I Met the 1st ADHD Retiree in His Mid-50s. He Shared These Struggles with Me.

A rare encounter I stumbled upon

Retirement has been a fascinating topic for me.

I met many people from all walks of life due to this passion project on the side. It started because I was intrigued. I wanted to know what retirement life is [really] like.

• Is it as beautiful as the media says?
• Is it as romantic as I envisioned in my head?
• Or is it as heartbreaking as my Dad’s experience?

I derived one conclusion from real life after 100s of conversations with real retirees.

There are no simple answers.

Will convinced me so.

William, or Will, the Self-Confessed ADHD Retiree.

He is known affectionately as Will to many of us.

This is one chirpy chatterbox with never-ending topics to engage us with.

To the younger ones, he talks about Swiftonomics. To the older ones, he goes big on workplace discrimination.

There is always a topic for everyone, for anyone.

And he speaks fast. Really fast. It is near-impossible to interrupt when he is at full-throttle. You will feel as if you’re standing at a railway track while a bullet train is coming your way.

And.

Will is always on the move. Always.

He cannot sit still. A casual 2-hour long coffee catchup in a café kills him.

“I believe I am an ADHD, Aldric. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that. I simply know. And I struggle with retirement because of that.”

I agree.

Will has to move. When he is not speaking at bullet train speed, his legs shake. I know because the café table trembles, and I see Tsunami waves in my cup of coffee.

When his legs stop shaking, his hands are busy. He would be extracting his notepad from his bag and trying to explain an idea to me with pen and paper.

“Will, are you always on the move?”

He laughed.

Quite loudly, too.

“I think better with movement.”

The Struggle with Something to Do is Not Divorced with Money

This is one recurring theme I extracted from our conversation.

Will does not have any issues with retirement finance. Generally, he doesn’t. I did not hear any laments about investing, personal finance, or any holdings that got sliced by half.

There was none of that.

Will’s struggle with retirement life is more, should I say, down to earth.

Is money an issue? Yes, it is. But it is because he is on the move. And to do so, he must spend.

Firstly, he is athletic.

Will is athletic beyond his age.

He goes to gyms, runs, swims, bikes, plays tennis, plays beach volleyball, does line dancing, and does rock climbing. Will’s bulging 56-year-old biceps put me to shame.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

An active lifestyle is a good thing — I have no doubt.

But it never crossed my mind just how expensive it can get.

“I got 2 road bikes at $8k each. They require regular maintenance, too. I run marathons overseas twice a year. Dance classes? They cost a bomb. And oh, premium washing power. My wife says I stink.”

This is only 1/2 of his story.

And already my knees are going jello.

I started wondering whether my chosen sports would eat my retirement wallet alive. I thought they wouldn’t. After all, I am hopeless with sports requiring a weapon attacking an object (a ball, let’s say).

I run. I swim.

That’s it.

But Will has something to say about that.

And he got me thinking.

“Running is not that cheap, too. I have to change shoes every 6 months for the cushioning. And I go for physiotherapies to relieve muscle tension. 10 sessions a package cost me $900. I cannot save on that, too.”

Oh, wow.

I never thought about that.

Are you planning for an active retirement?

You better have a war chest.

“I Struggle to Do Nothing.”

Will did not mention this.

I already know.

And I suspect this ties in with his overall personality in retirement.

• He must be moving,
• Activities he engages in require higher daily spending,
• He must top up his investment income because of higher spending.

This is genuinely fascinating to me. I never considered sports expenditure to chew up my retirement fund. I thought about food, transport, mortgage, and medical.

Sports? Nay.

“Will, did you budget for your unbelievably high sports-related expenditure when you were younger? I mean, your numbers… are crazy, crazy high. I still cannot believe my ears.”

He looked at me as if I had gone bonkers.

I gave him that.

I nearly did.

“Aldric, don’t be a nut. Who budgets for that? I never expected to run a Marathon in Berlin at 55. And I never knew I would be addicted to rock climbing at 50. At 50! Who knows?”

Will is precisely right.

Who knows?

His wife got annoyed because Will’s expenditure during retirement did not decline from pre-retirement levels, as most media reports say. Ironically, it shot up.

And so, they quarreled frequently.

Why? Because they share the same pot of money for their Big R.

Their quarrels forced Will to get part-time work to refill the depleting pot.

The strange thing is… Will is happy with that. I suspect it has to do with his ADHD-driven personality. Doing nothing at work kills him. He is better off working.

That is the best situation for him. I think.

Then again, he is the 1st ADHD retiree I have met.

And so, he might be an outlier.

I don’t know.

His retirement story is [rather] strange to me. Of course, I say this with due respect.

The Close

Will is the most physically active retiree I have met so far.

I see it as a good thing. Keeping our bodies supple and strong and having our brains well-oxygenated trumps a sedentary lifestyle at all times.

That said, I never connected the dots.

I would have never expected an active lifestyle to be expensive.

And maybe… it is time for me to reassess my retirement planning.

My retirement war chest could be woefully inadequate when the time comes.

Who knows?

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