Retirement from full time work – can you handle it?

A silly question? Of course you can handle retirement. No more enforced early mornings, no more work stress, no more ‘Sunday evening blues’. How difficult is that to handle? But ... maybe, just maybe, this is not quite as simple as it seems.

You have been working all your adult life, building a career, building finances for your future, and probably your family’s future. You have experienced successes, challenges, had responsibilities. At work you matter, your decisions count. Your brain cells activate daily as you respond to the demands of an important job – a role of significance in a team. Your daily routine has been shaped by the demands of the job – logistical, intellectual, physical. Weekends have been welcome breaks from the job routine, different days, days to look forward to.

Your social life, whilst not necessarily linked to the job, is probably with people who also have jobs – maybe similar, maybe not – but whose life routines are influenced by their job in a similar way to yours.Your ambitions, your life goals have probably centred around the job and the family. One helps provide for the other, of course, but there is a mutual interdependence between job and family for many people. Maybe not financially, but in the emotional and psychological sustenance that both life facets can offer to each other.

But things change – and you have been thinking about ‘retiring’ for a while now. The job maybe taking its toll on you, maybe not, but you are more and more looking forward to the luxury of not ‘having’ to work. There is so much you want to do, and you can’t wait to get on with it. Finances have been worked out and things seem to be ok, everything is covered. Let’s go for it!

But wait!

 Is finance the only thing to think about? You have carefully planned and prepared financially for the day when work can be waved goodbye to – but what about the psychological and emotional issues of the decision to change your life so massively?

How crucial to others will your decisions be now?

How will you cope with not being so ‘important’?

What about your social life? – how many friends are still working?

Will your relationship with your spouse be affected – now you are together 24/7?

Or ……… If your spouse is still working will that be a problem?

and the big one ..... How will you fill your days?