What do you think?
Rate this book
How to enjoy retirement: Activities from A to Z
This is a self-help book, a retirement book, and a gift bookMany people are unprepared for retirement when it arrives. Suddenly an abundance of time and freedom can actually seem stressful, and many people complain they "don't know what to do with themselves" once they leave the workplace. Many spouses are not prepared to live full-time with retiring spouses, either. To help these millions of Americans, How to Enjoy Your Retirement has over 1,000 ideas for making retirement a happy and rewarding time of life.People of all book-buying ages know people who are retiring or retired, so this book is also a great gift idea.
145 pages, Loose Leaf
First published December 31, 1995
2 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 1, 2010
I regard this whole retirement business as one of the inbuilt evils of the system. The idea millions cling to that at the age of 65 they’ll be given a little clock or something for decades of servitude and allowed finally to fuck off and enjoy themselves is like a sick joke.
Never having had a steady career path I have nothing to retire from except myself, and although suicide is often a tempting escape route I doubt I’ll ever take it because you never know what’s just around the corner. Some of my most depressed phases have been rewarded with periods of great richness that seem to have been a function of them, in the sense that the lower you get the higher you can rise, in some sort of reciprocal relationship. Is this why manic depressives seem to predominate in the Arts?
I went to the Channel Islands once to cover some yachting festival, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many retired businessmen gathered in one place before or since. As a tax haven, the Channel Islands attract many such creatures, generally overweight and vacuous individuals with their bored wives, spending their remaining days playing golf and checking their share values. I had a drink with one retired company director who talked for two hours solid about the meaning of a cheque, and how as a teenager he’d lie in bed studying company law and that’s what got him to where he was that day. When I tried to change the subject to something other than money it was as if a battery had gone flat in him and he almost visibly shrank.
At the other end of the spectrum, I saw a dear old couple on TV not long ago, products of the cradle-to-grave ideology of the nanny state, almost crying that they’d worked and saved hard all their lives and that now they were retired their pension was a tiny fraction of what they’d been told it was. No doubt the money-boys had been up to their tricks, or some fat bastard like Robert Maxwell had come along and decided to help himself.
As far as I’m concerned, when the adventures stop you’ve effectively retired from life. The years pass and merge into one inane mass and you suddenly find you’re old and that you get no second bite at the cake. Being completely vacuous helps, of course, but dare I say the more enlightened (cynical, disgusted, arrogant?) of us need to find ways of escape and the means to continue carving out an individual trench, have new projects on the go, never stop learning and empathising and helping and being compassionate, moulding upsets and heartaches into productive channels and refusing to go under, because you never know what’s around the next bend.
I’m reminded of I think it was a scene in Annie Hall when they were people-watching and saw an all-American, smiling, Bambi-eyed young couple passing and Annie wondered what made them so perfect a couple, and Woody says something like, ’She’s completely empty-headed, and so is he’.
Hit me with your rhythm stick, HIT ME! HIT ME! HIT ME! Besides, if you love your work and are beholden to no-one, retirement has no meaning. I think Picasso got the balance right. Life should be an ongoing struggle, and if you retire and have no struggle anymore then that for many is a form of suspended animation whilst for others of a more sensitive persuasion it can turn out to be an unexpected living hell.
I for one want nothing to do with anything the loving State provides, I march to a different tune and don’t believe a word I’m told through the media about anything. And I especially won’t be categorised. In the past I’ve worked with men in their twenties who walked and talked and behaved like sixty-somethings, and conversely I know quite a few ‘old’ people whose only sign of being older than twenty is the state of their skin.
We are all different, and to this extent Pointe I agree with your subjective stance and that we are what we think we are, but it’s always a running battle with official categorisations. I’m sure for instance I’ll feel a shock when I hit 60 and that it will take all my reserves of spite, disgust, anger and cynicism to keep the boat on its usual even keel :)
Never having had a steady career path I have nothing to retire from except myself, and although suicide is often a tempting escape route I doubt I’ll ever take it because you never know what’s just around the corner. Some of my most depressed phases have been rewarded with periods of great richness that seem to have been a function of them, in the sense that the lower you get the higher you can rise, in some sort of reciprocal relationship. Is this why manic depressives seem to predominate in the Arts?
I went to the Channel Islands once to cover some yachting festival, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many retired businessmen gathered in one place before or since. As a tax haven, the Channel Islands attract many such creatures, generally overweight and vacuous individuals with their bored wives, spending their remaining days playing golf and checking their share values. I had a drink with one retired company director who talked for two hours solid about the meaning of a cheque, and how as a teenager he’d lie in bed studying company law and that’s what got him to where he was that day. When I tried to change the subject to something other than money it was as if a battery had gone flat in him and he almost visibly shrank.
At the other end of the spectrum, I saw a dear old couple on TV not long ago, products of the cradle-to-grave ideology of the nanny state, almost crying that they’d worked and saved hard all their lives and that now they were retired their pension was a tiny fraction of what they’d been told it was. No doubt the money-boys had been up to their tricks, or some fat bastard like Robert Maxwell had come along and decided to help himself.
As far as I’m concerned, when the adventures stop you’ve effectively retired from life. The years pass and merge into one inane mass and you suddenly find you’re old and that you get no second bite at the cake. Being completely vacuous helps, of course, but dare I say the more enlightened (cynical, disgusted, arrogant?) of us need to find ways of escape and the means to continue carving out an individual trench, have new projects on the go, never stop learning and empathising and helping and being compassionate, moulding upsets and heartaches into productive channels and refusing to go under, because you never know what’s around the next bend.
I’m reminded of I think it was a scene in Annie Hall when they were people-watching and saw an all-American, smiling, Bambi-eyed young couple passing and Annie wondered what made them so perfect a couple, and Woody says something like, ’She’s completely empty-headed, and so is he’.
Hit me with your rhythm stick, HIT ME! HIT ME! HIT ME! Besides, if you love your work and are beholden to no-one, retirement has no meaning. I think Picasso got the balance right. Life should be an ongoing struggle, and if you retire and have no struggle anymore then that for many is a form of suspended animation whilst for others of a more sensitive persuasion it can turn out to be an unexpected living hell.
I for one want nothing to do with anything the loving State provides, I march to a different tune and don’t believe a word I’m told through the media about anything. And I especially won’t be categorised. In the past I’ve worked with men in their twenties who walked and talked and behaved like sixty-somethings, and conversely I know quite a few ‘old’ people whose only sign of being older than twenty is the state of their skin.
We are all different, and to this extent Pointe I agree with your subjective stance and that we are what we think we are, but it’s always a running battle with official categorisations. I’m sure for instance I’ll feel a shock when I hit 60 and that it will take all my reserves of spite, disgust, anger and cynicism to keep the boat on its usual even keel :)
December 29, 2023
I enjoyed this workbook because it gave me some new paths to consider in retirement. It is broken into two parts: the first a description of many popular retirement activities, and the second a table where you can check off your level of interest as yes, no, or later plus add some remarks. It’s a fun, approachable way to brainstorm the next phase of life.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews