Retirement Affects

Positive and Negative Lifestyle Changes

Retirement affects can create uncertainty and disappointment without planning and preparation

Retirement Affects

At work you had a job description with Goals and Targets to evaluate your performance. Rewards and incentives motivated you reach your goals. You were offered training and development to bridge skill gaps, and fulfil your potential. You worked as part of a team, and you got feedback from peers, and the person you reported to. Work/Career is a way to fulfil your needs. What replaces that in retirement? What are the retirement affects on that aspect of your life?

Without preparation Retirement Affects can create uncertainty, which could lead to shock and denial, anger, frustration and sometimes even depression.

With retirement planning and understanding, you can achieve the happy, active, and fulfilling retirement lifestyle that’s right for you

Retirement Quotations and Retirement Affects

This website focuses on the positive aspects of retirement. However, this may not be everybody’s experience.  For some, retirement can be confusing and disappointing, as is illustrated in the following retirement quotations.  

Resisting Retirement Affects

‘Today is a very black day for me.’

Judge Paul Carney, retiring after 25 years on the High Court bench.

"Nearly half of people surveyed did not have any kind of plan in place for their retirement other than a financial one.”

"As people have progressively more time on their hands, TV viewing hours increase."
Research by the University of Maryland found that watching TV might make you feel good in the short term but is more likely to lead to overall unhappiness. Not a good use of your retirement free time?

 ‘I do nothing Monday to Friday, and I rest on Saturday/Sunday!’ What do you think of this sardonic comment on retirement?

‘Our research shows that up to 70% of employees report experiencing stress in their working lives, with more than a fifth of workers regularly thinking of quitting their job as a result.’ And yet retirement brings its own stressors.
OPP MBTI Stress Management Report 

"I must confess to a sense of … puzzlement about why I'm still alive because the job I've been asked to do is over, for better or for worse." Archbishop Hickey’s on his initial difficulty with his transition to retirement.

Early Retirement Affects

‘At 55, then, you are in limbo land where time is simultaneously with you and against you. You are too young to put your feet up but too old to start anything new.’
Would you agree with Jeremy Clarkson? Can’t teach and old dog new tricks?

‘When you are thrust into the world of early retirement, it’s no good living from day to day...you need to have a long term strategy. You need something that will fill the void.’ Jeremy Clarkson

‘So you watch the lunchtime news...you go to the shops...you are aware that every penny you spend is coming from a pot that’s no longer topped up...most of my friends have jobs...this means I have to make everything last for hours...people who retire early have an increased chance of dementia...Jeremy Clarkson on his unplanned early ‘retirement.’

‘Dum vires annique sinunt, tolerate labores; jam veniet tacito curva senecta pede:’ Ovid-Roman poet

While strength and years permit, endure labour, soon bent old age will come with silent foot.

Retirement and Ageing

The average woman feels she has reached old age at 60, while for men it’s 58, according to the UK Department for Work and Pensions. At what age did you start to feel old?

In the blink of an eye our song changed from the Rolling Stones ‘Time is on my side’ to the Beatles ‘You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead’

Autumn leaves...in youth we are always looking forward, impatient for what’s coming next. With age we realise there are more leaves on the ground than on the tree.

Over the years, friendships ebb and flow. “You don’t have the energy, or the incentive, to start replacing people as you get older. Once you get to 70, when friends start to die off... You don’t have opportunities to make new friends. You can’t really go clubbing and you wouldn't be bothered, anyway. So your world starts to shrink.”

‘Nothing makes me sadder than old age, I think. It’s my emotional kryptonite.’ I wonder what the comedian Shane Langan meant by this?

'In the mile, there are four laps of the track and, in that sense, I'm on the last lap. That's how it is.' Poet Paul Durcan

An tslat nuair a chruann le haois, is deacair a shníomh ina gad. An elegant way to say in Irish ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’

Retirement Quotations

At times of transition - and uncertainty - we reach for Retirement Quotations to get comfort - and direction - in the articulate words of those who have been there before us.