The time has finally arrived. After working and saving year after year, your retirement fun is about to begin. Or is it?
Here are five unexpected surprises that could interfere with your ability to enjoy retirement:
1. Financial independence and retirement are not interchangeable.
Just because you have reached retirement age, meaning you are eligible for Social Security and able to withdraw your retirement savings without penalty, does not mean you will have the financial independence and freedom of a young dot-com millionaire. The reality is that you will likely have less disposable income in retirement than when you were working.
2. You feel as though you have lost your identity.
Retirement can be a difficult for transition for those who spent most of their life at work, talking about work and socializing with co-workers. Work was who they were, and now they are struggling to create a new identity. Fortunately, the Internet makes it easy to find retirement hobbies, activities and friends through such sites Meetup.com.
3. Traveling and taking vacations may not be as much fun in retirement.
When you were working full-time, remember how much you enjoyed planning your next vacation. But was the planning actually more rewarding than the vacation? It is possible that the need to think about and escape from your retired life might no longer be as necessary. It may actually start to seem like work!
4. You have too much free time and being with your significant other 24/7 isn’t as much fun as you thought it would be.
It is a shock to the system to wake up one morning and realize you don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time. But after decades of waking up and going to work, you are now at home 24/7 with your significant other. And now that you finished all those household chores and projects you never had time for while working, what do you do? Many retirees decide not to retire after all. But instead of working 40-60 hours a week, they start their own business or volunteer on a part-time basis. Resources like volunteermatch.org can help you find worthwhile and interesting ways to spend your time outside of the home.
5. You are more anxious now about your retirement because you are starting to spend your savings for the first time.
Now that you are retired, your life should be worry free right? As much as you tried to think of everything when planning your retirement, if you are like most people, you forgot about the final step of making final funeral and burial arrangements. Just as there are many websites to help you find volunteer opportunities and explore new retirement hobbies, services such as memorialplanning.com make it easy to find a cemetery plot. The retirement fun comes only after all of the preplanning is done!
