Retirement and happiness project. Retirees please respond?

Question

I'm doing a psychology project on retirement and happiness and would like an opinion from some people who are retired. Is retirement all it is cracked up to be or are you still working through your retirement? If you aren't working, are you happier now or were you happier working? What is it that most influences your sense of happiness in regard to this subject? Any response is welcome and appreciated.

Answer 1

I moved to an "Active Adult" community. Here I play 2 hours of water volleyball almost everyday and I'm active in several local theater groups. These are both activities, when I was working as a computer geek, I had no interest in. I usually bicycle at least an hour each day. My days are so full of activities (the above plus golf, tennis, softball, etc.) that I have no idea how I ever had anytime to work. I wish days were longer so I could do even more.

Before I came here I spent a week interviewing people in the community I'd meet while touring the area. I found a lot of people that regretted not retiring sooner, I found nobody that wished they had worked a few more years.

Do I know of retirees that are not happy? Yes, of course. But these are mostly people that are trying to live a retirement life in a work environment. People in the working world only have time to do fun activities in the evenings and weekends and then only after they finish all their duties (shopping, cooking, child care). So unless you can find a lot of like minded retirees in this environment there is very little for a retiree to do during the days.

Answer 2

Yeah, I'm retired, but I have plenty to keep me occupied, which is the key, I think, to a happy retirement. I'm much happier retired, but I can see that if your life before retirement was all to do with work, you'd be pretty bored retired.
The difference is doing the things I want to do, compared to doing things I had to do whilst working.

Answer 3

I'm still working just in another way. I clean the house instead of having a house cleaner so I'll have something to do. I get to spend more time with my grandchildren because I live closer now. I spend more time at the grocery store because I use to hate it. I spend more time shopping and that's fun even if I don't buy anything. The good part is that I can do what I want to do each day.