Retirement Is Boring: 11 Things To Do To Have a Happy Retirement
Being retired at 46 almost a decade ago, I am now living the life and in the company of people who are in their 60s and even older who are just living the life of a retired person.I observed that many retired people don’t know what to do with their excess free time and are bored at times.
I experienced this too but found ways of relieving my boredom by being productive and finding a purpose beyond the work that I used to do before retiring.
Here are a few things that you can do to stave off boredom before and after you retire:
Note: These facts were based on what I actually experienced and also observed from other retired people.
11 Things To Do To Have a Happy Retirement:
1. Save as much money for retirement2. Be sociable
3. Keep earning
4. Stay productive
5. Keep working
6. Have an exercise schedule
7. Eat healthy
8. Have a pet
9. Have hobbies
10. Develop a passion for many things
11. Have a purpose
Final Words
The Details:
1. Save as much money for retirement
You can’t solve all your problems with money, but money can solve a lot of your problems. This includes boredom.
For example, a lot of people want to travel the world when they retire, but if they don’t have much retirement money, they can’t do this.
Traveling the world is a good way to relieve boredom from the activities, people and places you’ll already accustomed to, that is why many people increasingly travel whenever their schedule permits it.
But traveling, especially internationally is expensive and not many people can afford it. As you can see, being a retiree with not much money can condemn you to a life of non-traveling even though you don’t have a desire to do so.
The same goes for eating out and indulging in your passions like watching live events. Sure, being a retiree gives you a lot of time to eat out or indulge your passions, but if you don’t have the money to eat out or indulge your passions, you’re stuck with cheap or boring indulgences.
This is the reason why you should save as much money for your retirement, so you can at least have a comfortable retirement and afford even a few luxuries.
This is not to say that you can’t have an exciting retirement with little money, but having money allows you to not only take care of yourself well during your retirement, but also allows you to experience things only people with money get to experience.
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2. Be sociable
Even before you retire, in fact, even throughout your young and adult life, you should be sociable. You should be sociable to as much good people as you can.
This is especially true of the immediate people around you: your family, friends, neighbors, and so on.
A lot of people die even before they reach retirement age and a lot of people also die of old age. This could include the people you know.
Unless you are sociable and keep meeting new friends and acquaintances, your circle of companions would grow smaller and smaller until you only have a few people to talk to.
Having no one to talk to on a regular basis is not only boring, but it can also drive you crazy. This is the reason why there are single people who are lonely and even develop mental problems.
Stay sociable even only if online. Social media is a great way to communicate with someone online. You might even develop friends online who would become your friends in real life.
You might start your own blog, YouTube channel, Instagram account and so on and create digital content.
This is a good way of making yourself busy without spending much money. You can even earn money by doing this.
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3. Keep earning
Speaking of earning money, when you retire, you would likely depend financially on your pension, savings and handouts from your family.
But unless you are receiving other forms of regular income, you might have a gnawing feeling that someday, your money could run out or won’t be enough, especially with inflation.
Peace of mind comes when you know that your financial situation is stable. This means receiving money no matter what happens to you.
But when you retire, you won’t be receiving the same amount of money as compared to when you were still working a regular job. When you retire, you would definitely see a significant drop in your income. Worse, your retirement income might not even be enough to live on.
This is not boring but stressful which is worse. The solution is to find a way to keep earning even though you are retired already.
This might mean investing some of your money, starting a small business or even working part time.
This is a tremendous boost to you peace of mind although it means doing extra work even though you are now retired and supposed to be enjoying yourself only.
But investing, starting a small business and even working part time might just turn out to be exciting for you and something you would enjoy in your retirement age.
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4. Stay productive
Many people think that when you retire, all that you would be doing is relaxing and enjoying yourself.
But one reason why retirees get bored with retirement life is because when they retire, they become idle, lost of what to do next.
Before retirement age, many working people can’t wait to retire. In fact, many people hate working. But there is one thing good about work, it makes people feel productive.
In essence, workers feel that they have worth if not for society, at least for their family or loved ones.
When you retire, you may feel that you lost worth or are no longer useful. You might enjoy retirement at the onset, but ultimately, you might feel useless and bored.
But you can circumvent this feeling by staying productive. For example, you could do the house chores that other members of your family normally do.
The feeling that you get of being in charge of some house chores cannot be underestimated. It makes you feel useful and even needed by the people around you, which is a good feeling.
But you can expand to other productive endeavors like being involved in some community or civic duties.
You can really feel productive when you earn money while also being retired. You can work part-time and partially support your family. This would really make you feel useful.
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5. Keep working
This is why it is important to entertain the idea of still working even though you have already retired.
If you have been prudent enough to save money dutifully and work hard at your job, by your retirement, you would have little need to earn more money in your retirement.
But work is a great way of filling up excess time in your daily life. When you were still retired, work takes up a half of your waking hours during weekdays and even weekends. It doesn’t have to be this way when you retire.
You could work part-time. This way, you still gain workmates who could become your friends, a way to pass the time but not too much, and also to earn money. Plus, its a good way to combat boredom.
While before you retired you worked to earn a living, when you retire, you work for leisure. This means you can leave your part time job anytime you want without the fear of losing your livelihood.
You can even choose jobs out of passion and not money. This is because in retirement, even though you work, your entire livelihood is not dependent on your job.
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6. Have an exercise schedule
When you were still working before retirement, either your brain or body or both are exercised. Office jobs usually exercise the brain while manual jobs exercise the body.
This is a good thing about work: the mental and/or physical exercise you get from it. This is why doctors and other health professionals advise old people to exercise their brain and body the more they grow old.
When you retire, you would likely live a sedentary life which causes your brain and body to stagnate.
The more your brain and body stagnate, the more you are likely to become inert. You would probably stay still for long periods of time doing little, if any.
As you can see, the lack of exercise leads to a boring life. If for example you cannot run anymore because of lack of exercise, you would not be able to do fun activities where running is involved.
The same thing happens if you let your brain stagnate. You wouldn’t for example, be able to cope with the latest technologies in entertainment which requires a certain degree of mental aptitude.
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7. Eat healthy
Not eating healthy food just like not exercising makes you unhealthy also. When you are unhealthy, you don’t get to do experiences that only old but healthy people do.
Healthy people have more endurance to take on physically demanding activities like sports and exercising.
You might be forced to look on while your more physically healthy companions enjoy themselves doing experiences reserved only for old but healthy people.
If you tend to eat junk food or eat food that are not nutritious, you would also tend to get weak and sickly and would not be able to do enjoyable activities that only old but healthy people do.
Retirement age is also the time when your body has already started to deteriorate irrevocably because of age. This is also the time when people usually become health conscious because they actually feel the slow deterioration of their health.
Obey what your aging body is hinting at you. Exercise and eat healthy to remain healthy and lead an active life even though you are already old.
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8. Have a pet
Having a pet is in a way like having a child. Just like you have to feed and take care of a child, you also have to feed and take care of your pet.
It is not uncommon for people to talk to their pets even though they don’t respond. Many people feel happiness when they talk to their pets, especially if they have no one to talk to.
If you used to have children in your life and they have grown up and have separated from you because they have their own families now, pets might just be what you need to rekindle the feeling of caring for someone or something.
But don’t have pets that are high maintenance and annoying. This is especially important since you can’t care for someone or something like you use to do when you were still young.
This is not only mostly embarrassing, but could land you in legal and financial trouble in case your dog injures other people.
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9. Have hobbies
If having pets is too much for you, have hobbies that would fill out your time productively. For example, instead of caring for animals, you can take care of plants.
Plants are much easier to take care of as against animals. All that plants need are sunshine, water and healthy soil.
You can even grow plants that you can eat like vegetables and fruits. You can also choose to grow medicinal plants.
If you are the writer type, you can write and publish books and novels. You can setup a blog or write whatever you want in a website.
If you had a lifelong hobbies which you can’t spend a lot of your time on when you were still working full time, you can devote a considerable time to them when you retire.
But don’t lose yourself completely on your hobbies when you retire. Overdoing your hobbies no matter how much you like them, could result in you getting bored with them eventually.
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10. Develop a passion for many things
When you were still not retired, your life would have been dominated by work and raising a family.
Your mind would be constantly thinking of how to earn more money and what is happening to your family.
But if you are a lifelong learner or even just a common person, you could develop an interest or even a passion on almost everything.
For example, you could turn your interest to the news. You could lose hours of your daily time just getting updated to today’s news.
You could study different fields of knowledge. For example, you could turn to science and handyman YouTube Channels to develop your own machines and tools.
You could develop a passion for cooking, art, investing and so on. You might even start a small business based off what you have just learned.
After learning one field of knowledge, learn another, and another, and so on. You don’t even have to spend a lot of money to do this.
The internet is nearly an inexhaustible source of free knowledge from all over the world especially western based knowledge.
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11. Have a purpose
A lot of people seek purpose in life. While you were still not retired and concentrating on your career and family, you hardly think about your purpose in life.
In retirement, you lose the purpose of chasing after a career and raising a family. Your mind becomes idle and you start to think about much deeper things than just career and family.
Free from the shackles of a work or a family schedule, you life begins to drift from day to day without purpose when you retire.
Having no responsibility to a company and your coworkers, and also having no responsibility anymore to your family except maybe to your partner, you feel like you have no more purpose.
This is especially true if in old age, no one is dependent to you anymore, especially financially. A person who feels they are needed especially financially and socially have a good sense of purpose in life, like being a financial provider, caretaker, mentor and so on.
Find a purpose in old age. It might not be as a financial provider anymore but like as a caretaker. For example, you can take care of your grandchildren when their parents are not around.
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Final Words
Making sure that you have adequate savings and a robust circle of friends and acquaintances is a good way to not be bored and find happiness in your retirement days.
But this is not enough, you should strive to be healthy by exercising and eating healthy as well as keeping busy and productive as much as you can.
Keep to a schedule so that you won’t miss your early life which was filled with career chasing and family raising.
You could find ways of continuing to earn money even though you are already retired. This not only earns you extra money, but gives of a feeling of being financially stable even in cases of financial emergencies.
Have purpose in your retirement age so you don’t drift from day to day being idle and doing nothing with purpose.
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Having to be forced to stop working in my late 40s by failing health I am now living the life comparable to a retired person. Technically a retired person is a person who has reached the age of retirement. This age varies from 60 to 70 in many countries. You can also retire even if you have not reached the specified age but is financially stable enough to take care of yourself...