Transcription
I thought I understood my life when I was working. I loved my job, happy with my career. I often said I love my job. Uh, I was happy, happy at home, happy at work, and I was grateful. Uh, raised four great kids, married to my wife for 38 years. But retirement exposed a few things I completely underestimated and didn't value. And honestly, they surprised me. Here are 15 things that I underestimated that give me more joy, improve my health, and give me a lot of passion. So, let's jump right into it. Get my computer up here.
Um, I underestimated how much stress I was under. This is number one for a reason. Um, the other ones aren't really ranked, but this was big. I consistently told people that I was not under stress. I got asked all the time. Um, they just uh assumed I was stressed because of the, you know, the responsibilities that I had. But I, you know, I loved it. I enjoyed what I was doing. It was not until I retired that I understood what stress was. I had this background stress that was like setting down a 15lb weight. Honestly. Honestly, because I never knew when I was going to get a phone call on the weekend, the evening, whether there was going to be a problem presented. Um, you know, as the a large department manager or a plant manager, you don't get small problems. Everybody brings you complex problems that have a lot of consequences. So, um, yeah, I I'm kind of embarrassed, but I underestimated how much stress I was under just having deadlines, expectations, uh, presentations that I had to present. Uh, so, you get it. But I promise you, if you're still working and you don't think you're under stress, uh, I'm saying you're wrong. [laughter] Don't toot out yet.
Number two, I underestimated how many hours I really dedicated to work. Think about those exhausted evenings thinking you're coming home at 5, 5:30, and are you uh free or are your mind occupied with work, de-stressing, decompressing, and you just want to veg out on the couch, eat supper, and then watch TV? That's work-induced, work-induced, you know, um, you know, tiredness, exhaustion that goes away when you retire. You not only gain 9 hours a day that you were at work, you gain the the time that you were exhausted. Um, the phone calls 24/7, 365. I worked at a plant that that ran every day of the year. The vacation emails. I got up at 5:00 in the morning on uh every day of vacation, every holiday, and did email for about an hour, and that's how I was able to keep up. You may say, just don't do it. Well, then the workload just gets more uh demanding on Monday uh or when you return from vacation. It was easier just to do a little bit at a time, screen them, if you will. Um, that was a big deal.
Uh, number three, I underestimated the true cost of going to work. This one, this one's interesting. Um, when I was doing my budget for retirement, um, one of the things I completely missed is I'm not driving 20 miles a day. The mileage, uh, the gas, the tires, the oil changes. I drive 2500 miles a year now on my car where I was driving about 15. Well, that adds up. Add in some work clothes that you need. Added in lunches, going out to eat, um, fundraisers you may be required to give to and participate in. Um, it's thousands of dollars. [laughter]
Um, number four, I underestimated the toll on my health. Stress eating. That's my nemesis. Stress eating. Uh, and I was uh like I said, I didn't know I was under stress, but I was grab a quick cheeseburger. I'd grab a quick slice of pizza, some lasagna, uh, you know, those, you know, make-feel-good, comfort foods, uh, sedentary days, sitting in meetings for nine hours a day, poor posture. I did walk a lot and I prioritized exercising. I got up at 4:45 in the morning, exercised virtually every day. Uh, but it took up u some mental uh, space to think about how I was going to exercise all the time, and I don't have that. It's one less decision I have to make in retirement.
Number five, I underestimated how much better I sleep without alarms. I was getting 7 to 7 and 1/2 hours sleep a night when I worked. Okay, I now sleep closer to nine. And before you judge me, that's just what my body needed. Uh, without an alarm, I I sleep about nine. Um, I don't have anything to stress about while I'm sleeping. I don't take naps anymore. It used to be very common on Saturday and Sunday. I'd fall asleep on the couch. Now it doesn't happen anymore. And um, it's very important to health as I read uh getting that rejuvenation time uh restorative time of sleep. And I'm sleeping like I said, close to two hours more than I was.
Number six, I underestimated how many friends were really just co-workers. Had a lot of conversations. Good social life. You know, I I talk to dozens of people uh a day in a friendly way. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. But when you retire, you realize who your real friends are. And you, no offense to anybody, they were great people. I was proud to work with them. Um, would do it again. But who are my true friends? The people I could confide in, the people that would come and, you know, drive 50 miles to, you know, pick me up and help me with a flat tire on the on the side of the road. How many people would I feel comfortable doing that for would do it for me and I would I do it for them? I'd do it for anybody, just so you know. Um, yeah, co-workers versus friends is completely different. You learn that when you retire.
Number seven, I underestimated how quickly the company would move on. Uh, the cemetery is full of irreplaceable people. You've heard me say that before, but I had a lot of things going on at work. Uh, when I walked out the door, I passed them on and I said, "Call me anytime. I know there's a lot, you know, I've got a lot of this in my head, some of it written down. Uh, call me anytime. I'll come out. I'll meet you for lunch. I'll help you make sure that you can implement your ideas in addition to mine and just really make an impact." I got zero phone calls, zero emails to support. They moved on. Day I announced I was going, a week later, they forgot my name. Okay, 30 years of experience, 32 years, gone.
Number eight, hopefully I'm doing these in the right order. Uh, number eight, I underestimated how much money was wasted by me being busy. Subscriptions, insurance plans, you know, how long did I or how much time did I have to dedicate to researching home insurance, auto insurance, life uh uh life insurance, uh, um, you know, cell phone plans, utilities fees, you know, replacing the light bulbs in my house with LEDs, Um, I didn't have time to optimize uh any of these things. Uh, one of the big ones for me was uh u getting rid of the cable. We were paying like $220 a month for cable and internet and I'm paying under a hundred now. Um, all because it was just a big deal to go through that conversion and I wasn't looking for things to do. Right.
Uh, number nine, I underestimated all the decisions that impact taxes. This was a shock for me when I retired. Uh, when you're working for somebody else, your W2 employee, taxes are something that happens to you. When you retire, asset allocation means a lot. Sequence of withdrawals means a lot. When you take Social Security means a lot. RMDs, do you need to do Roth conversions to, you know, minimize your RMD tax brackets you're going to go into? Uh, and when do you spend money? Uh, you know, do you spend it all in one year or do you spread it out over a few years? Just how you pay for uh large expense items mainly? Um, just huge. I I underestimated that. I had no idea that was coming at me uh in the quantity it was in retirement. I didn't spend much time on taxes when I worked.
Number 10, I underestimated how much I would cut expenses with time and focus. DIY projects, uh, you know, my dishwasher breaks, I try to repair it. I go online, go on YouTube, and a lot of these repairs could be just a little circuit board, could be a little fitting, could be a filter. Uh, comparison shopping, spending time buying something on sale, uh, cooking at home. I, my wife and I love to cook at home. Uh, one of my retirement gifts was a pellet grill smoker. I love to smoke. Uh, slow weekends. Okay. Cutting the cable. I talked about that. Um, and diving into every expense.
Number 11. I underestimated how draining my commute was. You know, sometimes I would feel pretty good at 4:30, 5 o'clock in the afternoon and then I drive home 30 minutes and you're like, uh, [laughter] it just sucked the energy out of me. I don't know why that happens. It doesn't make a lot of sense. But, um, that commute sometimes took an energetic Joe and made him a tired Joe. U stress, fatigue, uh, loss of life energy.
Number 12. I underestimated how much energy office politics and drama occupied in my mind. How much energy there was in that um, you know, it just occupies, you know, mental load is what my daughter calls it. Mental load. You got all this, this person doesn't like working with this person. This person's complaining about this person. This promotion came up. It went to the wrong person. Why didn't I get that job? The absence of all that office drama is very liberating and uh freeing and peaceful.
13. I underestimated how fast-paced my life was. Evenings and weekends were rushed. Uh, on a Saturday, I had a list of four or five things I needed to get done. I need to cut the grass, need to trim the bushes, need to go buy a suit for a wedding, you know, I needed there was always something to do. And then we're meeting up with this couple at 5:00. Boom, boom, boom. I was very task and accomplishment-oriented. U, you know, vacations were the same way. You know, hey, we got a week of vacation. You know, hey, I got the whole thing planned out. We're going to see these seven things on Monday. We're going to see these four on Tuesday. We're going to go on these two hikes. We're going to go to this national park, that national park. We love national parks. And we are going to win the vacation. We're going to get 40 things done during that week because we only have so much time and we want to see everything. So, boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Just very fast-paced. And this was a problem when I retired, uh, because I had a to-do list. You know, a couple months before I retired, I started writing down a list of things I wanted to do around the house, and I thought it would take me many, many months to get this done, maybe years to get this, like caulking the windows around the house. Stripping it, caulking it was one. And um, I had that entire list done in about three weeks. Three weeks. And I thought I had potentially years of projects because I couldn't slow down. I I finished those projects like I was doing when I was working. I didn't realize mentally that every day was Saturday in retirement. That was a surprise.
14. I underestimated the value of carefree timelessness. This is a Matthew Kelly quote. Uh, he's he's a guy I listen to uh based on faith. Uh, and he, carefree timelessness is time you spend with people, family, friends. Uh, and you don't have an agenda. You don't have something to do. You're just hanging out. Hanging out on the back porch, hanging out in the living room, hanging out on a walk, but you're not bound by time. You know, you don't have to be back from that walk in an hour. You got all day. Carefree timelessness. No agenda, no task to accomplish. It's not speed dating with your family. I like that. I came up with that myself. Uh, just laughing as a family, talking about the past, time with grandkids, you know. I I love babysitting my granddaughter, Everly, and we'll just, you know, play in the yard. We hop on rocks in the yard is something we she likes doing. I got this dry creek bed in my backyard. She likes hopping from one rock to the next. We go to the park. Uh, I love giving her a bath. She's fun, you know, just playing in the water. We put on some music. We dance a little bit. Uh, just carefree timelessness. I I'm not I don't have to get the bath done in 5 minutes, 10 minutes. I got all day. I'm not a rushed person. So, uh, that's cool. Cool. Very cool.
15. And I underestimated how satisfying it is to work on my life instead of working for money and working for somebody else. Uh, I love learning. I spend a lot of time on YouTube. I have a u retirement group. I uh we get together. I I have a study group. We study historical topics. Um, Huey Long, the governor of Louis uh Louisiana is who we're studying this month. If you've ever heard of him, let me know if you've heard of Huey Long. He was a little bit of a tyrant, uh, but got a lot of stuff done in the, uh, late 20s, early 30s, last century. Um, self-improvement, nutrition, and faith. I spent a lot of time learning uh, about health, eating one-ingredient foods. I eat very low carb, uh, exercise, uh, rehab. You know, when you're 61 years old, you have some rehab. I had a shoulder problem. Um, a doctor was talking about rotator cuff surgery and I went through about three months of exercises not that the doctor gave me that I found on YouTube, 100% better as of today, you know, well, as of a couple weeks ago, but uh, about two to three months of exercises I learned that. So, hey, retirement didn't just give me time, it revealed the unrestrained me, unrestrained by money. So I can direct and, you know, in time constraints by money and time constraints. Uh, so it revealed, I think, uh, a truer self, um, and the things I underestimated for decades, um, became the biggest lessons for me and gives gives me a lot of joy, happiness, and uh, gratitude. So there you go. There's my list of 15. Hopefully this helped. They show up.