Retirement Brings With It Extra Time

Make The Best Of It

- Patti and Milledge Hart

Singer Jim Croce longed to put time in a bottle. Retirees aren’t always certain what it is they long to do with time, but one day they stop working and find they have a barrelful of it.

“People often are so focused on making sure they are financially ready to retire that they forget to plan for what they want to do in retirement,” says Patti Hart, co-author with her husband, Milledge, of The Resolutionist: Welcome to the Anti-Retirement Movement.

“And they may have more time to fill than they realize. Life expectancy has grown, and retirements that last 20 years, 30 years, or longer aren’t that unusual. So you have to start thinking, what will you do with your time? How do you envision your days playing out?”

For the Harts, the answers to those questions involve the “anti-retirement movement,” where retirement is more than a rocking chair on a front porch or endless hours of golf.

“We did leave our careers, but we would never call ourselves retired,” Milledge Hart says. “We are busier now than we’ve ever been. The difference is that we are busy doing what brings us joy rather than what advances our careers.”