Today’s question is: how do I stay productive in retirement?

A lot of folks who are approaching retirement realize that retiring for the sake of not doing anything could certainly be unhealthy, whether that be physically, emotionally, mentally. Just tuning out, while certainly good in small doses, is not a great step as far as just a stage of life.

We love to see our clients be busy, whether that be picking up a part-time job or continuing work at your present job. Sometimes, people approaching retirement still enjoy their work, but don’t necessarily want to do it 40+ hours a week. Maybe you’re able to scale back to two or three days a week and still be able to be productive doing what you love, but also have the time to be able to enjoy yourself.

People have different ways of defining productivity. For you, it could mean making more substantial family contributions. Maybe your kids now have their own little ones, or nieces and nephews. Or, maybe you have a family member who needs special care and spending time with them could be a help to their primary caretaker.

Productivity could also look like volunteering and giving back to your community. Your religious organization or a non-profit would be something that you would find passion in and bring a lot of productivity to your organization or group.

However it is, we encourage folks to find something that they can sink into in retirement because while doing nothing can be fun for a few days, it certainly is not the way to kick off the golden years of your retirement.