Retirement Reflections

A collection of guidelines, observations, or thoughts that I picked up when planning to retire or that I learned after retiring. This is a work in process.

After Decision Made But Before Leaving

1. Check if you used your work email for any websites you'll be using after retirement and change those to your personal email. These are often things like Airline or Hotel websites, Conference or User Groups, and Reference websites. If you use a password manager, that might be a source to help remind you of those websites. Take care that some websites have your email in more than one field (logon, correspondence, alerts, notifications, etc.). Also, on some websites the email address change is not processed immediately and they don't always let you know. Do this before you retire as some websites will send verification to old email.

2. Many companies have matching for select charitiable giving. However, they may not have it for retirees. Double check and if you plan to give to an organization the is eligible for matching, do that before you retire.

3. Make sure you have contact information for the people who you plan to keep in touch. You'll likely not have access to corporate directories and the like after you retire. Also make sure people have your contact information if you want.

4. While there weren't a lot of people in the office when I left (the office had just re-opened after the 2020 pandemic), I enjoyed going around and getting a selfie with the people that meant a lot to me.

Post Retirement

1. Act now. While you may think with retirement that you have infinite free-time, you don't. You want to guard from procrastination.  

2. Do not sit down until 2:00 PM.  A co-worker shared this with me. The idea is you can do whatever you want as long as you're standing. Read a book or work on computer or do a jigsaw puzzle, but do it standing. The risk is once you sit down, you won't get back up.

3. Look forward, not just backward. A well-lived life is worth remembering, but there is still more living to be done, so we want to look forward as well. 

4. Guard from spreading yourself too thin. This balances an earlier guideline. You might have so many things on your list you want to jump into or lots of volunteer groups might want you to jump in right away. I found that adding things in one at a time allowed me to judge time commitments.

5. Balance structure and spontaneity. It's good to have some structure to ensure you're getting things done, but you also want the surprising and random fun.

6. Stay Connected. If the majority of your interactions with others was through work, then you'll need to be purposeful in keeping those connections or making new ones. I found setting a goal of at least two activities a week, and tracking it, was a good start.

7. Do you repeat yourself? Since your interactions may be more scattered, it might be more difficult to remember who heard your new joke or recent adventure. Most people are gracious about it, but just something to think about. Something I did while working was for a few people that I only connected with every four to six weeks was to make a list of things I wanted to be sure to tell that person. I used Google Keep to track.