Experiment and Adjust Over Time (Your Balanced Leisure Lifestyle)

In the previous two posts, you were introduced to the retirement strategy of creating a balanced leisure lifestyle.  As mentioned, overwhelmingly, successful retirees emphasize the importance of building and implementing such a balanced lifestyle for a number of reasons including constructively knowing how best to spend your retirement years.

A word of caution and advice: Be prepared to experiment with your leisure activity selection until you find the right mix. Be prepared to make adjustments over time, too, as the opportunities and your interests change. You might also need to make adjustments as your physical or financial situations change. Don’t let new challenges deter you!

My knees became so bad I could barely walk up and down stairs. Though I knew going to the pool for water exercise would help, the thought of dealing with the ladder was too much, and I stopped going. Two weeks later, a friend from class called to see if I was okay. After hemming and hawing over the reason for my absence, I finally confessed. To my surprise, she laughed and laughed and then reminded me she herself uses the lift to get in and out. I went back the next week and only suffered from being teased.

—Norma E., artist

Some of your activities might fall into more than one category. For example, taking classes associated with a hobby could meet an education need, and chatting with fellow hobby aficionados could meet social needs too. However, don’t let the category crossovers go too far, or your lifestyle might be balanced only on paper. Just because your set design hobby puts you inside a community theatre doesn’t mean you’ve also met the need for entertainment.

Couples occasionally try to establish a leisure lifestyle in which they do everything together. Although this works for some couples, most find it impossible to achieve in a healthy way. There is good reason for that: Being a couple doesn’t mean both people have identical interests and needs. Just as everyone should experiment to find the right mix of activities, couples should experiment to find the right balance of things they do together and things they do separately. It’s also important for couples to communicate about this. Discuss expectations, any feelings of exclusion, and budget issues.

The greatest impediment to creating a balanced leisure life, of course, is procrastination. We sometimes tell ourselves, “I’ll start my search next month,” but then this elusive “next month” never comes. Some retirees find that such procrastination eventually becomes unhealthy. They describe becoming gradually disenchanted with retirement. Some even sink deeply into isolation and develop a habit of low expectations. To avoid these problems, I recommend using a calendar to set review points.

Place notes in your calendar three months, six months, nine months, and one year after your retirement date. Each note should read, “Am I living a balanced and satisfactory life? If not, create and implement my plan for a successful retirement now.” These reminders should help you keep procrastination at bay, and they will even allow you to revise your plan based on your experiences, whether positive or negative, but remember: Planning is one thing, but it’s taking action that counts. Don’t put off your search. Start checking out the fun stuff and get building your leisure plan today!