Stay Active and Connected

Returning to that visualization of the final 20 or 30 years of your life, there will be a need to feel vital, active, and connected. Experts agree that being vibrant and active are key ingredients to a happy and fulfilling retirement. It’s not how much money you have, where you are living, or even how you fill your time. It’s your attitude. A positive attitude typically comes from staying connected to the world and being engaged in activities that interest and excite you. Retirement expert David Demko has four rules to make sure you stay engaged, excited, and fulfilled in retirement:

  1. Plan to retire from your job but not from your life. There’s all the difference in the world between the two.
  2. Think about what makes you tick, what makes your life worth living. Some of the people we’ve highlighted in this site used retirement to engage in a passion or activity that truly excited them.
  3. Set lifestyle goals. Plan to make your retirement years as interesting as possible. Make a list of 10 things you’d love to do when you retire. If you’re not doing these things now, begin to do them on a small scale so when you retire they’ll naturally expand into even larger activities.
  4. See through the dollar signs. Don’t get too caught up in the financial aspects of retirement planning. You need a nest egg, no question, but you also need your health to enjoy the lifestyle it affords you. Living a healthy life is your first-class ticket to enjoying your retirement years.

To these I would add one more: Plan to stay in touch with a strong network of people who support you. A study at the University of Michigan concluded that the most powerful predictor of satisfaction right after retirement was not health or wealth but the breadth of one’s social network. People who retire need to replace the social connections they enjoyed at work. This means retirees should plan to invest time and effort in meeting new people and staying in touch with old friends. This may include new venues for meeting people, such as continuing education courses, exercise programs, and volunteer work.