Retirement Is Not What You Expect

The transition to post-career life can be bumpy.

Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash+

I talk to scores of people about retirement. Some love it. Some hate it. Some find it vaguely unsettling. So I was not surprised by the results of a research study published in 2023 by The Retirement Coaches Association. Researchers asked a set of questions about retirement to two groups – people who were already retired, and people who were as much as 10 years away from retirement. What the study revealed was a significant disconnect between what pre-retirees thought would happen and what actually did.

For example, 48% of pre-retirees thought adjusting to retirement would be easy, and 52% thought they would adjust quickly. In reality, 43% of the retirees said the adjustment was harder than expected, and 45% said it took longer than they had anticipated.

The biggest gap between expectations and reality was around social interactions. About 40% of pre-retirees expected to have more daily social interactions during retirement. That turned out to be true only for 15% of the actual retirees. Two-thirds reported their social interactions decreased by anywhere from 25% to more than 75%.

A Major Transition

What the study reenforces is that moving from career to post-career is a major life transition. Many people find the transition surprisingly difficult.

But that shouldn’t be a total surprise. When you remove the activity that has dominated your life for 40 hours (or more) each week, you open a gaping hole in your daily life. At first blush, it sounds ideal: Think of all the freedom you’ll have with an extra 40 hours a week!

Then come the unexpected losses. The respect you were accustomed to receiving because of your position suddenly evaporates. Your work friends have less in common with you and begin to drift away. You might even feel guilty for not producing, because your subconscious has imprinted that old belief that work is virtue and leisure is a sin. You’re not sure how to answer when a new acquaintance asks, “And what do you do?”

All this would be true if the retirement experience remained unchanged over time. But the retirement experience itself is in transition. If you still expect your retirement to be anything like the ones your parents and grandparents enjoyed, toss that notion out the window. Thanks to medical advances and growing appreciation for wellness, an older adult who retires today at 65 can expect to live another 25 to 30 years. That longevity totally alters the nature of retirement. Instead of a few years of leisure at life’s end, this longer post-career life begs for other activities to keep life interesting. (It also alters the math, making it that much harder to save enough to cover 25 to 30 non-income-producing years.)

Emotional Preparation

It would be nice if we entered this life transition forewarned and forearmed. But oddly, what usually passes for “retirement planning” can fit neatly into a slot called “financial planning.” Having money is good, and it takes planning (and luck) to save enough money to sustain you in the manner to which you would like to become accustomed.

But most of the rude surprises and dashed expectations are not financial at all. They are emotional, psychological, or existential. The professionals who ply the financial planning trade are rarely equipped to deal with them.

The people who are equipped are retirement coaches. An occupation born in this century, retirement coaches get right to the heart of the issues that often rattle people making the transition to post-career. Through conversations and assessment tools, they help their clients identify their core values and what they really love doing. They sometimes help clients create a structure to replace the imposed structure of a work week. “We can help develop strategies to create a fulfilling and purposeful retirement,” says retirement coach Karen Midyet.

As another retirement coach, Gary Foster, points out, longer lifespans have altered the traditional expectations of retirement. “This new extended post-career period doesn’t come with the same sort of guideposts we had for all the other phases of our lives,” he says. “We’re in new territory with outdated maps, but with the potential of 20-40 years of runway ahead.”

Wisely, some financial planners team up with retirement coaches to give their clients a more complete picture of what post-career life may have in store..(If you could use a retirement coach yourself, check the Retirement Coaches Association website for a list of certified coaches.)

But as Foster notes, retirees are venturing into terra incognita. The ground is shifting, and new uncertainties about Social Security and Medicaid only add to the upheaval. The transition to a different life after working is trickier than ever. It’s not a weakness to seek out help keeping your feet on the ground.