RETIREMENT | ONE YEAR LATER
The First Anniversary of My Early Retirement
Was it the right decision? You bet
Since I decided to pull the plug early and begin my retirement, I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked, “So how’s the retirement going?” or “Do you think you made the right decision?” I usually respond with a big smile and raised eyebrows. “What do you think?”
I think the reason I still get those questions is that it wasn’t an easy decision for me to walk away from my successful career. And because I know that many of my friends and former coworkers are contemplating the same thing or are jealous that they will have to wait a few more decades before they can walk away.
Time has flown by. I find it hard to believe that a full year has passed already, but I can honestly say it’s been everything I could have hoped for. More or less.
There’s nothing better than waking up when my body wants to and not when my alarm goes off. Then I have the luxury of wondering, “What will I do today?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all playtime, there is some structure to my days. I think I need that to assuage my guilt. Yes, there’s guilt when you are told, from a young age, that one of your missions in life is to get a good job. Ah, and then what?
So I wonder if some of my health problems this past year can be blamed on post-retirement guilt. (Did I just make that up?) In the past year, I’ve had surgery to remove some lipomas from my arms, emergency surgery for pancreatitis, and I’ve been diagnosed with BPH (Benign Prostatic Hyperdosis — a severely enlarged prostate) and may need surgery. Oh, and I’ve been diagnosed with tendinitis and have been seeing a physiotherapist, acupuncturist, and chiropractor for several months to treat that. I was told it may be related to scrolling on my phone more than I have been used to. I wonder if my body was just waiting for a break from my working life before it started to break down.
But really, what could I expect? I have to keep telling myself that I’m now over 60 and my body is not the same one I have used and abused for much of my life. Things don’t quite work the same and my strength and stamina are waning. But that doesn’t stop me. I just have to slow down a bit.
One of the other things people who know me ask is if I have done much traveling since I retired. I haven’t done as much as I’d like, but I did spend over three weeks traveling through France and visiting with family in Paris. It was my first overseas vacation in three years, thanks to the pandemic. I also spent a relaxing few days at a friend’s cottage to decompress, starting the day after I retired.
This year I’m planning to do the Camino Portugues, 160 miles, or 280 kilometers long. I’ll be walking every day for about two weeks.
After that marathon, I think I’m going to need a holiday, so I plan to visit a few places in Spain that I haven’t seen yet, and then head to Morocco for a couple of weeks. Does this sound like a trip for the average senior citizen?
Retirement has reignited my love of creative writing. I always wrote for my career in journalism, but that was all about the facts. Now I can write about whatever I want whenever the mood strikes me. I found Medium just before I retired. It’s a site where I can post my creative writing, with a supportive and talented community that not only inspires me but also encourages me. It has given me the confidence to continue. I’ve found I can also combine my love of writing with my love of photography to tell some of my travel stories.
The biggest hurdle I had to get over before deciding to take early retirement was the financial one. After I made the decision to walk away from the work-a-day world, my investments peaked at the end of 2021 and since then they have been on a steady slide and only recently started to stabilize again.
So now as I enter into the second year of my work-free future, I think I am on the right track. My finances are still in pretty good shape and I have found a hobby to give me a reason to get up every morning.
When I was in France, I learned that the average retirement age was 62, which I am now. Violent protests have broken out recently over plans to raise the minimum age, to receive a full government pension, to 64. People are upset because retirement in France doesn’t mean that someone is being put out to pasture. It means they can begin their second life at an age where they can still enjoy themselves. I can’t argue with that, with or without an early government pension.
If you want to read more about my plans to walk the Camino, I wrote about it here…