Nick Maggiulli wrote an article that looks at retirement from non-financial perspective. When one hears the word retirement the first word that pops into head might be “money” or “savings” but while money is important for retirement, it matters far less for overall well-being than one might imagine at the outset.
Ernie Zelinski wrote a book “How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free” and it contains no sections on money. Why does it exclude these? Because the author’s research found that things like “physical well-being, mental well-being, and solid social support play bigger roles than financial status for most retirees.” In other words, it’s not about the money. Zelinski states: Regardless of how talented you are and how successful you are in the workplace, there is some danger that you will not be as happy and satisfied as you hope to be in retirement…What may be missing is a sense of purpose and some meaning to your life. Put another way, you will want to keep growing as an individual instead of remaining stagnant.
The premise of the book is that it is not a financial crisis you need to worry about in retirement, but an existential one. The fact is, once you stop working for 40+ hours a week, what are you going to do with all of your time? It is easy to say “vacation”, but even if you did that for an entire year, then what?
John Osborne, a retired educational psychology professor who teaches a course on how to retire happy, said in his book: The more your life revolves around work, the more of a shock retirement will be. It’s like having a portfolio that’s not diversified, and it’s not until your job is gone that you confront reality. It can be like falling into space. So what’s the solution to this future dilemma? As Osborne suggests: diversify your life interests. It is easier said than done, but finding other purposeful things to do with your time will likely lead to more life satisfaction than the marginal amount of money you will earn from working more hours in your primary career. This is probably not true for everyone, but you should consider it.
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