Retirement: Are You Really Ready?
A number of Baby Boomers are well into retirement age, while others are contemplating this major life change. Yet our generation seems to also resist age and rest and slowing down; we have invested so much in our careers. Many of us are working far beyond the “typical” retirement age, some because of finances, others because they don’t want to give up their life’s work.
The following excerpt from AARP poses some great questions to ask yourself as you ponder retirement. What will it really be like?
- What will you miss from work? The challenges? The social life? Your authority?
- Will not working make you feel less vital?
- Do you have an agenda for filling your time with your choice of hobbies and interests?
- What will make you rise each day as excited as you were at the high points of your career?
- What ambitions are you waiting to fulfill?
- How do you think your being around the home more will affect your partner, if you have one? What does your partner think?
- To what extent will be you in service to other family members once you retire? How do you feel about that?
From “Really Ready to Retire?” by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners, AARP Bulletin, September 2018
And check out a first-person perspective from our newly retired friend Julie Campbell, in our recent post “This is What Retirement Feels Like.”
By Cherie R. Blazer
Cherie is a late bloomer Boomer, born at the tail end of the Boomer generation. She was playing with Barbies while her older sisters marched on Washington and fought for equal rights, but watched and learned. Now she is an empty nester with a whole new future to explore and share at www.BoomerConnections.com! As “Philosopher in Chief” Cherie merely wants to change the world with this blog: to encourage those of us in the midst of our “second act” to look at life with new eyes, open to a life filled with new beginnings rather than endings, and to apply all we have learned to a way of living that is more meaningful and profound. There is SO much to live for, up until the very end.