How To Retire--Financial, Social

Retire is a strange word with a variety of possible meanings. At first you might think it could mean to retire your car.

How many of us really retire in the true sense of the word? I always thought of retirement with a gold watch and a pension you could live on comfortably the rest of your life.

Seniors would all be in pretty good shape if they at least got the second part of that equation-retirement income to last forever. Many of us basically just quit working at some point and left a job or a business, or decided to find a new way to make money. New businesses and jobs starting after leaving the primary job are often referred to as retirement jobs. Many of these jobs and businesses are way tougher and more challenging than the original work or career, and unfortunately not nearly as lucrative. When my husband tells people he has retired I always think to myself, who is he kidding? Not that he hasn't always worked and he was involved in an excellent profession in his work years. He has worked with me in my business and has worked in some different retirement jobs. It goes back to that gold watch thing. However he did buy me a gold watch many years ago, so maybe I will re-purpose the watch and call it a retirement watch. Unfortunately there is no pension to go along with the watch.

You always hear about people living on a "fixed income". Unfortunately today not many of our expenses are fixed ,and many of us have gone through adjusting to living on way less money.

As we speak, food and gas prices go up, not to mention insurance, taxes, travel, utilities and everything else we live with. For those who have counted on their cozy little nest eggs--many nests have all but disappeared. and there are far fewer eggs. It is a challenge cutting back on spending with fixed expenses. Many are trying to cut back on food, driving, and cutting back on any unnecessary purchases. Many of us are looking to doing less loads of laundry, hot water use and are learning to be creative with leftovers and serve more economical meals.

You may have noticed that retired people are frantically busy, and often more so than when they worked. However, not in the same way. Time has taken on new dimension. FIfteen minutes used to be like two hours, and two hours is now like 15 minutes. When you were in the working world and you had fifteen free minutes you could accomplish two hours of work. When you are retired two hours often does not seem like enough time to accomplish 15 minutes of work. I realize there is a bit of an exaggeration here, but you get my point.

Hopefully in retirement we get to spend our time in doing what we want. Of course we have obligations and things that have to be taken care, but more free time for recreating. Writing for HubPages has helped me organize my time much more productively and I like that sense of being busy and getting things done more quickly like I used to.

Many retirement communities have non-stop activities available to the residents. And you can book yourself for 10 hours a day with crafts, sports, parties, lunches and more. I personally am most happy with few planned activities. One of the nice things about not going to work is being able to do what you want with your time. I make my list everyday and try to follow it but I don't get upset if I don't accomplish everything on the list. I love having something productive to do and getting paid for it. We still need a sense of accomplishment in our lives one way or another.

Feeling peaceful to me is one of the best feelings in the world. Lets face it we all have many challenges in life, and retirement may not always the easiest time. This is where we are and we always have the choice of being happy or not. I have seen people with little possessions always cheerful and happy and the reverse, people with tons of money and possessions always complaining and unhappy. When I wake up in the morning I look forward to my first cup of coffee, sitting at my computer and writing, joining my husband for breakfast and looking forward to the day. I can stay home all day and putter, go out or just do whatever I want. Having the choice of how I spend my time makes me very happy. To me this makes retirement the best days ever.