you on a precise schedule, no matter what.

 Your body doesn’t know or care that you are retired. Because there’s no longer a compelling reason to go to bed and wake at regular hours, the new retiree may tend to stay up late to watch TV, or indulge a favorite hobby. 

The result is called timeslipping.

 Typically, the phenomenon starts out gradually. You go to bed a few minutes later each night for one reason or another.

 Over a period of weeks and months you find yourself with a growing problem on your hands: It’s 4:15 AM and you’re sitting in front of the tube watching a real estate infomercial as you fall asleep.

 Eight hours later, you wake up feeling much like the proverbial drunk in church, and you’ve missed the entire morning.

 As If that were not bad enough, it gets worse. Another side effect of living in leisure world is that one no longer has a rigid time structure (the Monday-Friday work week) on which to set their external timekeeping system.  

 For example, some time ago Fred went grocery shopping at the local supermarket. As he approached the clerk in the express lane he bade the young lady a cheery good morning:

”Not bad weather for a Friday, huh?”

The clerk looked at him in puzzled amazement. They both stared at the checkout computer screen:

Welcome to Stop and Shop – Monday - July 4, 2005

 If you’re not careful, this will happen to you at some point in your retirement. Don’t worry about it, though.

 Everyone present when this gaffe occurs will get that knowing look on their face, and then quietly attribute the problem to a senior moment.

Entertain-itis

  In this new information age it is important for you to at first go light on all forms of media and entertainment, at least until you think you can handle it in larger doses without throwing things at the media delivery device.

 This includes all forms of entertainment such as television, Internet, radio and newspapers. A good book is a recommended exception. You'll find lots of them sitting on the dusty shelves of your local free public library. 

 Warning: The slow-crawling retirement media addiction worm will creep up where you sit, and bite you where it hurts. Do not attempt to indulge more than an hour or two of media each day.

 Media addiction, while less of a problem for women, can be especially frustrating for male retirees.

 Tom usually rises each morning after everyone has left the house. With an hour or so of total silence under his belt, he is now bored stiff.  Where the heck is the remote control? 

He locates his eyeglasses, and then gropes under the sofa seat cushions for the device:  

Poor Tom settles for Good Morning America and the talking robots again, and makes a mental note to tune in for Blue's Clues at 10 AM..

 In case you've been on an extended vacation to Ursa Major and haven't yet had time to notice, daytime television is not designed for the 50-74 year old male. 

With few notable exceptions, the folks that present you with 500 digital TV channels could care less if you are a live or dead male senior citizen.

 Actually, you may as well get used to this attitude in almost everything you do that concerns the mass media. Remember that you are no longer a vital part of our economic strategy. You’re now a marketing has been. 

 Magazine editors and Internet websites, too, are concerned primarily with attracting young people (18-49), because these are the primary viewers and readers that pay their bills.

 As far as network TV programmers are concerned, you don't exist.

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They Know You're at Home

  You may not be aware of it yet, but that wonderful instrument that hangs on your kitchen wall – the communication lifeline that keeps you in contact with the world - is about to become your mortal enemy.

 Most telemarketing companies are run by sociopaths of the first order, very smart people who do their homework every night. 

As soon as their hired minions manage to ferret out two of the most important facts they need to know about you (your age and sex), you 're in big trouble. You can't escape and you can't hide because they know you're at home.

 And, unfortunately, your Caller ID box only works some of the time to block the calls. When you lived in the working world you had the pleasure of the telemarketer’s company only at dinnertime. 

 As a retiree, you'll have the same pleasure several times a day.

 Fortunately, there’s help on the horizon for this very real and annoying problem.  

As of October 1, 2003,  the date the new Federal Do-Not Call Telemarketing List (http://www.donotcall.gov) becomes effective,  telemarketers will pay up to $11,000 in fines for each violation of your privacy. The list is not a telemarketing cure-all (some businesses and non-profit corporations are exempt), but it’s a big step in the right direction.

 Let Freedom Ring

  What is the single most important piece of advice you can give to someone who is about to retire?

  At any price (and at any cost) you should strive to maintain a sense of personal freedom. 

One major advantage the retiree has over his working counterpart is the relative freedom to do and say what he pleases, when he pleases to do and say it.

 Here are a few do's and don'ts that may help you to enhance and protect your sense of personal freedom in retirement:   

 Do allow yourself to be different.  On occasion do something crazy such as mow the lawn in your pajamas. The result of this exercise may seem silly.  However, soon you'll begin to realize that you are in control of your life. It's a wonderful feeling that everyone should experience on a regular basis. In a nutshell, this is what retirement is all about.

 Do try to remember that you will not (and cannot) live forever. Don’t get so wrapped up in trying to stay healthy that you forget to have a life.  

Do get fired up about something once in awhile. Speak your mind on a pet subject, or write a letter to your favorite Congressman. It’s good for the soul.  

Don’t allow guilt to ruin your life.  Remember that guilt is a powerful influence that marketers and other manipulative people use to influence control over you. While the world of work is all about power and influence, the world of retirement is not. Unless you live in a commune, there is no longer a major social penalty for many types of non-conforming behavior (smoking, eating, wearing a silly hat).  Remember that nobody is watching, and virtually no one cares.  

 Don't just do something. Stand there.  If you've nothing to do, then so be it. It’s easy to remain a prisoner of old habits. We are conditioned through years of work to equate busy-ness with business. Got to go. Got to look busy. Got to say the right thing. It’s now time to throw those notions out of the nearest window.

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