What does retirement look like for you?

[SueEllen]

Please apply for First Dates. I can you you and Fred having a bit of a bromance

Whorty you would be great on there.

You've already been on telly so you can cope.

Just don't wear a certain outfit....

[_V_]

Retirement for me begins early next year. My plans are as follows:

When the weather is good, I will spend most of the day outside. Cycling, walking and hiking. Visiting old castles, stately homes, arboretums and nice market towns. Will be moving soon to the coast too. I also am crazy about gardening and more ambitious projects like landscape gardening. Have some big plans for a big plot to redevelop.

When the weather is bad, I still have interests in IT, but not really aligned to may bread and butter skills. Will be getting into science, engineering and AI subjects and building robots and other machines that interest me. That's the mad scientist in me dealt with.

Then there are the duvet days when I will smile and think about the IT workers getting up early to spend all day as a slave to a computer monitor to some ungrateful permie manager. Will really enjoy those mornings.

Then there is spending more time visiting family, and also some of my friends have already taken a very early retirement (they are ex public sector with stonking final salary pensions).

Time will be spent traveling overseas too, especially city breaks which I really enjoy with the wife.

It certainly helps that I have built up quite some pension, investment properties and other money, so really it's not having the time now when working to spend it in an enjoyable way as I see fit. Plans will adjust day by day as the whim takes me. Cooking one day, reading another, DIY projects, whatever the hell I like. Work wastes 1/3 of your life, being with people you often don't want to spend time with, doing tasks that bored the pants out of you for money you might never get to really enjoy.

This will be me every morning before planning an enjoyable day.

[vetran]

Work wastes 1/3 of your life, being with people you often don't want to spend time with, doing tasks that bored the pants out of you for money you might never get to really enjoy.

[/ATTACH]

here you go this makes me smile

Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.

― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

[_V_]

It also warms my heart there are so many highly paid IT workers here working solidly through their 50's, 60's and even 70's. Paying a ton of income tax and national insurance to fund infrastructure I will be making the most of, then dying at their desks, selflessly putting others first.

[BR14]

It also warms my heart there are so many highly paid IT workers here working only on selected, interesting projects. Paying a ton of income tax and national insurance to fund infrastructure I will be making the most of, to top up already very generous pension income to support their luxurious lifestyles

FTFY rawprawn

[d000hg]

I'd love to retire. Just keeping on top of the garden and house is a fair amount of work that I quite enjoy - manual skills so different to what I do every day.
I'd love to get good at music, and have interest in writing both songs and fiction one day.

[_V_]

I'd love to retire. Just keeping on top of the garden and house is a fair amount of work that I quite enjoy - manual skills so different to what I do every day.
I'd love to get good at music, and have interest in writing both songs and fiction one day.

Yeah, it's amazing how good manual labour doing what you enjoy can be. At the end of the day in IT I feel like a worn out husk. A day spent "working" the garden I feel fantastic.

[xoggoth]

Been here for years for me.

Do lots of walking. Outdoor volunteer stuff - maintaining local open access areas, footpath inspections and repairs for council. Old fart stuff - art group, karaoke. No writers club since our leader croaked unfortunately. Trips with loony old lady friends.

I like doing IT, spent ages doing walking map thing based on Bing Maps API, loads of features. Currently doing new payment system on small business website. Not sure what I'll do when that's finished.

[DoctorStrangelove]

What amuses me most is that despite all the money I spent on electronicy bits & pieces before retirement, I've spent most of the last two and a quarter years gardening and fettling the garage and tin shed into some vague resemblance of usability.

It's quite fun in its way and quite removed from embedded software & electronic design.

Went through £500 in B&Q last month, and there's more to come.

[Whorty]

51 and fit you can still be very active.

I actually love travelling alone especially historic sites. My family tend to get bored looking at 1000s of year old artefacts, I can spend all day.

So maybe concentrate on travels on stuff you personally want to see and / or find like minded people. I prefer to take my Family somewhere they want to be.

I was lucky enough to travel for work doing installations and fixing issues. I saw some great places you wouldn't normally go and ate with the local workers.

My ex Neighbour used to help on the Bluebell railway, another neighbour runs a charity which is always looking for volunteers, we volunteer for various youth organisations. I used to volunteer for Foodbanks.


Glad you are getting there. Helping other people will definitely help.

Unfortunately all this is easier said than done when you're on your own. I'd happily go out for the day somewhere that Rach wasn't that interested in when she was alive, because at the end of that day there was someone at home to talk to later about the day, and what you saw. Not quite the same when you walk in the front door and the house is empty, and all you can talk to is a photo on the wall.

And travel alone again is not as easy as it may seem when you're so used to travelling with someone else and sharing the experience. The guilt alone that I'm seeing something new/interesting or whatever and Rach can't is hard to cut through.

This is not a pity party, it's just the way things are for many new widows. It gets easier apparently, but the 'firsts' are always the hardest.

One reason I've gone back to work full time is to put some structure back into my life after all the years of caring; some familiarity. With structure will come the ability to do things alone, then when I am ready to find a different path then it should be less of a shock to the system.