Many people look forward to retirement. They work hard, save, do all the right things but what EXACTLY do those people plan to do when they reach retirement?
Some people don’t even know. They just look forward to the day when they don’t have to wake up early to go to work. And what do those people finally do when they reach that glorious goalpost?
They sleep and watch TV for 10 hours a day.
But seriously, you ask people what they’re going to do in retirement now that they have all this free time, they can’t really give you a specific answer.
You get the generic response – “Oh I’ll travel, read, paint, write”, etc.
But what’s stopping you from doing all that right now?
Really.
What’s stopping you from doing that all right now?
Sure you can’t do it in full capacity because of your time constraints at work but you can still do it.
You can paint if you want. You can write that novel if you want. You can travel if you want. You can pretty do everything you want to do in retirement right now in some small capacity can’t you?
So what’s stopping you?
Here’s another reason why I don’t want you to wait until retirement to do what you want. You fall into the “when, then” trap. WHEN I retire, THEN I’ll be able to do xyz. You fall into the HABIT of thinking that certain conditions have to be filled BEFORE you do something and we know that life doesn’t work like that at all.
If you live your life like that, not much is going to happen. You’re not going to do anything because life is never going to be “square”. When you die, there will be toothpaste left in the tube. When you die, you’ll have bills to pay. When you die, you’ll have dirty clothes. When you die, there will be uneaten food in your fridge. When you die, there will be books you haven’t read on your bookshelf. Life, no matter how much we want it to be all nice and neat and square, never is and never will be. Get comfortable with that and act accordingly.
Then there’s the logic – what if you don’t make it to retirement? You get a heart attack at work, crash while you commute, a tree falls on your head. What a waste that you didn’t get to do what you really wanted to do!
Seriously.
It’s something definitely worth thinking about.
Then think of it in numerical terms. An average person lives to be around 80 but retires at 65. You spend 81% of your life NOT doing the things you want to do so you can live to do what you want to do in the remaining 19%? And not even in full capacity due to health problems and low energy?
It doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff.
Whatever you’re waiting to do in retirement, you can do it in some small capacity now.
I heard somewhere of a person who decided that for every 7 years of work, he would take 1 full year off and travel the world – something he wanted to do in retirement. I think that’s a GREAT idea. If that’s too extreme for you, maybe do 5 years of work and then take 3 months off or 6 months off. Play around with the numbers. It’s definitely a concept worth exploring and something that can get you excited, something to get you up in the morning so that 40 year work career doesn’t seem so long and dreary.
Another reason to not delay is this. What happens if that something you’ve always wanted to do in retirement, you end up doing it, and it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be? You work your tail off in a job you hate and when that time finally comes to retire, that thing you were thinking of doing in retirement that would be so glorious – isn’t really all that what it’s cracked up to be. What a let down!
But if you “test drove” earlier, you could figure that out quickly and find something that really speaks to you so that you’d have a great time in retirement doing whatever it is that brings joy to you.
And let’s not forget the ULTIMATE reason why you should do NOW what you’re waiting to do in retirement.
And that reason is simply this:
You might run into the possibility of retiring full time NOW.
You try out that something you’ve been waiting to do in retirement, you like it, you get good at it, you find a way to serve others while doing it and eventually it becomes your main source of income.
How great life would it be if you could retire early in that sense and if you think about it, retiring early in that aspect is even better than having the money to retire early because if you just have the money to retire early but don’t know how to best spend that time, it’s not as sweet and fulfilling.
And yes, one could argue you could spend that money finding what you want and like to do but think of the tradeoff in time.
A person who finds that something when he’s 35 compared to somebody who retires at 65 and maybe finds it at 70 but can’t do it at full capacity due to health issues. Money can’t buy 35 years and the vitality youth brings.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that retirement is this grand place where our lives will be perfect and a place where we’ll have all the time and freedom to do what we really want to do.
But it won’t always be like that.
We might have bad health conditions, low energy, friends and family that we knew might’ve passed away early, our retirement nest egg might not be as big as we want it to be, we’re financially constrained from doing what we want to do, there’s just so much unknown out there that we’re taking for granted.
Don’t wait.
You can do what you’re waiting to do in retirement in some small capacity NOW. Don’t wait until retirement to start living because if you haven’t developed the habit of doing what you want to do regardless of whether conditions are right, you won’t have it then when you retire. At retirement, another imperfect condition will pop up that you’ll use as an excuse not to do what you really want to do and what then?
That truly is a life wasted indeed.
So in the words of Red in Shawshank Redemption:
“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
