6 TRUTHS We Learned AFTER Retirement | Retire Well

today's video is a bonus video from Malta and a bit of a pep talk about retirement and how to think about it now in the Years leading up to me Calling it Quits at work we focused on my career raising and helping our kids through college saving money and finding that perfect golf community in Florida to retire where we could take that extended rest and relaxation that we felt we deserved well let us tell you that shortly after that last day of work everything changed and I me everything we had been planning the perfect retirement at the last minute we switched it up seriously we switched it up and set out to live the retirement of our dreams so in today's video we want to share with you six life lessons we've learned along the way and how they've impacted our entire journey through these first four years of retirement now these lessons have truly changed our lives you know we hope you connect with some of them and they may help you in your planning or make making that big switch in your own life we're J and Beth and we are the retirement Travelers if you're just finding us we are full-time World Travelers our passion is sharing our journey and hopefully inspiring others to live their best retirement life we have a website where we create travel guides for the places that we go and if you're wondering where we are in the world right now we keep our Instagram updated to our current location so be sure to follow us there the first thing we learned is that you must Master the ability to Pivot life is constantly changing and retirement is no different shortly after we retired at the end of 2019 we had planned on taking an extended trip to Europe well like everyone else in early 2020 Our Lives came to a screeching halt and our choices were limited we quickly formed a new plan and rather than waited out on our condo we opted to live our next couple of years outside side we bought a travel trailer and hiked our way through the national parks of America living in 250 square ft we were social distancing from everyone but each other which was a big adjustment it was during this time that we realized that what we really loved was being adventurers together and we formulated a new plan we created retirement Travelers and began to dream a new dream for ourselves we didn't overanalyze the situations or the difficulties that we would encounter or second guess our abilities we just made a drastic pivot in our lives looking back this very tight space in the Airstream just opposed us against the grand backdrop of the national parks as we drove across the country now when we were in the truck our view changed drastically and became not small but Grand you know seeing farmland and mountaintops and rivers and streams and oceans it showed us that there were bigger dreams out there and we could jump into those dreams you know we listen to travel stories on audio and that helped us even broaden our Horizons even more World Travel was our pivot retirement was our pivot and honestly this pivot has reenergized what we thought would be our sleepy years no big accomplishments and no big goals boy were we wrong yes you know we found that the key to pivoting is to plan but don't overanalyze you know assess but not create barriers and the main thing is to stop sitting around procras fting your dreams you know we've learned that jumping into something and there are many choices you can make can be a great way to Pivot your life the second thing we learned is that we have unlimited possibilities in retirement so why did we put ourselves in a box and limit our options during our planning stages we didn't realize it then but we were putting so many restrictions on how we would spend our retirement it wasn't that we rejected other living options or even ways to reinvent ourselves we were oblivious to them during our Us Journey we had many conversations you know we challenged each other to think about what we really wanted in life you know what our dreams and hopes were and how the perfect retirement we had planned might just be limiting us you know we realized through these discussions that we had put ourselves in a little box of doing what everybody else was doing moreover we were too concerned with following the expected path you know the one we mean what will everyone think of if we sell our house and give away all of our stuff and throw in some matching shirts and then what will they think of us one of these discussions got us thinking about what we love most about travel now we had traveled before I retired and the places we love the most were not the bright shiny ones with the fancy hotels it was places like Vietnam Colombia and Argentina you know we love traveling in these places eating from roadside stands and interacting with the people who live there we began to talk about what it would be like to travel more and live with less Comforts that we had grown accustomed to one conversation led to another and before long we decided that our lives could be very different than the perfect world that we had created we realized that we could change our square box into any shape we wanted and it was okay to be different different than what we had planned and certainly different from everyone else recently we did a video where we told about Bev having multiple sclerosis we heard from many of our viewers who said that they too were dealing with a health issue and it changed the trajectory of their life as well now for us we learned very early not to take our good health for granted and that we might have a very short window of opportunity to do everything we wanted you know most people retire when they are 65 when they are still healthy and able to do many things this time is called the go- go years and this is the stage we are in we can move quickly carry a backpack and we have so much optimism about our plans we are energized and ready to tackle it all but we know that the next phase is the slowo years now this is the stage where people make a decision to slow down their lives on purpose and also because of need now the next phase after that is the noggo years this is when you're physically unable to do all the things you desire to do because of your health and your abilities take a toll many people have curious inquisitive Minds at this age but their body can't keep the pace they'd like to the Big Challenge in retirement is to be aware that these stages can come hard and fast once we took a look at the numbers we realized that we had less time to go and do than we first imagined and many people only have 10 or less go- go years slowo and noo come very fast your window of opportunity is narrow and you must make the most of that time while you're able if travel is your passion like ours getting out there and making the most of these years is important we've heard all the excuses oh I'll go later when the grandkids get a little older or you know I don't want to downsize the house because I want the kids to have their old bedroom to come back to for Christmas you know the list goes on and on but one wise elderly neighbor told us that when we started out to see the national parks it's really good that we're going now because they waited too long and now they can't go this awareness was probably the biggest surprise and most significant learning in our retirement life if you had told us 5 years ago that we would be thrilled with no house no cars no TV no clothes and very few possessions I would have thought you were Silly and but the reality is that not having stuff has been liberating for us our stuff was holding us back downsizing simplified our lives in so many ways and has given us the freedom and financial ability to travel the world World it has also changed our Focus from material possessions to having many great experiences building relationships and living our retirement life to the fullest we didn't live out our lives like this before retirement you know we lived with way too much stuff and looking back at it it felt like we carried stuff into the house all the time you know we thought stuff was our friend but now we know it was really just a ball and chain the realization that we didn't need stuff to live a great grand life has been what we're so proud of seriously what what took us so long recently we did a video where we told about this process of Swedish death cleaning it's the gift you give your heirs by dealing with your stuff and not leaving it all for your kids to conquer when you die this video will play after this one so stay tuned for that one after a 34 year long career my first thought after retiring was to take perhaps a 30-year vacation now of course taking a short break did make sense but retiring our brains and not taking on a learning challenge differed from the direction that we wanted to go now as tempting as doing nothing in retirement sounded there have been many studies that show that lack of challenging your mind could lead to a much quicker loss of cognitive function it is similar to lack of exercise for your body as we said earlier we didn't overanalyze we jumped into creating retirement Travelers we didn't know what we didn't no when we said let's do this but probably two weeks in we realized that our brains were getting a calisthenic workout that we never imagined it would have been simple at that point just to call it off and not go further creating a website learning different editing software very difficult editing software uh you know figuring out what to do with the loads of video files that we had you know figuring out what gear we needed watching tons of videos hiring someone to teach us SEO and and just working with tech support to get everything up and going it was massive the amount of learning that we had to do I always you know had done Facebook but I had no idea of the behind the scenes knowledge that it took to run multiple platforms and create content on them our point is that giving our brains a workout in retirement has been one of the biggest things we've done yes the challenges have been very hard you know but we've persevered you know we still feel overwhelmed at times but we're getting the hang of things and we're pivo constantly you know we never let our minds go on a vacation with our health issues we know that eating well and exercising is the most important part of the equation for living a grand life if we don't do what we need to do to keep our bodies healthy we will throw away our opportunities there are two aspects of this the first one is to seek medical attention and not put off the regular checkups and dental cleanings you know we both see Specialists and we do need regular appointments some we do in the states and some we do abroad you know we take our medications and we do what the doctor advises one of those is to get enough exercise being on the road has been a great way for us to get our steps not great for staying in racing shape for John he's a runner but overall we are more active than when John worked we are finding that stretching has become more important as we age and eating right is a key to good health people ask us all the time what we eat since we stay in hotels all the time but every breakfast around the world has healthy options and we make good choices at dinner time we probably eat salmon twice a week and I'd like they about five times a week yeah and we make it a rule at every meal to get a good serving of vegetables even at breakfast as you approach retirement and soon after retirement your friends begin to pass now this was one of the most heartbreaking things we experienced early on you know I just thought that my best friends would be around forever but it wasn't the case you know we've learned that good health sets up the remainder of your life life and without it you just can't do a lot so take good care of yourself you know your grandchildren are worth it and they need their grandparents to be alive for a long long time we hope that you have found our retirement lessons helpful regardless of what stage of retirement you're currently at so stay tuned for death cleaning it's up next be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

Views: 48,285

Keywords: retirement, retirement planning, early retirement, lessons learned, retire, retire early, retirement 101, things to do in retirement, retirement travel, retirement lessons, slow go years, retirement advice, retirement tips, best retirement, retirement travelers, retirement health, retirement living, world travel, planning for retirement, retirement plan, retirement stories, retirement transition, retiring at age 60, retiring at age 55

Id: SE8gDcR_DaM

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023