Contents
Should You Retire?
Can You Afford to Retire?
Retirement Money Management
Retirement Health Insurance
Life Insurance and Retirement
Housing and Retirement
Retirement and Your Social Life
Mental Activity and Retirement
Travel During Retirement
Working During Retirement
Retirement Health
Learn more with these titles from Barnes & Noble
|
 |
 |
 |
|
Retirement and Your Social Life
A full-time job brings structure to your days and to your social life. When you retire, you won’t have that structure, which can significantly affect your social relationships with your spouse, family, and friends. Planning a fulfilling social life in retirement will make your life enjoyable and may even extend it—studies have shown that regular positive social interactions improve overall physical and mental health.
Retirement and Spousal Relationships
Retirement tends to change the daily interactions you have with your spouse. Couples who previously shared only mornings and evenings together may find themselves spending every moment together. You can help smooth this transition by planning out your:
- Time together and apart: Make sure you and your spouse have similar expectations about the time you want together and the time you want to spend alone or with others. Different expectations about how much time you spend together can cause friction.
- Activities: When you’re working, coming home to be with your spouse can feel like a relief. When you’re retired, spending all your time around the house with your spouse can feel stifling. To keep your relationship feeling special, plan activities that you’ll do together outside the house and with others.
- Retirement goals: Couples who have different goals for retirement tend to argue more than couples who have shared goals. Travel plans and major financial decisions, for example, should be made as a couple.
- Household chores: After retirement, the division of labor that kept the house running smoothly may not work any longer. Discuss possible changes to your household responsibilities before you retire, and be open to making more changes afterward.
Retirement and Family
Retirement will give you much more time to spend with family. However, it’s important to remember that your family members may not have that flexibility. Having open discussions about your wishes for time spent with family helps prevent arguments and disappointment.
Retirement and Friends
Leaving the workforce often means leaving behind daily interaction with your colleagues. In addition, if you’re one of the first of your circle of friends to retire, you may find that you have a lot of time to do all the things you wanted to do, but no one to do them with. When you retire, it’s crucial to continue to see your friends and to remain open to making new ones. Studies have shown that friendships impact longevity as much as close family ties.
Staying in Touch with Colleagues
Although it’s easy to say “Let’s keep in touch,” it’s much harder to do in practice, especially when you never had to make plans because work ensured that you would see each other every day. Before you retire, you may want to set up weekly or monthly lunches, dinners, or other activities to see your friends from work. Putting these plans in place before you retire often makes it easier to keep them going once you reach retirement.
Staying in Touch with Current Friends
As with work friends, one of the best ways to make sure you see your friends often during retirement is to create weekly or monthly plans—you might go golfing with one friend on Tuesdays, have lunch with another on Wednesdays, and go out to dinner with a couple on Thursdays.
Making New Friends
More than any other time in adult life, retirement offers the opportunity to choose friends based on shared interests and personal characteristics, rather than proximity. The best way to make new friends is to go to places you enjoy and join groups that are engaged in activities that interest you. Some great places to make friends include:
- Personal interest and activity groups
- Volunteer activities
- Churches, synagogues, and temples
- Travel tours
- Art galleries and museums
Love After Retirement
These suggestions for making friends can also help unmarried or widowed retirees meet people they’d like to date, as can online friendship and dating services. Though many retirees enjoy online dating services, it’s important to be aware of the pros and cons of online dating:
- Pros: Online dating services can introduce you to a much wider range of people because they aren’t bound by proximity. Getting to know one another through phone calls and letters can also help people develop an intellectual bond early in a relationship.
- Cons: Meeting people through friends and other connections offers a safety net that online dating services don’t provide. Choosing a reputable service with an up-front fee will eliminate some, but not all, of the risk. People often lie online, which can cause unpleasant surprises later on.
Five of the most popular and reputable dating sites for
retirees are match.com, Yahoo! personals, www.seniorfriendfinder.com, www.true.com, and www.eHarmony.com. All these sites charge a monthly fee that can range from a few dollars to more than $20.
| Acknowledgments & Disclaimer |
