Retirement Obligations and You

When you retire, your life changes pretty drastically. You don’t have to wake up at a certain time every morning, you don’t need to spend hours of your day working at a job, and you don’t need to answer to a boss. However, that doesn’t mean you don’t have obligations.

There are definitely retirement obligations that come up when you leave the workforce and understanding how to prioritize them (and how to let go of some of them) can really shape your retirement. 

Examples of Retirement Obligations

The term “retirement obligations” might not make sense to you at first. After all, it’s retirement. You’re no longer working and you’re free to do what you’d like, so how do could you have obligations?

The reality is, that while you have more free time, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have more freedom. Some things that could be considered retirement obligations are:

Work Pressure

When you leave work, work doesn’t always necessarily leave you. You’ve been used to productivity and moving up the ladder and proving yourself. This attitude can continue into retirement. 

So can the way you identified yourself. There’s a good chance that for years you introduced yourself as your profession. You were a doctor or a lawyer or a banker. Now that you’re retired, you might feel obligated to have another way to identify yourself besides “retired.” These feelings can be tough to let go of, but you can do it over time. 

Being “Busy”

It’s natural to want to fill your days. It can feel “lazy” if you decide you just want to spend today sitting around the house reading a book or watching TV. On the other hand, busyness can make you feel like you are getting the most out of your retirement. You’re not “wasting a day.” You’re “doing things.”

Having a lot of empty days on your calendar can make a lot of people feel anxious. You feel like you should be “doing something” and being busy helps you calm that anxiety. However, your retirement shouldn’t just be doing “something”, it should be doing the things that really matter to you.

Rather than fill every moment of every day, try to make sure you’re enjoying yourself. Spending the day at home doing “nothing” can be very fulfilling.  

Family & Friends

It feels strange and perhaps a bit insulting to refer to family and as an “obligation”, but it can be true for some people in some situations. Some people see that their friend or family member has retired and believe that means they have unlimited time. They might, therefore, get upset when the retiree tells them they aren’t able to meet up for lunch or babysit their grandchild.

The truth is that, for a lot of people, retirement isn’t just sitting around waiting for someone to call you. It can certainly be very busy. It’s fine to say no to certain social obligations. It’s okay to say you’re not able to host a holiday party. It’s even fine to say you’re too busy or tired to babysit your grandkids sometimes. 

Be honest with your friends and family and don’t feel like you need to do anything out of obligation. 

Keeping Up

If you have other retired friends or relatives, you might feel tempted to keep up with their lifestyles. Your friends down the street renovated their entire house and yours still looks the same as it did 20 years ago, for instance. The same is true for travel. Maybe your sister is traveling the world and your biggest trip a road trip you took last summer. It’s easy to feel like you need to keep up. 

However, remember that your retirement is for you and it’s about what you want to do with your life. Think about whether you really want to renovate your house or travel the world, or would you be doing it just because that’s what others are doing?

Deciding Which Retirement Obligations Matter

Each person’s retirement is unique. What some will see as retirement obligations, others will see as how they want to spend their time. This is what’s important.

Think about how you actually want to spend your days. What matters the most to you? What makes you happy? When you finish a day, look back and ask yourself if you feel good about what you did. If you do, that’s a good day, no matter how you spent it.

Let go of the retirement obligations that don’t make you happy and keep the ones that do. Don’t worry about what others are doing, focus on yourself. That’s one of the keys to having a successful retirement.