Retirement Activities - Spend More Time Doing the Things You Enjoyed Doing Before Retirement

Retire Happy by Spending More Time Doing

the Things You Enjoyed Doing Before Retirement

Not so long ago Gunther Schoeps, a former Lutheran Minister at St. Paul's Chapel in Edmonton, called me to let me know what he is doing in retirement. When he retired at 70, he decided to indulge in several activities that he had pursued before retirement, but not as much as he would have liked.

For one, he started reading more. One of the first two books that he read after his retirement day was The Joy of Not Working. He claimed that the chapter on handling boredom was very helpful to him. Schoeps also intended to visit his homeland of Germany more often and to devote more time to cross-country skiing, hiking, and cycling.

Here are some resources to help you have a happier retirement:

Retirement Activities - Learn to Enjoy All 15 Things That Agatha Christie Enjoyed


Why Hard Work Can Kill You


SMART AND RICH


RETIREMENT FRIENDS THAT HEAVEN SENT

Here are some new articles that will soon appear on The Retirement Cafe:

More Ways to Kill Retirement Boredom Without a Gun - from Chapter 8 - 1001 Ways to Enjoy Your Retirement
Make the Creation and Maintenance of Friends Your Overriding Purpose
Green Thumb Yourself Out of Depression
When Comfort Doesn't Feel Comfortable, Do Something Uncomfortable
Stay Active Doing the Things That You Find Interesting

Retirement Quote:

Whatever the challenge of a new age, in the end what really counts is not the years in our lives but the life in our years. It is not about longevity, but the depth of life. Long ago I learned that age does not wither the mind if people remain positive. No one is too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. It is a mind game. As Churchill suggested, "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
— Singapore Retiree JENNIE CHAU

Tidbits to Enhance Your Retirement Living

Here are some tidbits about work, fashion, and retirement that may or may not enhance your retirement.

Evidence That Hard Work Can Kill You

• Approximately two million workers die annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, according to one United Nations report. This means that work kills more people than war (650,000 deaths per year).


• Employees who work over forty-eight hours per week double their risk of heart disease, according to a 1996 UK government report.


• According to a 2003 American study, long-term job strain is worse for your heart than gaining forty pounds in weight or aging thirty years.


• According to a 2002 study in the British Medical Journal, employees with stressful jobs are twice as likely to die from heart disease as those who have jobs with little or no stress.

Five of the Top-10 Dumbest Retirement Moves

• Planning to work forever


• Gambling


• Spending a lot of time shopping


• Being afraid to spend the kid's inheritance


• Neglecting your health by not indulging in vigorous physical exercise every day

Fashion Is Designed to Fatten Your Ego and Slim Your Bank Account

• Fashion is something that goes in one year and out the other. - Author Unknown


• Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new. - Henry David Thoreau


• Fashions are induced epidemics. - George Bernard Shaw


• Being named as one of the world's best-dressed men doesn't necessarily mean that I am a bad person. - Anthony R. Cucci

How to Survive a Recession in Style

My family wasn't affected by the crash of '29. They went broke in '28.
- Gerald Barzan

Here is what a Squidoo Lens Maker Says about the benefits of a recession and how it will help you survive a recession:

• A recession makes you wiser
• A recession makes you think out of the box
• A recession makes a decision maker out of you.
• A recession makes you appreciate what you have.
• A recession forces change
  

Here is one way on how to survive a recession in style:

I just received the following letter from Raúl Mellado in Spain:

Dear Mr. Zelinski,

I am writing from Spain, after reading your book The Joy of Not Working, after a recommendation by a friend. I must say it's one of the funniest — yet at the same time useful book I've ever read.

When I told my colleagues I was quitting my job as a computer engineer to move with my girlfriend to a little island (called La Palma) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where we had no job, no house; just a couple of friends living there and nice weather all year long, they all said I was crazy.

Now, looking back, I think it's them who are crazy for staying where they are! I clearly remember one coffee break, talking about what we would do if we won the lottery. And absolutely no one would stay where we were.

So I thought, if you don't like what you do, Why keep doing it?

Here, in order to pay the rent for our flat, my girlfriend takes somesporadic jobs as a nurse, and I use my computer skills from time totime on some projects, but most of the time, we are free. We havereduced our expenses to the minimum, and our capacity to enjoy lifeto the maximum!

We have walks in nature, read the newspaper lying on the beach, several books (one per week is our aim,) learn new recipes and cook our slow-food, learn new languages, etc.

I am 26, and she is 24. We are really happy we took this path whenwe are relatively young (no young enough to keep awake till 6 am ata party, anymore), not wasting our lives living for work.

Also, we think this lifestyle, reducing consumption to a minimumand escaping the vicious consumerism, apart from increasing our happiness, helps our planet, working in favor of its sustainability.

Currently, we are trying to find and develop some kind of businessin which we can enjoy ourselves and have a regular income, not working too hard. Do you have any suggestions?

[ Answer: Yes, read Career Success Without a Real Job.

Now we are looking forward to reading your latest book How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free, lying on a beach.

We would like to thank you for all we've learned with your book, andno need to say, we would really enjoy having your visit over hereone day. Just look for flights to "Santa Cruz de La Palma", in Spainand let us know what time we should pick you up at the airport.

Best regards from Spain,

Raúl

Here are a three retirement quotes:

Retirement is the beginning of life — not the end!

— from How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

Don't wait for retirement to be happy and really start living. Invariably, people who try this find out that they have waited much too long.

— from How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

To fear retirement is to fear life.

— from How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free

Also check out these resources to help you survive a recession:

Fashion and Money

Top-10 Dumbest Retirement Moves

Benefit from a Recession: Quit Your Job

There are many benefits from a recession as are listed on my new website Love a Recession.

A recession is not the end of the world. Heck, you can even quit your job.

Following is a scan of a letter that I received in 1992 from Les Oak in Ontario who quit his job after reading The Joy of Not Working. Keep in mind that there was a recession going on at that time too.

I will soon post another letter that I received from a woman who just quit her job. Her motivation was Les Oak's above letter announcing his quitting his job, which appears in the latest edition of The Joy of Not Working.



If you don't have any good reasons to quit your job, then visit my new website The Fun at Work Cafe.

If you can't quit your job, it's likely that you are not as proficient at debt management as people such as Les Oak are.

Here are some quotes from The Money Cafe to place debt and credit in their place:


Who pays his debts, gets rich.
— French proverb

He that has not bread to spare should not keep a dog.
— Chinese proverb

The saving man becomes the free man.
— Chinese proverb

You can't put your VISA bill on your American express card.
— P. J. O'Rourke

He who borrows gets sorrows.
— Turkish proverb

The Joy of Not Working Is Leisure Literature

Here is an e-mail that I just received about The Joy of Not Working:

----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 1:52 AM
Subject: Forward To Mr. Zelinski


Dear Author of The Joy of Not Working

I, as of many, have just read your latest masterpiece. Words cannot dictate the relevance of your "leisure literature". I for one will not sit idlely by as the world turns by, or will I? I just would like to add a minor saying I thought of while absorbing your "work"; "if it is not-doing then don't do it!" Thanks for your odaciousness?, and optimism? (sorry, it just fits!)
Your friend,
Nathan O. Stevens
Victoria, Canada (well...now)
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

Here is one of my recent blogs on my Red Room Webpage: Reasons You Gotta Love a Recession ,

When the Recession Affects Your Retirement, Turn to Your Friends

I am still working on my new e-book 101 Reasons to Love a Recession.

Looks like the recession is having its effects to retirees worldwide. (If you would like to see a definition of recession go to the Love a Recession website.)

Figures obtained by The Weekend Australian show the country's 2.3 million retirees are 20 per cent poorer than they were a year ago, with the global financial crisis slashing the value of their assets.

Approximately 40,000 soon-to-be retired Australians this year will be forced into part-time retirement jobs as the economic downturn erodes the value of their homes and savings.

Research by Rice Warner Consulting shows that of the 155,000 Australians who planned to retire this year, between 38,000 and 40,000 will move into part-time employment - if their bosses don't force them out in a cost-cutting drive.

It's getting tougher for Japanese retirees as well: The Japanese slide in household spending remains unchecked. In addition, the government reported a record fall in industrial output. Japanese unemployment continues to rise.

No doubt many retirees will have to learn to adjust their spending habits as there is little free money to be had.

Of course having a happy retirement depends on many other things including having a number of best friends to share time with.

Here are five quotations about friendship to place the value of best friends in perspective:

#1 of Top Ten Friendship Sayings
It is better in times of need to have a friend rather than money.
— Greek proverb

#2 of Top Ten Friendship Sayings
When you are looking for a best friend, don't look for perfection; just look for friendship.
— Unknown Wise Person

#3 of Top Ten Friendship Sayings
A true friend wants nothing more from you than the pleasure of your company.
— Unknown wise person

#4 of Top Ten Friendship Sayings
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if your best friends end up elsewhere.
— Unknown wise person

#5 of Top Ten Friendship Sayings
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
— Unknown wise person