Retirement Expectations

The other day an old friend commented to me, “Quite the journey you have been on since starting retirement. This was not supposed to happen (in reference to the hurricane).” And it made me think, what was I expecting retirement to be like when I began the journey? And were my expectations societal? Personal? Realistic?

Looking back, I did recognize that retirement meant I was leaving one lifestyle and needed to create a new one. The lifestyle I was leaving was 100% career/work focused with no work life balance at all – no exercise habit, no hobbies, no volunteering, no healthy eating. I had few friends outside of work and with my critical thinking skills, I was always seeing the negative side of things. Yes, I was an overthinking pessimist on everything. This was great for project management (and career advancement), but not so good for daily, stress-free, joyful living.

I expected to continue to work in retirement, as it was an early retirement and that was what everyone expected me to do. So, I created a consulting LLC, signed on with multiple consulting companies, actively worked networking (I had monthly targets!), and at one time was putting in 40 hours a week on projects. At least I could choose the projects I liked doing, but it was still mostly a working lifestyle. I also explored the idea of a second career as a Retirement Life Coach and went through the entire training and certification route. After a few years, I finally moved away from working and declared my work-life balance was, “I worked for 32 years, so now I will live for 32 years.” And it has taken me years to not feel guilty about stopping working!

I “tried on” many things to create an exercise program I would do regularly and identify hobbies I enjoyed. It took a long while to find volunteering that “fit”; volunteer work felt like another expectation of retirement. I recognized my friendships were based on proximity (work!) and consciously focused on making new connections, time and time again as we did the full-time move to Florida and then had many friends leave the area because of the hurricanes.

We planned to do the “snowbird” lifestyle, splitting time in Florida and Cincinnati. Hubby hated the cold and I hated the gray winters in the Ohio river valley. We both enjoyed our time in Florida – my hubby the water-lover and me, because I felt more freedom. We downsized in Ohio to make this happen, but our other responsibilities made it more like 5 weeks back and forth, resulting in me not feeling rooted in either place. I eventually agreed to move full time to Florida, a huge change leaving a place I knew, regular activities I had created, and retirement friendships I had cultivated.

I expected to travel, as it was what everyone else seemed to be doing in retirement. I had the list of all the places I had never visited and “should” visit. (Another societal expectation of retirement?) But we had our cottage in Florida and did the back and forth taking care of two homes, so when was there time to travel somewhere else? I also realized I no longer enjoyed the travel planning, and the actual traveling was stressful as well. Yes, I loved our trip-of-a-lifetime African safari. But other smaller trips had as much stress as enjoyment involved. And so, travel planning went way down on the things to do list.

My exploration into my retirement transition (summarized in my book – still available on Amazon! – link here) taught me tools that made the early years of retirement easier. I still use many of those tools even now, like possibility lists, a retirement lifestyle vision based on core values, and regular assessment of activities against that vision. And that retirement transition process included a “refine” step, which has been helpful as we hit major unexpected life changes, from dealing with cancer to living through the Covid pandemic, and from managing the Big Move to losing our house in the hurricanes. The “Big Move Possibility List” had 110 new things to explore!

My old friend was right, our life today is not at all what I imagined our retirement lifestyle would be when I started this journey. We had to shift our thinking when things didn’t work out as planned and adjust to things out of our control. I’m so glad I decided to actively practice the tools of Positive Psychology (no longer that pessimist; still an over-thinker though), that I’ve had a supportive hubby on this crazy journey, and that we have had the financial security all those years of working provided. I’ve been living more short-term recently (focusing on getting back into our home), but I do wonder if I should think about what the next 10-12 years of our retirement journey might be. Some of those items on the early Possibilities List with a try-it-on mindset did result in many every day, weekly, or monthly routines!

Has your retirement journey matched to your early plans?

Header Picture – for those following the house recovery project… we have drywall! They already started the “mudding” and exterior paint could begin this week (rain dependent). We had to re-think the bathroom’s tile (everything we picked out a few weeks ago is no longer available) and the kitchen design (non-custom cabinet sizes not aligning to our design vision). So it’s been a busy house week… finally!