Retire in the Middle - Don’t wait ‘til the end
Tom Kilday
A maven, lifelong learner and educator sharing my experiences to help you build your best life. Don't wait to do the things you desire most, time is finite.
Retire in the Middle - Don’t wait ‘til the end
What does retirement look like to you? Is it no work at all? Sitting in a chair on the porch?
Have you thought about retirement? Does your mind wander to a vision of a tropical paradise?
Or are you planning to fish??How much fishing can you do?
Or maybe just sit on the porch enjoying life rolling by
When you think about retirement it is a very nebulous thing.?We don’t have experience with it and we really can’t know what it means for us because someone told us about it or we read a book about it.?It would be like someone telling you what it's like to be married or what it's like to have kids.?I can tell you lots of things about marriage and kids but until you actually experience being married or having kids my words Cant really fully make sense to you.
As you walk out of work on your last day there is an emotional and practical change to how you see the world around us.?You are not going to work tomorrow.?The drive home is different. Waking up the next morning is different.
Sure, for the first few weeks you have so many things to catch up on and so many projects you want to complete around the house.?Maybe sleeping in is your thing or coffee with your friends who have retired, too.?But, eventually you get caught up. How long can this be your only focus? 20 years???
People make lots of financial plans for retirement, but most people do not make emotional, social activity, physical health, mental well-being and relationship plans. It is essential to also plan/consider your time management, goals, and purpose as you head into retirement.
In retirement, you will likely be home more with that person you married.?You spent 30 or 40 years separated by 8+ hours a day at work. Now, you are hanging out again…all day, every day, 365 days a year. How will you create relationship balance??Getting to know your loved one again from an entirely different perspective can be a challenge.?The business of work is done and now it's the business of life you need to manage.
When I ‘retired in the middle’, as I like to call it, I had a plan, but it wasn't as well thought out as it could have been.?Of course, hindsight is 20/20.?That is why I am writing this newsletter - to help you create focus, develop a plan and go forth into retirement in the middle well-prepared.?Some people refer to what I did as ‘my first retirement’ but I don't plan on having a second retirement.?I think I will always do some type of work moving forward because I already had my break and I’ve found that the work I am choosing now fulfills me in a different way than before my retirement in the middle.?Retire when you are young enough to enjoy the fruits of your labor.?Don't wait till the end.
So pre-planning for what you will do during retirement is important.?We did some pre-planning about travel but never took into consideration what I would do when we were not traveling.?Sure, planning for travel is a thing, but not an 8 hour a day thing.?What else did I do?
I walked the dog. Sometimes I walked her for 3 hours a day.?The dog would often look at me and wonder why I wasn't at work and why she had to walk so far each day.
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I read loads of books. Actually, I listened on tape…I mean digital phone app thing…you get the point.?
Here are five that helped me develop financial focus.
Here are five that helped me develop a focus on my purpose.
I stacked wood, lots of wood.?I could listen to the books on “tape” while stacking. I even learned how to build some really elaborate circle wood piles worth posting on Facebook. But how many of these can you build?
I cleaned and reorganized the entire basement.?Tons of rubbermaids and color-coded labels later I called it quits. Once its done - Than what do you do?
I spent (shit) tons of money on buying things because I had all this free time and so many great ideas of what we really needed to make this life better. We really didn't need any of it.?Well, maybe the outdoor sectional, yeah we needed the outdoor sectional.?Oh, and I bought my kids Japanese katana practice swords so I could watch them fight in the backyard while I sat on the sectional.?We needed the katanas.??
What I was missing?
OK, A little psychology here despite not being a psychologist.?Retirement was fun when I was doing something like traveling but when there wasn't anything to do I got inside my head and created problems.?People need problems to solve to remain engaged in life. Otherwise, they will create their own problems right out of thin air.?
People need goals, social interaction, purpose, tasks, time management and direction.?
Sounds like something you get from working, right??The non-busy time gave me too much opportunity to think and what I learned about retirement is that thinking in a vacuum of social interaction, tasks and purpose is really unhealthy. Don’t quit work wholesale. After you retire in the middle, look to modify your work, change your work or quit and do something else entirely.??
Retirement in the middle gives you time to slow down enough to see what is important to you.
If you keep your goals and purpose at the forefront of your ‘retirement’ then you will be better able to make choices that continue to fulfill you when you go back to post-retirement work.?You can plan to keep working until late into your life, but you will be able to find work that fulfills your need for activity, social interaction and purpose and still have time to sit, fish and golf, if that is what you want to do!?
Retire, according to Oxford Languages Dictionary, means to “leave one’s job and cease to work”.?This makes retirement about the time you gain.?After retiring in the middle, I’ve realized the fruits of retirement aren’t really about time but about choices. I’ve learned that I don’t actually need to retire or cease work, but can plan my choices carefully to be fulfilled by the work I choose to do.
In future posts I will share the strategies I used to achieve Retirement in the Middle.???