Since people have brought up finances, it is also good to figure out how much you will actually likely SPEND in retirement, in a realistic manner. I tracked all my spending for a year or two before retirement, but if you only use a credit card or two it could be easy to do after the fact.
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My plan is to go part time at 55, in three years, when my youngest finishes high school. I don’t think I’d want to be home full time, but teaching every other day and having half the week to myself sounds awesome.
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I worry we could easily spend more in retirement, especially if we travel. I’m trying to wind down my business. (I’m self employed.) DH retires at the end of June. I have plenty to keep me busy, I already spend a couple of hours a day learning Spanish and a few hours a week painting.
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To me, not having a schedule is one of the biggest advantages of being retired. I absolutely love that I can wake up when I want to (most days - we still do church on Sundays), and decide on that day if I want to do what I thought about doing or not.
I love being able to be on trips and if a delay happens, it’s not a big deal at all. Plan B to Plan F (or higher) is part of the fun. We’ve had to miss nothing due to needing to stay on schedule. We’d have missed a bit if we had to be home on time.
I love being able to decide on the spot that we want to do X without having to figure out when we can do X.
I’ve never needed an alarm to wake up because my body has some sort of internal alarm clock (even if I need to be up at 3am for something unusual), but there’s something that’s just pure relaxing to not caring when I get up, even if it’s almost always between 6am and 7am. Ditto with not caring if I get to bed at 10pm or 1am.
Work was fun. I truly enjoyed it. But now I think it’s part of my past, because I really like being able to be fully Type B and there’s a lot still on mu bucket list that I want to do.
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Because I started planning/dreaming about retirement from the first day of my first job, I was never concerned about how I would fill my time when I jettisoned the very thing that was keeping me from the life I desired. I never wanted to work and hated every minute of it. For me, leaving the workforce was like stepping out of jail after decades of confinement and forced labor.
The first thing I did was SLEEP. I think I slept most of the first three months. Just turning off the alarm (and never turning it on again) was liberating. I vowed to do absolutely nothing for the first six months, just luxuriate in the absence of a schedule. It delighted me to get up when I wanted, shower when I wanted (or not), shop in the middle of the day, stay up late with no concern for the morrow, read to my heart’s content, take naps, lunch with my mom/friends whenever I felt like it and, best, lose the sense of days (every day is Friday). I was giddy with freedom.
It’s six years later, and my life is exactly what I was longing for in my twenties – permanently unscheduled time to do whatever I please, and whatever I please happily fills my days.
On a previous thread, we talked about concerns for establishing routines and feeling productive in retirement. I think “productive” and “routine” are work/job words. I left these behind, too. For me, retirement was not about replacing one routine with another or feeling any pressure to be “productive,” whatever that means. I think these concepts put unnecessary stress on what should be your glorious freedom. And that means freedom to do whatever you want whenever you want, even if that is absolutely nothing–or what looks like nothing to someone else. I think retirement is a time to ask yourself that classic question: What would you do if you knew you could not fail? Rephrased: What would you do if a paycheck no longer mattered? The people I know who are truly embracing retirement for all its worth can’t tell you what they do with their days but are astonished by how time flies. They joke, “I’m not sure how I ever found time for my job.” They are fully engaged with family, friends, and community, and they do some wonderful things, but retirement looks very different for each of them. There is no “right” way to enjoy this new phase of your life, so don’t burden yourself trying to justify what you do with your time. It’s yours at last. In the early months especially, I would advise that you simply enjoy that extra sleep, linger over those cups of coffee, turn off the clocks, reconnect with old friends, pick up a book…feel that freedom. And don’t worry, retired life has a gentle way of drawing you toward where you need to be and what you should be doing, but you have to slow down and let it.
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Funny how we all are different, isn’t it?
I’ll set the alarm in retirement (most days) still because I LOVE Morning - I could care less about 11pm most days of the year. That plays out in most weekend days and off of work days now.
I love a checklist and to me, as seen in my retired husband, no checklist or planned schedule = confusion and disorganization.
Outer order, inner calm. 
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I needed an alarm to get up at 4:30 every morning, but my body won’t let me sleep past 7 at the latest. I, too, am a morning person, and that first cup of coffee and catching up with the herd here is a pleasant way to start my days.
That’s my (anal) mantra, too, @abasket.
I literally said this a few days ago
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OP, I could have written your post! I quit my “big” job in last April, gave 3 months notice (too much) but was offered a lovely, low-key job in my industry while in my notice period. I had been planning on taking the summer off and then re-evaluating in the fall. Instead, I finished old job on a Friday and started new job on a Monday. And I love new job! Fantastic company where i had worked many years ago and still had many friends, my group is lovely, the work is easy enough for me but I still have enough to learn that I enjoy it. I really love my industry - it’s fun and interesting and I can’t imagine walking away from it.
But I am burned out. I am really tired. The post above about just sleeping for a few months - oh! That sounds so wonderful. Burn out is a real thing. I am addressing it by being conscious of my workload. Just because I am capable of doing a lot more at this job doesn’t mean I need to raise my hand for every project. I block time in my calendar so that meetings aren’t scheduled and sometimes - I use that hour to just zone out. I think of it as taking time to build my strength back.
My plan now is to work for five more years. D23 is off to college in the fall - get her through and then I will start wrapping it up. I’m in a creative industry and at that point - I might try to actually CREATE instead of marketing and selling someone else’s creations.
I think the same way you left your last job - you will know when it is time to leave this one. From what you write, I am not sure if you are there yet. But I suspect you will be in the next year or so.
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I think @ChoatieMom hit the nail on the head for me. The need to feel “productive”. I watched my FIL struggle with that as he hit his 90s and still was trying to write the book he had planned but at that point he was not physically or mentally capable of doing so but also never really gave up that need to just enjoy what was left of his life. While I am not like that, I feel the need to do something interesting and productive. Work, working out and my art class fill that for me now. In the past, I did more volunteering and no art. There are volunteer gigs I plan to embrace, which will hopefully fulfill that need. For me, having structure seems like it will remain important.
I also think, even though we are highly likely to be fine financially, the idea of spending rather than saving is still a challenge for me.
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