Kick Your Bucket List
Start Your Road To A Happy Retired Life By Kicking Your Bucket List To The Curb
Take a Jimmy Buffett moment to reconsider your retirement lifestyle
Being retired is a new sensation for almost all of us. Since it typically occurs when we are older, you should adjust your rules for living. If you have a bucket list, kick it to the curb. Start with being happy and enjoying your retirement your way.
Bucket lists are for people who don’t know happiness, just being busy. Suppose you have 40 things on your bucket list. You are on your deathbed and realize you only did 39 of them. How will that make you feel? Instead of cherishing retirement, you had an impossible list to complete. It’s just like you were working.
Take a Jimmy Buffett moment to think about the type of lifestyle you want. One you enjoy. Maybe it’s not living a Margarita lifestyle. Maybe, it's simply changing your attitude, if not your latitude. After all, you don’t work for anyone anywhere anymore.
Then, kick the bucket list.
Here are 7 things to consider that may help you on your happier retirement journey.
1. Travel
Retirement travel is overrated.
I traveled extensively for my job. It’s tiring, stressful, and unhealthy. I hate to tell you, but you are probably in worse shape now than ever. If the first trip you take in retirement is a long, multi-city tour, that may cure you of any future travel.
Are you thinking about traveling the country in an RV with your spouse?
Over 39 years ago, for the first and last time, we rented a 26-foot RV. I remember asking the RV rental attendant about draining the waste tank. “Maybe once during the trip,” was his reply. Try every day.
Then there was the terror of driving it on California freeways, parking it, and sleeping in close confines with our then very active 3-year-old. There were disagreements over directions, and I had to do all the driving.
On returning home, my wife’s closing comment? “That was like spending a week locked in the kitchen.”
RV travel isn’t on our bucket list. Staying in 4-star hotels when we travel is.
If you are considering buying an RV to spend weeks on the road with your spouse, please save your marriage. Just rent one for a week and see what you both think.
2. Never Run
Just stop it. Walk everywhere. Why run in or around the house, or even walk fast? Slow down. You’re retired now.
Plus, when you have scissors in your hand, you will never fall on them. Or a knife. Or window glass, jars, or any tools.
Running is for people in a hurry. You’re retired. Hurry doesn’t exist.
Walk.
3. Seldom Wash Your Levi’s.
Controlling expenses is important on a fixed income. Here is a money-saving tip: own 2 pairs of Levi’s. Buy a new pair for dressy and retire the faded ones to working status.
Dressy times are when you wear a clean shirt, maybe with buttons and a collar. If you wash the dressy pair, they will fade, and turn into a second pair of working Levi’s. You don’t need 2 pairs of working Levi’s. My big secret is don’t wash your dressy pair. If you have a spouse with a cleaning fetish, hide this pair.
After washings, Levi’s shrink in the waist. And the longer you own that favorite pair, the more they shrink. Of course, that might not be all Levi’s fault.
Now, the working pair. Wash them when the dirt and grime are thick enough that they stand up on their own. Depending upon your spouse, she may seek out this pair by scent, so hide them well.
I hang mine in the garage, “just airing them out, dear.”
4. Stay Off the Ladder
I am 75. Every so often, I lose balance for a split second. Fortunately, I am not on a 6-foot ladder when this happens.
After age 70, NEVER EVER use a ladder. Get someone else to use the ladder. You’re old for Pete’s sake. Ladders for 70-year-olds mean a trip to the ER.
This advice comes from my niece, an ER nurse. Several years ago (probably not thinking how old I was) she complained “How stupid is it for 70-year-olds to use ladders? They are in the ER all the time!”
My dad fell off a ladder shortly after retiring. His ankle fractured resulting in a lifetime limp. Worst of all, it added strokes to his golf handicap.
According to the CDC, 133,000 people fall from ladders at home every year with about 240 deaths. I guarantee that the people falling from ladders aren’t 20-year-old painters. They are you and me.
There you have it: advice from a nurse, my personal experience, and data. What more do you need?
Don’t use a ladder.
6. Never Cave Dive
One of the many things on your John McClane bucket list, right after skydiving, is cave diving.
Let me give you two pieces of wisdom.
- If God wanted us to fly, we would have wings.
- If He wanted us to be underwater, we would have gills.
Remember the saying “If your buddy dove off a pier, would you?” The same goes for cave diving. If your SCUBA buddy wants to cave dive, get a new buddy.
Don’t cave dive.
7. Never Compare Yourself to Others
Your retired neighbor just got a new BMW. Well, good for him. Your trusty Subaru gets you from point A to point B in safety and comfort and never breaks down.
Want to be unhappy? Then envy your BMW-owning buddy. Comparison is the single biggest source of unhappiness in life.
You are retired, you made it. How many people didn’t? Think about that list.
Make a bucket list of experiences you want, not a checklist of things to do and places to visit. Maybe it’s having time to spend gardening, something you never had time for when working. Perhaps it is reading those books, enjoying different music, or being in nature. Visit state parks on occasion versus stressing trying to complete a checklist of national parks.
Then there are family goals such as seeing grandchildren graduate, supporting your children while they work, or being the caretaker of their homes.
This is not some race to finish a list, be the winner, or achieve more than the guy with the new BMW.
Set your retirement course, one that fits with your values and beliefs. Value your relationships with people and your deity. Hang out with people who aren’t caught up in consumerism.
Change your attitude, change your mindset, and be happy. Happiness does not have a price tag.
Thanks for reading my article. It may not make you roll on the floor laughing but, hopefully, you found some humor in it. — Jim
