How to have an epic retirement
Last updated on 3 April 2024
Key points:
- Give yourself a honeymoon period with retirement where you get to travel and do something you’ve never done before
- Have a good understanding of budgeting and how changes to your lifestyle will impact your budget — ie. petrol, food, electricity usage, et cetera
- Give yourself projects that allow you to work at your own pace and make improvements to your home
More recently, job satisfaction, health, trust, financial literacy and other social factors have been confirmed to have an impact on retirement preparation. Retirement life happiness, measured as physical pleasure and mental satisfaction, is essential to people as they age.
However, how financial investment affects the individual’s confidence in a happy future retirement life was revealed to be important.
Although, time is money and how we invest time can be just as important. Retirement opens up the time that you can spend on others, on yourself and on your assets. Setting yourself goals and working on them yourself can revitalise the effort that you need to expend to feel a sense of pride in waking up each day.
Some retirees return to university to pick up new knowledge or work on personal arts, crafts and hobbies that give them a renewed sense of purpose. However, the base level of occupying your time and contributing to success is home improvement.
Currently, 76 percent of retirees own the homes they live in and people may choose to downsize later down the road. Adding value to your property can completely overhaul your overall lifestyle, future and budget — allowing you to set goals, learn tasks, expend effort and give you options for downsizing that allow you to reap the benefits of work you do in your early retirement years.
In addition to maintenance, improvements and building, these tasks can allow you to work together with a partner and divide duties to achieve goals quicker — giving any potential relationships a new life later on.
Ikea may serve as a great way to kickstart your dream home and get to work on projects without much research. You can follow the instructional booklets and put together furniture, replace old inventory and pick out a new look that will make you feel a sense of pride when inviting others over.
Keeping your house in check can keep you physically fit and financially free later in life, along with allowing you to stay on top of what needs fixing in case you leave to travel or give someone the chance to house-sit.
YouTube is a valuable resource with step-by-step tutorials that are readily available to help you breeze through personal tasks or projects that you may have outsourced due to time shortages or for convenience.
Instead, the added costs of labour, transport and upselling can remain in your pocket and be used for a full life in travel and financial security when you feel it is time to make a significant change, such as moving into a retirement community.
Picking up a new series of tools can inspire you to work on projects through what is known as the ‘sunk cost fallacy,’ wherein people feel that they’ve already lost money, so they force themselves to keep spending money in order to make progress rather than quitting. It’s a psychological principle that will force you to take action and improve your work ethic after work.
What would you change first about your home during retirement? Let the team at Your Retirement Living know and subscribe to the newsletter for more information, news and industry updates.
Related content: