Retirees, what do you do all day long?

[ducknald_don]

@liberty I'm not so sure about that. My wife was a competitive athlete in her youth (100m in 11.51 seconds) but is paying the price now with lots of mobility issues. Pushing your body to extremes comes at a cost.

[liberty]

@ducknald_don I would not train to become an elite athlete myself. I have tried that before, and it's not fun and gives lots of stress and issues. But learning some techniques to apply as an amateur athlete could probably be nice.

[C40]

To give a brief answer:

- Chill
- Exercise
- Get a lot of things done (can truly get all the things done that I had put on my to-do lists, which was not possible while working).
- Remember to, and actually do talk to family and friends
- Various hobbies. many hobbies. Huge amounts of time available for this
- Reading. A lot at a time if desired
- Extreme relaxation (video games. Doing nothing in a day. etc. In some cases it feels bad/wrong, and other cases is fine)
- More time with girlfriend or for dating

In general, if I don't do something specific right away, I do tend to take a lot more time in the mornings for the start of the day. That includes things like having coffee, sometimes exercising, taking care of garden, reading news or whatever. That time can expand to about 4 hours and it can feel like I take a huge amount of time just to do the initial things before ~'starting the day' - by which I mean starting to do things that are specific to that day. That feels a lot different than when I used to get up for work and very eat/dress and leave for work, in which case that day ~starts within 30-60 minutes after waking. But I did find that after some years, the whole 'start of the day' thing - in that I mean the idea/concept, sort of went away and I don't think about it like that anymore

The mind has strange ways of adjusting. So the change from a working life to not can feel like not much is different, and also that there are huge differences. I've recently started to do something that is like work, which requires a set commitment of time 5 days a week, and a time load of around 40+ hours per week. At first it felt quite strange, but after a few weeks it felt pretty normal, including the big changes to starting the day quickly again instead of in a drawn out way

[Salathor]

Sample day (we are a family of 4 with kids 7 and 3).

7 am: wake up thanks to either the sun or kids. Make coffee, listen to talk radio, and read the WSJ while chatting with wife and kids.
8 am: eat breakfast. Do a little math homeschool with older daughter (my wife does the other subjects).
9 am: putter around with the trailer. Maybe take out the compost. Maybe do a little gardening. Etc.
10-12 am: Go up to the office and work on my coding, go down to the greenhouses to garden, work on projects, etc.
12 pm: Lunch with the girls.
1 pm: Either more coding or a little video games while we have the girls do 'quiet time' (ie, play by themselves and draw, read books, tell stories, etc.).
2 pm: Head back to trailer and hang out with wife and family. Discuss dinner plans.
3 pm: Shower (we have a solar outdoor shower, so got to be early). Have a beer or cocktail.
4 pm: Start dinner. Let the kids watch a show. Wife and I listen to a podcast together while she cooks.
5 pm: Eat dinner. I do dishes.
6 pm: Get the kids ready for bed. Read a book, brush teeth, etc.
7 pm: Head up to office to play computer games or work on coding.
9 pm: Watch a show with wife.
10 pm: Get in bed, read until 11 or so.

This is my 'standard' day, if nothing else comes up.

[Humanofearth]

I got bored. Got fat and played video games.

Now wake up at 5am most days, immediately clean up, journal, wim hof breath, have protein & salt & vit C sugar drink then workout at gym or do cardio and foam rolling at gym.

Come home, eat protein and some carbs.

Go to thermal ice and hot baths.

Come home, hopefully protein and carbs or get my 10k steps and walk to some carbs + fat delicious foods.

Then work or read about monetary things, play with spreadsheets, count calories, workout planning, meet friends to eat more.

Then lights off and lamps only basically after sunset and sleep around 8pm. If I wake up too early, I do my morning ritual then work till the gym opens.

Really focused on health, family, and wealth. Most of my meals are social and typically with my girlfriend. Both of us hardcore on same priorities so it’s great to have the freedom but working is one of my favorite things. Something I didn’t ever feel until well after my first retirement stint.

Travel got painfully boring by the end.

[Did]

I took off about a year and a half for covid. I returned to work because I'm a chicken and I don't feel like I have enough money, but for me there was definitely a period of sit and stare at the wall while you recover from job burnout. So that's also a thing that can happen and it can take about a year to come back to yourself if you were in a bad place when you quit

Burnout recovery was important for me too. I travelled around Australia for 8 months in a van, which was wonderful beyond words. I then took off to live in a stone cottage in rural Ireland for 5,5 years.

Back working now, mainly for extra cash. But I loved my break, and the burnout has gone.

David

[Married2aSwabian]

Just 5 months in on the retirement thing.

DW and I went on an AMAZING 2 month long camping, hiking, backpacking road trip out west.

Each day was unique, each day a new adventure.

Now back in MI for 2+ months with crappier weather, the days involve either getting up early or sleeping in, often getting in about 1-1/2 miles of lap swim, maintenance stuff around the house, reading, woodworking, catching up with friends and family, or whatever I feel like. Pretty nice to have full autonomy over my time.

After 50+ years, however, of school and then work, we are somewhat programmed to go after the next brass ring.

This is where mindfulness helps to “defrag the hard drive” … little by little. Putting away the “should whip” - I should be doing this, I should be doing that. Fuck that.

Don’t just do something, sit there!

[Freedom_2018]

I (now 50) have been retired (all income from investments only) for 10 years and have been location independent.

The first 2-3 years were motorcycle touring and slow long car road trips across the country a few times (some camping but mostly motels/hotels).

Read about house-sitting in 2015 and tried it out. I have a partner and we both love animals and miss having our own after our last cat passed away. Since then we have done over 75 house-sits in the US, UK, Spain and Malta. We continue to do this as and when it suits us.

- In 2017 we walked the width of Spain on the Camino Frances

- In 2020 were just short of finishing the Camino Portugues before COVID lockdowns forces us to return to US....hope to be able to finish in spring 2023.

- Continued to travel and housesit in the US during COVID. The mood seemed much better outside California so spent much of the time outside CA (I remember we were at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and our car was the only one in the entire parking lot. ..I took more pics of the parking lot than of the Canyon itself!).

- A chance encounter with an Austrian world traveling cyclist led us to buy a couple of folding cycles and head to France in Sep2021 to cycle the EV6 along the Loire river. Later that year we rented an apartment in Zagreb, Croatia and stayed there for 3 months (knowing that they were going Schengen meant most likely our last chance to spend that much time in the country). Then went to Belgrade, Serbia and did same for a couple of months.

- 2022, everyone started travelling so we stayed put in California mostly house sitting all over the Bay Area and tending to some maintenance issues and losing some adiposity gained in our travels. Having access to a kitchen to make food really helped and lost close to 40 pounds since June and am below college weight. So I feel there is something to show for not traveling in 2022! Did lots of local hikes and bike rides which was fun. I think we enjoyed California more this way than when we lived and worked here and took it for granted ...what a difference a perspective shift can make!

- Most regular days these days conprise of walking, eating yummy food (btw we lost weight even while eating lots of ice cream, cakes, social gatherings, wines and steaks etc.. just good old keeping an eye on the overall calories. This feels much more empowering than the liw carb regimen that worked previously as it greatly increases our flexibility while traveling in Europe ... most of the world does not eat steaks cooked in butter everyday while being scared to death of carbs to keep fit ), playing with cats, some reading and very minimal portfolio adjusting. Strangely haven't been worried at all about the market even though I think I am down 15% plus in 2022.

- Exploring a move to France since I would like to cycle more in a bike friendly area and see more of Europe. Not a fan of bureaucracy and paperwork involved...maybe there is another way I can get the uoside without a formal move

- My photography has significantly improved and while I now take pics only with a cellphone (always available), my key strength in my pictures is composition. Good compositions make a visual impact that often a lay observer can't quite pinpoint why but does distinctly feel. Most people assume I have a fancy camera and software. Not sure where to take my photography from here other than further honing my eye.

- Have been finding it hard to read as much as I would like. The 2 books that were memorable in 2022 were The Leopard by Guiseppi Lampedusa and The Tartar Steppe by Don Buzzati...both are very worth reading again and stayed in my mind for a long time .. otherwise I have struggled with fiction.

- Oh and I enjoy watching and rewatching old classic movies. Lot of the new stuff does not make much sense to me. Nice to see that a lot of Bollywood movies have improved a lot.

- Sometimes this whole thing seems too easy and I long for a 'real' challenge and I think my brain can occasionally direct that towards some hypochondria...maybe it is a sense that time is indeed fleeting and I only have a limited amount of it. My wish as a child was to be immortal since the beauty of the world was so much to behold that it would be such a shame for it to be over one day....I still feel the same today (why couldn't human lifespan be a few thousand years like the bristlecone pines!... perhaps there is good reason for that ).

On the whole, life is good and I don't miss the office environment at all (with all the woke and diversity and PC stuff I hear thatbgoes on, I probably would be a good candidate for inadvertently getting into trouble! My spirit would have been amputated for sure....and there is no prosthetic for that ). I do miss some good intellectual debate and broad ranging discussions which I mostly now get from older people it seems. I would like to be able to write more (started a blog but...) but writing feels too linear and slow so by the time I want to say something my mind has already processed the gist of it to myself and moved on to something else...why then bother writing it down??..or so my head goes. Maybe I need to slow down my Ne and process my ideas more Ti...I dunno... photography provides much more instant gratification and for it to be good multiple moving parts have to come together just right and at the right time (suits my ENTPish nature more perhaps....but nothing is fully cast in stone including personality).

I just realised that I might be one of the people on the forum who have been around the longest but probably not posted much (so many new names I see). I used to have another handle here too before I forgot the password for that and now have this current handle.

ERE seems ro have come a long way from meeting with folks in Berkeley and Vasona park in South Bay to all this ERE2 stuff etc. The world has really changed in the past 10 years especially.

Somebody wake me up when September comes . I wish everyone old and new a wonderful 2023 and all the best lifenhas to offer.

[white belt]

After 50+ years, however, of school and then work, we are somewhat programmed to go after the next brass ring.

This is where mindfulness helps to “defrag the hard drive” … little by little. Putting away the “should whip” - I should be doing this, I should be doing that. Fuck that.

Don’t just do something, sit there!

This is interesting because it seems like this perspective seems to contradict the views of others on the forum like @Ego and @Jacob. I wonder if the satisfaction that comes from not doing something is a function of needing to decompress or is also a function of temperament? I've seen plenty of people in the working world who are always running around that should definitely take some time to just "sit there", but I've also seen early retirees (e.g. my dad), who would benefit from less relaxing and more doing. Idle hands and so on.

[zbigi]

My guess is that it's largely temperament. Many (most?) people, prefer a life of idle pleasure and engaging with their interests in a light,non-commital way. That's pretty much how the aristocracy and the rich have always lives through the ages.

[Married2aSwabian]

This is interesting because it seems like this perspective seems to contradict the views of others on the forum like @Ego and @Jacob.

Well, I guess the world would be a pretty boring Orwellian place if we were all like-minded clones of each other.

In western culture, we place a lot of emphasis on DOING.

While this is tremendously helpful to get that next promotion, achieve FI, or boost GDP, it’s not necessarily a recipe for happiness. Sometimes it helps to take a break from running around like ants and reflect.

I’ve been working since I was 14: everything from bussing tables to selling high tech automated assembly lines, plus raising a family on a small five acre farm, as the sole breadwinner. Not a ton of “free” time along the way. I don’t regret a minute of it, but having some downtime is important. The “idle hands” trope is complete bullshit, BTW - handed down over the centuries by high priests and aristocracy to keep the lower and middle classes feeling guilty and nose to the grindstone.

The freedom in retirement to enjoy a free-form day, filled with as much or as little as one wants to do is priceless.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to plan our next extended camping/hiking/backpacking adventure! ;D

Edited.

[Ego]

Don’t just do something, sit there!

This is interesting because it seems like this perspective seems to contradict the views of others on the forum like @Ego and @Jacob.

Humans are highly adaptable creatures. Married2aSwabian's Boorstein quote is referencing the fact that many in Boorstein's audience have adapted to the perpetual feeling of overwhelm. Their default response to personal problems is to add more distractions to their lives, and continue doing so until their sub-conscious minds revolt and cause physical or mental breakdowns. Boorstein is encouraging the overwhelmed to stop manufacturing distractions.

Early retirees frequently recognize the overwhelm and the temptation to use it as a distraction, so they find a way off the treadmill. They then experience a pendulum swing from overwhelmed to bored-to-death.

Over the vast scale of human history, very few humans had the luxury to experience this degree of boredom and we are simply incapable of dealing with it in the same way we are incapable of dealing with extreme overwhelm. Consequently, many early retirees return to work. Others do their best to adapt to the boredom and gradually become more and more accustomed to doing less and less. They have no reason to get out of bed each morning and they more-or-less get used to it.

I try to encourage the goldilocks point between the two. Adaptation toward *self-directed* doing. Not for the sake of manufacturing distraction but for the sake of continually building and maintaining a life where I am excited to get out of bed each morning.

I continually search out examples of people who are decades ahead of me and still have that excitement for living. I compare and contrast them with those who seem bored-to-death.

The excited people have a lot of interesting characteristics that we could talk about. As far as I can tell, none of them can just sit there for very long.

[Sclass]

Good thoughts Ego. I need to be more mindful of how I fill my time.

I can recall colleagues who’d toil till 9pm just to avoid confronting their home situation. Overworking was an easy excuse for those with really messed up domestic situations. There were others that ran away from romantic connections citing the great demands at work justify their celibacy. I think they were just afraid of being human. They all kept each other company late into the evening at the office.

Retiring for me was like getting instantly dropped into a vacuum. I could move effortlessly without resistance but I instantly suffocated due to the lack of overwhelming work. I was like a flywheel or engine that just got unhitched and allowed to freewheel uncontrollably.

Some fabrication of work and crisis was necessary to maintain my personal sanity. My system needs some internal drag or it’ll blow itself apart.

Nowadays I have to come up with things to work on. I get a little distressed if I’m not doing anything. I think this has to do with going all out since I was 13. I can still feel my grandma looking over me telling me I have no work ethic, I’m soft because my momma was soft, satan lives in my idle hands, work hard and I’ll be free.

It’s funny how all the reasons for working I was given for the last 40 years have become nonsense. Except for uncontrollable freewheeling and subsequent self destruction.

[DutchGirl]

I can still feel my grandma looking over me telling me I have no work ethic, I’m soft because my momma was soft, satan lives in my idle hands, work hard and I’ll be free.

Goddammit, sclass' grandma, lighten up a bit. Geez.

[Western Red Cedar]

Thanks for writing up this post! You've outlined an FI lifestyle that resembles much of my own vision. Can you elaborate a bit more on your approach/strategy for housesitting? Specific websites you've used, how it influences your travel itinerary, things to avoid, that kind of thing?

[mathiverse]

Thanks for writing up this post! You've outlined an FI lifestyle that resembles much of my own vision. Can you elaborate a bit more on your approach/strategy for housesitting? Specific websites you've used, how it influences your travel itinerary, things to avoid, that kind of thing?

This might be better in a new thread. There are also others who could contribute based on other posts I've seen.

[Western Red Cedar]

This might be better in a new thread. There are also others who could contribute based on other posts I've seen.

Looks like it already exists and @freedom_2018 has a detailed post on it

viewtopic.php?p=195910#p195910

Feel free to offer any updates in the linked thread if things have changed post-pandemic or you have any other lessons learned in the last few years.

[frihet]

After 3 years out of work, I became a university student for the first time in my life last autumn. I'm taking a half-speed distance course on "the history of ideas". It is basically the ideas that have formed western thought since Plato/Aristotle and forward. I'm enjoying it very much, history and religion were my favorite subjects in high school, but then I got practical and choose the trades instead. Being able to study what I want without having to think about it leading to employment is such a treat. Another nice side effect is that it gives me a small grant and loan to invest in the market now during the downturn which gives a bit of extra interest to follow current economics.

For periods I've been doing 7-14 days of meditation retreats at my home mostly, but one at a center. Then it's walks, some exercise, reading, podcasts and some traveling to visit friends and family for days or weeks at a time....Not much is needed and I don't miss work one bit, although I might try something out as an adventure in the future, but there is no movement in that direction at the moment.

Another little project is that i started journaling with John Michael Greers freely shared material. It is intense work called Spiritual Alchemy going through Blame, Shame, and Guilt to begin with, but if stuff comes up there is plenty of time to process it thanks to this blessed lifestyle.

https://octagonsociety.org/preliminary-lessons/

Then there is dating, being so highly introverted it is a treat to have the social energy to see several women at the same time. And if one drops off there is a curiosity to go on a new date......

Curious if there is anyone else who has started to study just for fun and interest after retirement? I realize that this might be something that is only feasible in countries with free education.

[Married2aSwabian]

@frihet, great post. There are some topics, such as behavioral economics, that I would find fascinating to audit at a school like Michigan, but that would be pricey. Will have to check around.

How are the meditation retreats for you? How does your practice change after so many days in a row?

I struggle a bit with my daily practice, but it’s still the best way to start the day! For nearly three years now, I sit for about 20 mins each morning. That is what I meant in my above post by, “don’t just do something, sit there”. Doesn’t mean we sit around doing nothing all day, just that we sit to clear our heads to pay attention to what’s going on!

Also, I’m guessing your gonna get a whole bunch of follow up questions on the multiple girlfriends for introverts comment with this crowd! ;D