14-02-2017, 02:43 PM
12
Re: How Easily Did You Adjust To Your Retirement?
I've been retired from full time work for 3 yrs this March . I'd given 6 months notice as whoever was following me in needed training and showing the ropes . I began to wish I'd given only a month or two for I was exhausted , you see I was doing 2 jobs alongside each other . (Podiatry ) I was suffering with neck pain due to the work and was counting the days down . My last day at work I was given a farewell do and thanks etc and I drove away feeling as though the world had dropped off my neck and shoulders , and the pain dissappeard .4 days later I flew to Singapore for 3 days en route to Adelade in Australia for a month stay with friends of a friend .
I worked 4 years on after receiving my state pension and saved and saved for those rainy days which come and go now . I wish I'd retired at 60 but I was to afraid too due to lack of savings and income .
I had worked since the age of 14 doing weekends while at school , in that time I had 3.5 years off to have my two children .
This is the best , gentlest , kindest , time of my life .
14-02-2017, 03:16 PM
13
Re: How Easily Did You Adjust To Your Retirement?
It's really nice how most of you welcomed retirement and are enjoying it. Some of you were even racing for the door!
I have to admit that now, when I wake up in the mornings at 5.30 am to be with he who must obey who still has to work, the rain is lashing against the bedroom window, it's freezing cold outside, it warms my heart to think that I don't ever again have to venture outside in it as I used to unless I wish to, Sod the two pups wanting their walk in this rain, they're worse than me! garden for them when it's freezing and raining like this. I would much rather go out there and use the pooper scooper for a few minutes, wash my hands and then down goes the kettle switch - Again!
I am starting to really enjoy this sedate type of life. I don't even want a part time job or volunteer at the moment. I'm still adapting to spoiling myself. It's been a long time coming.
14-02-2017, 06:58 PM
19
Re: How Easily Did You Adjust To Your Retirement?
I took early retirement, due to very unforeseen circumstances. I hadn't planned on early retirement, but my very close colleague and best friend who after driving us 250 miles from home to Canterbury, was the same day taken seriously ill with a brain tumor, she had not experienced any symptoms or anything else until that afternoon. What followed was the most horrific time of my life. I rarely saw my home for 8 months, if I wasn't at work I was with her. During one of her lucid moments she said to me, "whatever you plan on doing, do it now whilst you can. If you hadn't ducked when you did that little arrow would have hit you and not me".Those words have never, ever left me because she was so right. They had a huge impact on me. Mr Clumsy had already taken early retirement and was agency driving. We talked about things and decided to sell up and spend a couple of years in Africa and then come to Spain, as we had intended doing once we both finished working, mostly for Mr Clumsy's health re his asthma and chest infections.
Everyone thought we were mad, and I wouldn't disagree with them, my friend's untimely death changed me completely. So that is what we did. It was an expensive venture, some bad experiences and many good ones. I obtained a permit to do voluntary work, I could help at a local infant school with English lessons, I went to a local orphanage where I could help out with the abandoned little ones with AIDS, I could give talks to the senior children about AIDS. My ex employers were brilliant, they would send me all the leaflets an updates which I could then give to the teachers. I also helped out in a friend's safari office typing his letters. He did have a girl who was supposed to do his office work, but it was extremely painful to watch her. I learnt an awful lot, not all of it good.
Eventually we left and came here to Spain. Do I have any regrets? Some but not many. Since moving to Spain my two other closest friends have also died, one from multiple myeloma and my Finnish friend who died so very suddenly in September. Her son told me that the three years she had been in Spain had been the happiest of her life, she had more friends here than she ever had in Finland. Eivor, my friend, had also taken early retirement from teaching.
Since living here in Spain I wonder where I ever found the time to go to work. The death of my friends at fairly young ages has really proved to me that my friend with the brain tumor was right. Enjoy your life whilst you can, we none of us know what tomorrow might bring. So yes, for me, retirement was a good thing. I loved my job but I have no regrets taking retirement.
14-02-2017, 08:49 PM
20
Re: How Easily Did You Adjust To Your Retirement?
I was working as a Bank Admin with the hospital, they stopped giving me bookings so I spent a year or so existing on savings and the occy pension when I took voluntary retirement in 2003. So I bit the bullet and resigned, taking their pension, knowing the State Pension would soon follow.So my full retirement was really already there: I just had to make it final.
i love it!
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