Retirement: Six Months in Review

I just celebrated my six-month anniversary of being retired.  You know when you go on vacation, sometimes it takes a couple days to unwind from the stress of work?  I took me a couple months of retirement to unwind from work.  But now it actually feels like I've been retired for years, not just months.

Stress:  My stress levels have plummeted over the last six months.  Of course I still feel stress from time to time, but once we got the health insurance situation figured out, most of it evaporated.  It probably helps that I get eight or nine hours of sleep each and every night now.

Money:  Now that it's been a full six months, I feel confident that my retirement calculations were pretty good.  Our expenses are slightly under budget for the first half of our first year.

While the stock market has made me nervous over these last six months, thanks to a well-diversified nest-egg, we have "only" experienced a decline of 5% compared to the S&P's 13% slide since the beginning of the year.  There are many out there that are opposed to paying the fees for an investment advisor, but I'm not convinced I could have achieved these results on my own.

Education: When you work, your brain is being challenged (hopefully) on a day-to-day basis.  The great thing about retirement is that the challenges to your brain are exactly the ones YOU want to be challenged with, not the ones your employer is paying you for.  I've taken two writing classes (the third starts this week) and classes on how to use my new Apple computer.  And I've finally come into the 21st century with social networking and blogging.

Activities:  In the two years before my retirement, I saw three movies at the movie theater.  In the last six months, we've been to more than half a dozen movies (let's hear it for the matinee!)  We've been to concerts on weeknights and I've re-discovered the library.  I've knitted two baby blankets and dusted off the sewing machine to sew myself a skirt.

And with my newfound time (and with newfound social networking technology), I've reconnected with friends I haven't seen in years.  I've read over a dozen books, countless blogs, and way more news than I've ever had time for (although I'm not so sure that is a good thing.)

And how much money have I saved (and calories burned) by cleaning my own house, gardening, growing fruit and vegetables, and painting my house?  (Not to mention calories burned cycling around the Napa Valley and hitting tennis balls during working hours!)

What was different than I expected?  Before I retired, I thought I would miss work, at least a little.  The most surprising thing is that I don't, at all.  The second most surprising thing is that even without work, I still don't feel like there are enough hours in a day to do everything I want to do! 

Comments

[Sylvia B]

Congratulations on reaching the six month mark Syd; I can't wait to get there. I am so heartened to hear how well this is going for you. Having had most of the summer off, and now being back full-time for the next two months - and then it's retirement for me - I've experienced the drop in stress and now the return of sore shoulders, a stiff neck, aching back ... not to mention the noise in my head as I try to figure out how to meet many work challenges. Until now I've been doing a count-down by months; I think it's time to switch that to weeks or even days. Your comments about what has to be in your head are really interesting to me as I try to work through what matters to me and what's been imposed as important. What an interesting journey this is. Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences.

[RetiredAt47]

Congratulations on reaching the 6-month mark. Time seems to move so much faster after you leave the workforce, doesn't it? I will hit my one-year anniversary at the end of this month.

You are doing incredibly well if your investments are only down 5%. I thought I was fairly well diversified, but still I'm down more than that (I can't bring myself to determine the exact number, though).

And I agree wholeheartedly about health insurance being such a major concern. I still worry a bit about what will happen in the future, but I have to let that go.

[Retired Syd]

@Sylvia: Hopefully the two months will fly by and you can pick up where you left off!

@RetiredAT47: I would love to hear more from you about your first year of retirement--did you notice any big differences between the first 6 months and the last six months? Do you have any new plans for your next year?