Retirement Lifestyle Issues: How to Fill the Days Ahead

August 17, 2010

From a retirement plan perspective, your employees may have a good understanding of their pension, 401k, and eligibility for retiree health insurance from your plan communication initiative.  Perhaps you even sit down with each pre-retiree to help them through the exit process.  But do you also discuss lifestyle issues with them?  It is hard to imagine, but there are quite a few pre-retirees that have no idea what they will do day to day after they collect their final paycheck.  I could think of a multitude of ideas for filling my retirement days, but others that I have talked to have never even put a thought to their plans.

I recently had an attendee at one of my Retirement Readiness workshops that wished she had invited her husband to sit in on the meeting.  She was complaining that in the past year since he’s retired, he hovers around her since all his buddies from work are still at work and he had no other social network of friends.  His main event every day is driving her to and from work, and coming to her work to join her for lunch!  She said it was great to have a personal chauffeur for the first few weeks, but now she actually misses sitting by herself in rush hour traffic.

When it comes to retirement, monetary benefits  are certainly important – but does your company have a retiree alumni group?  Or, are there local programs such as the YMCA or public library that would be happy to link up with volunteers?  It is important to keep active and remain social in order to enjoy a well-rounded retirement, so make sure that lifestyle issues become a conversation point as your employees transition to retirement.