I’m looking at retirement sometime later this year. It sure feels strange to think about life without the day job. That made me curious about what people here did soon after they retired. Take up a new hobby? Volunteer? Read a bunch of books? Work on the house?
I bet there’s some interesting stories out there!
I got so bored I was going out of my mind. I don’t have hobbies really. So, I went back to work as a contractor after 5 months 3 days a week. That lasted about 18 months as it was temporary. A great fit. I tried another job that wasn’t a great fit almost 2 years ago and I quit after 2 months. Since then I’ve been able to settle into not working. I’m not bouncing off the walls anymore.
I asked that question of my friends who stayed home and they got defensive. I really wanted to know how they filled 12 hours each day.
So, I like to read stuff on my iPad, I’m a Poshmark reseller now (I have found a hobby!) and that eats up a lot of time, I like getting together with my friends…cocktail at lunch anyone? I exercise, I take care of all the indoor cleaning, shopping, cooking. Right now we are redecorating our house, so I’m running around doing that, but I know that’s not an “everyday” activity. We have plans on going to Italy later this fall, so I got an Italian CD course from the library, 30 minutes each day teaches conversational Italian for tourists.
Let’s see, I’ve discovered I have a lazy streak. Oh, I like to watch Netflix, but only allow myself a couple hours late afternoon before hubbie comes home, if at all. I know these don’t sound particularly fulfilling, but I’m happy. I really have no desire to work anymore.,that last gig did it to me. Gosh, just reading this I sound so pathetic…,haha.
It’s been 15 months for me. I cleaned out some things in the house. I have exercised a lot. I have had a lot of in law issues to deal with, which has involved a lot of back & forth from Michigan to Georgia. I updated my living/dining room areas, which was a long process for me. D had a baby, so that will occupy time in the immediate future. I know that I will do something down the road, although I am not sure if it will be paid or volunteer. I want to take my time and figure out what I really want to do. For now, I am content to be just a little lazy for the first time in my life. I won’t apologize for it!
Spending a lot more time on Parent Cafe!
My retirement was not “cold-turkey”, so it didn’t seem as abrupt. I’ve been self-employed for about 25 years, and slowly cut back over time when I was nearing full retirement. Highly recommended.
I retired from full time work as a speech pathologist in the schools in 2011. Since that time, I have done 10 long term leave positions (2-5 months in length) in five different school districts.
I also became more active in my town. I’m an election poll worker and moderator. I serve on the economic development commission and I’m a member of our high school board for donations.
I volunteer at an agency that benefits developmentally disabled adults and young adults.
Until this year, I had two separate monthly luncheon dates with other retirees. I’ve also been able to visit with friends during the day.
I take ballroom dance lessons with my husband, and was doing adult tap with some friends (hoping that resumes at some point).
Honestly, if I wanted to, I could be way fully booked than when I was working full time. I have needed to say no to a number of groups who have asked me to help out.
I too am going to retire later this year.
I plan to exercise just about every day. I was looking forward to going to the gym, but we actually just canceled our membership and have purchased equipment for home. I’m hoping to take the time to cook better meals. I would like cooking to become a hobby with the husband, especially once he retires, but we will see how that goes.
Once it’s safe, I would like to volunteer some, and travel a fair amount. I also like to read, and have some friends who are already retired, so hopefully we can “do lunch” and day trips. I will consider taking classes at a college near me if there’s something I want to take. I also have to de-clutter our house. We have so much stuff.
I do worry that I may be sorry I retired at some point, but I’m willing to take the risk 
I have been doing some consulting for the company that I used to work for. Having a regular meeting each week and having some preparation needed for the meeting gives some structure to my life and gives me the impression that I am still useful. To a large extent I do this to pass on my expertise to a new generation. Any small financial incentive is secondary (but don’t tell my boss). The meetings are all virtual so COVID has not had any impact on this.
I try to spend a few hours each week finding something in the house to get rid of. Having spent a couple of decades in the same large house has given us too much opportunity to collect stuff that we are never going to need again.
The yard and garden are probably doing better now that I am retired. This is something I can still do even with a pandemic going on.
I cook dinner on days that my wife works and probably do more of the shopping.
Mostly I am surprised how busy I continue to be in spite of having mostly retired.
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 three 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.
A question you might ask yourself as you approach retirement or planning for retirement is “what kind of life am I privileged to have or consider?”
I hope that people always keep “we” in the equation - meaning not only thinking about your wants and needs. “We” might be your family, your neighbors or your extended community/communities.
I have 5 more working days until I retire!
This is in addition to the usual things I do around the house now.
I don’t see myself being bored.
I went back to school, got my MSW (got my B.A. in 1971, my MSW in 2018!) and now work 4 days a week as a therapist!
I retired Aug 1, so it with Covid things are not at all as I had imagined. Sigh… this was supposed to be our “go go” travel time in early retirement.
No doubt we’ve done more Netflix etc than envisioned.
One victory was gaining control over the gardens. For many years my mother had tended gardens for us (win/win), but for the past few years mostly it had gone wild. We had fun planting some zucchini too.
I have been able to exercise lots more. In addition to running more, I sometimes “commuted” to my running trail by bike. It’s only 1.5 miles away, but when working I never had a long enough time block to bike and run.
Also I’ve been reading, including one book club with friends and another with church.
@badgolfer - you don’t mention household chores. If you are living with a spouse/partner who is doing most/all of the household chores (cooking/cleaning/errands/laundry/paperwork/lawn care) you can certainly take on more of those tasks.
A friend of mine was worried when her husband retired over a year ago. He is a quiet introvert with few hobbies. The first week of his retirement she arrived home from work one day to a sparkling clean house! He also decided to take on the laundry and do some of the cooking. She had always done all of this (admittedly his job was very demanding both physically and mentally and involved a lot of travel). This was a win for both of them.
Congrats @FallGirl! Is this the retirement week! Look forward to hearing more about your time.
I’m not quite there yet. Some days I can’t wait and others (especially with Covid) I am happy to be working. My DH retired recently and is doing some volunteer work and has taken cooking and food shopping, but still has a lot of hours to fill. A lot of my retirement plans centered on things outside of the house which are not happening now. I also like still bringing in a salary.
@mom2and- this is it! Friday is my last day.
I am very excited though a bit nervous about not getting a paycheck (I will be getting paid through January and also have some PTO payout coming). Although we have planned for this, it still seems strange to be drawing from our accounts rather than working to save . I feel fortunate to have that problem, though!
During our planning sessions for rampdown-to-retirement (my husband retired first), we often mentioned how hard it is is to switch mindset from “saving mode” to “depletion mode”. Our pensions are much smaller than originally envisioned, so really liked watching the 401K balances increase over the years.
Another challenge is lack of motivation. Perhaps it is because during Covid nobody else sees our house or comes over for dinner… but our housecleaning and cooking routines have not improved as much as I had hoped.
December 12 2020 was my retirement date (stumbled into a pretty sweet severance arrangement). The first week or so was taken up with Christmas prep, then just after that we headed to our beach house, and we’re still there, headed home tomorrow. So I haven’t had a chance to really see what my day to day routine will be. Hoping for more focus on self-care and working out, although this darn frozen shoulder along with the pandemic is making make that difficult. Organizing, decorating, puttering…
Following this thread to see what others are up to! @ChoatieMom your plans look like mine 
My husband took a severance package and “retired” in December 2019. We were going to do some travelling, spend more time visiting my daughter, do some short local day trips, and shop for a new home nearer to her. Then Covid hit. He has been keeping busy doing a lot of cooking. We are eating like Europeans, decide in the morning what to eat, get the fresh ingredients, and then cook them (although this was hard at first during the pandemic - my husband has switched to getting lots of the fresh ingredients from local markets).
I still work part-time from home (was always from home). I think we have handled the transition well and it will get even better when we can do stuff again.
My husband and I retired in June 2018, and almost immediately went on a planned Euro vacation trip. Traveling and spending time at our 2nd home were the big plans. We bought a 5th wheel in spring 2020 to replace our travel trailer and assumed we’d do some camping.
We did get a trip to Euro Christmas Markets in 2019, but the pandemic put a stop to further travels.
I read a lot, spend time at our 2nd home (nearby, but feels a million miles away), putter around the house.
My husband does woodworking, gardening, some home improvement projects.
I’ve also had one procedure on a hand and two hand surgeries, and am looking forward (ha!) to what I hope is the last surgery this winter. Once I heal from that, I should be able to kayak, bike, etc.
We have hope that we can do more traveling, have cousins in other countries visit, actually use the 5th wheel sometime this year and in 2022.
I’m sorry to say we don’t have any “interesting” stories as life after H’s retirement has been pretty mundane. He went into a bit of a blue funk for a while, but thankfully a thoughtful gift from our kids encouraged him to take up a hobby he’d talked about earlier. During H’s career we rarely traveled as he took as few vacation days as possible. I’d hoped we could make up for that in the first few years of his retirement, but my health problems combined with several surgeries put an end to travel plans.
Early on we spent some time on deferred home maintenance but H found it easy to put off most chores in favor of computer gaming, which has consumed at least 30 hours per week. He reads his Kindle every night and listens to recorded books whenever he’s doing chores or cooking.
H has taken over most grocery shopping. For the past 9 or 10 months, I’ve shopped online and he’s done the curbside pickup. He also started cooking more, although he prefers to stick with breakfast and grilling. Recently, he began vacuuming once a week and cleaning the bathrooms. He used to say he’d do whatever I asked but I had to point out what needed cleaning. He no longer treats chores as something I need to delegate.