You’ve served other people through your profession, and now it’s time to go home. You’re probably worried about what to do in retirement- your new life without reporting to work as before. What exactly can you do for your growth and development nearing the senior adulthood age? Well, retirement is what you choose. You should start by expecting changes. Today, you may have dreams that might radically be different from your desires a few years into retirement. Remember, a change is as good as rest, therefore, learn to embrace it in advance. After a long time serving others, it’s now time to focus on yourself- what brings bliss. This article enlightens on what you can do after retirement. Keep reading to gain more.
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Overview: What To Do After Retirement
- Travel to your dream destination
- Become an educator
- Stay relevant
- Get into entrepreneurship
- Do things that make you happy
- Exercise
- Become a farmer
- Materialize your retirement plan
Tips on What to Do After Retirement
1. Travel to your dream destination
As a retiree, Is traveling one of many things in your bucket list?
Did you ever have a deep desire of being in new cities that you’ve always heard of but wasn’t able to visit before your retirement?
Great news for you! You now have all the time (and hopefully money) to visit and discover new places!
You don’t have to go to Africa, the Gulf region, or other continents to have a great experience! Chances are you have not visited all the cities within your home state or province so I advise you to start from there. Next, travel within your country and discover the story and history of your own country.
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Yes, You read it right! You can register to AirBnB and host your house to renters while you are away travelling the world!
This is especially advisable if your house is in a prime location.
2. Become an educator
Do you love teaching? If yes, then becoming and educator is one of the best tips you can do after retirement.
Becoming a traditional educator
You may consider becoming a supply/ substitute teacher as your second profession. Whether in a high school or college, public or private, check out to see which one fits you.
The downside of this is you might have to take extra credits to become a qualified educator and of course you will need to spend time planning, teaching, and grading your students.
On the other hand, the upside of being an educator is you know you are leaving your legacy to the next generation. All the knowledge and experience that you accumulated over 65+ years are now being passed down to young minds that some day will shape the world that you will live in in the final stages of your life.
Becoming an online educator
It is also important to remember that you have an access to the internet. That means you can also become an online educator.
Being an online educator is amazing because you only record your class once and sell it or share it over and over again to thousands of students.
Another thing you can do is to set up a blog and write articles on subjects where you believe you are a subject expert. Another cool stuff about blogging is you can monetize your blog! Of course, you can use those extra $$ you will earn to fund your bucket list.
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3. Stay Relevant
Not because you retired means you are now out of business. You should avoid the ” I have done my part to my family and to my society, now let me rest” mentality.
After retiring, you should still maintain your relationship with the people or even pets relying on you. Exercise like a 25-year-old person. Stick to your schedule, socialize with your peers, friends, and relative, and continue to learn new things.
I know a couple of retirees where they believe they already reached the end of their life after they retired. Basically, they made a decision to just stay at home and wait for their time.
Others, refuse to learn new things because they proclaim that they now have a hard time retaining information because of their age. Even if this is true, I don’t see the connection between having difficulty retaining information and learning new things.
So what if they can’t remember what they are learning? This is not high school anymore. No one is going to be mad at them, nor someone will reprimand them for their mistakes.
Learning something new daily actually may prevent Alzheimer and dementia.
Another thing you can do is to continue to pursue your purpose in life! Life purpose will never end as long as you are alive! That is why it is called life purpose.
4. Get into entrepreneurship
In this day and age, there are hundreds of ways to earn money. In other words, you need to know that working is the only way to earn an income.
At the end of the day, everyone needs money to have a good life. That said, I recommend that you invest a portion of your retirement money in a business!
There are a lot of ways to start a business today. Below are some suggested businesses that you can do.
- e-commerce
- Online course creator
- Affiliate marketer
- Instagram shout-out business
- Domain and/or website flipping
The examples above only require little money to start and it is extremely easy to learn. However, I understand that these businesses are heavily reliant on technologies. Please don’t be intimidated. The skills you need to start these businesses can be learned and the online courses available will teach you step-by-step on how to get it done.
You can then use the money earned from the business mentioned above to start a more traditional business. Examples of these businesses are the following.
- Real estate
- Stock market investing
- Brick and mortar stores
- Start-up companies
- Consulting agencies
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5. Do the things that make you happy
This article focuses to help you find purpose after retirement but most importantly we want to help you find happiness.
Yes, it’s what you need the most at this stage of your life.
Tips 1 to 4 provided you ideas on what to do after retirement but our goal is not to push yourself to be the best, the oldest, the top, or first. No, that’s not it. Don’t stress.
The most important part here is for you to enjoy the process. Prioritize getting the most out of life.
At this stage of your life, no one is going to reprimand you for misplacing files in the office anymore. You will not be accountable for tiredness. And you will not have to answer any phone calls anymore.
In short, you’re are free from responsibilities. Therefore, determine what makes you free and happy.
Is it touching lives through charity works? Attending church and mentoring the next generation makes you alive? Is it play with pets and grandchildren? What’s your passion?
Answer these questions and decide what matters most to you!
6. Exercise
You’ve always had an excuse of lacking time to exercise when you are still working your 9-5, but what about now?
You have all the time in the world so design a workout schedule and follow it.
Yes, body is aching all the time, joints seems to be giving up and illnesses comes but exercise still matters a lot.
One benefit of exercising is it increases your longevity and makes you feel younger.
Just consult a trainer and nutritionist before beginning your exercise program, more so if you have an underlying health condition.
7. Become a farmer
Do you love gardening or tending animals?
Starting a farm is probably one the of funnest and most rewarding post-retirement project you can probably do.
Of course, farming is not easy and there are lots of things to learn but I believe that is what makes it fun!
Farming would also require a large amount of money to set up and to run depending on the size you want, so hopefully you’ve save enough money while working. If not, then here is a suggestion that will kill two birds in one stone.
- Start learning How To Farm if you have no prior knowledge
- Create a backyard farm to apply what you are learning and to test if farming is for you
- Create a blog and a Youtube channel and document your progress
- Monetize your blog and Youtube
- Put your online income back to your farm
- Buy a small farm and grow it again
Pretty sweet right?
8. Materialize your retirement plan
Do you recall what you promised yourself doing after retiring?
The time has come. Don’t chicken out or procrastinate, especially if it’s something valuable for your development.
If you have none, then your first project is to sit down, grab a journal, and plan your next 10-30 years of your life.
When planning, don’t worry if it is to ambitious or complicated. Unless your plan is to create a company as big as Amazon or you want to create your own spaceship that will transport you to Mars, then everything is learnable within your time frame.
Once you have a working plan, then start planning on how you will achieve it! This way, you’d have achieved your vision- feels good achieving our goals.
The Bottom Line
You are now out of the work force and you are almost free of any responsibility.
There is a great temptation to just sit back, relax and watch the life goes by. Please resist this life style.
Instead, go plan and pursue it to make you feel alive and young until the end.
Unlike in previous generations where the life expectancy is just around 70 y/o, this generation boasts a life expectancy of over 80 y/o!
So yeah. You might be retired at work, but that doesn’t mean you are retired in life!