" Helping you is what we do."
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THE INSIDE SCOOP ON RETIREMENT
WHAT ARE THE FIRST FEW DAYS
OF RETIREMENT ACTUALLY LIKE? What is it going to be like, that first morning when you wake up and don’t have to go to work... ever again?! Will you be euphoric? Disoriented? Or, perhaps, afraid? HAL: "Well, the first morning I woke up, let's go back a bit, about two months before I picked the date I was gonna go and I used to wake up and think to myself, "What am I doing? Have I got enough money? What am I gonna do with myself?" The morning of my first day being retired, I woke up and I thought, ‘Ya, this is me’. I immediately enjoyed it. I had time for me. I didn't have to give somebody 8, 10, 12 hours a day of my life. If I wanna work out at the gym for that amount of time I can do it. If I wanna hike, it just gave me total freedom to look after me." MAUREEN: "Actually I left on Good Friday, so Thursday was my last day at work and Friday I was bouncing off the walls. I thought, 'I can't handle this. I can't do this. I gotta go back to work!' But by the Monday it was finished. ‘I don't have to go back to work.’" RICK: "So it took you a few days to adjust?" MAUREEN: "Oh ya, but not that long. Not as long as I thought." GORDON: "I was ready. I've never had a desire to go back and do it again." RICK: "But it was disorienting?" GORDON: "Oh yes. It's absolutely unsettling. You wake up and all of a sudden you don't have to go to work. Well, then you say, "*$#&*, this is great!" RICK: "How did the transition go for you?" PAT: "I was working practically full-time and I just retired on the Saturday, and Sunday that was it." RICK: "And did you find it difficult to adjust at all?" PAT: "Yep. The only difficulty I had was not waking up at half past 4 in the morning for a little while. Now I soon got out of that." RICK: "So there was adjustment for that?" PAT: "Ya, but on the positive side, ya. You wake up thinking, ‘oh I've gotta get up and go to work, ha ha.’ It was all positive. It was great." BRIAN: "Without work you’re dead, eh. Pretty well. Unless you’re a millionaire who can travel the world and stay in ritzy hotels and all the rest of it. But for average working people it’s definitely the pits." The Reporter’s Notebook Whether the adjustment to retirement takes seconds, days, or years, it will be something you will face. And for a select few, like Brian, retirement will simply be yet another thing to endure. |
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Cheri Crause, Rick Hoogendoorn, Richard and
Brenda Jacques
copyright
2008 Cheri Crause
& Associates Inc.
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