EP. 313 – Retirement Hobbies and Activities – What Today’s Retirees Love to Do

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In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss the fun and fulfilling side of retirement: retirement hobbies and retirement activities. After years spent working and raising families, many retirees look forward to rediscovering passions or picking up new interests. Radon and Murs explore why hobbies after retirement are so important for mental, physical, and emotional well-being and share some of the most popular retirement lifestyle ideas embraced by today’s retirees.

Listen in to learn about fun things to do in retirement, from volunteering in retirement and gardening to traveling and staying active with sports like pickleball. They also discuss how participating in activities after retirement helps build social connections, promotes lifelong learning, and keeps retirees energized. If you’re planning retirement lifestyle goals, this episode is full of practical inspiration to help you retire comfortably and secure your retirement.

In this episode, find out:

·      Why it’s crucial to plan hobbies for seniors ahead of retirement.

·      The best ways to incorporate fun things to do in retirement into daily life.

·      How volunteering in retirement benefits your health and social life.

·      Why activities like gardening, traveling, and learning are top picks for retirees.

·      Tips for trying new activities for retirees and building a fulfilling lifestyle.

Tweetable Quotes:

“Retirement is the perfect time to invest in yourself through hobbies that inspire, energize, and bring joy.” — Radon Stancil

“Having an active retirement isn’t just fun—it’s essential for your mental, physical, and emotional well-being.” — Murs Tariq

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!

To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

Welcome to Secure Your Retirement podcast. We are excited to be able to talk with

you today again on another topic around this idea of retirement. You know, when we

do these podcasts, we try to not make it all technical every single time that we’re

talking. And we know right now in particularly with all the different things that

are on the news about things like tariffs and recessions and all those kinds of

things. And then the back and forth between the different types of governments and

now even countries, that can be stressful. So, we said, let’s talk about something

that is a concern. It is something that our clients and those that are talking to

us as they think through this idea of getting to retirement Question comes up

sometimes because we’ll ask what are you going to do in retirement? And they go,

man, I got so many different ideas, but I really don’t have it narrowed down yet

as to what I’m going to do And so we thought it would be kind of a fun episode

to just talk about what’s the top hobbies top things that people want to do when

they are in retirement. Because, you know, there’s all kinds of different things that

people can have passions about. Sometimes though, they’ve not figured that out yet.

So, we always talk about that first year of retirement. That first year of retirement

is kind of like the vacation phase. I really don’t have anything. I’m going to

figure it all out. I’m not going to just go from work to some other work. And so

I kind of want to have some fun. So, we just thought we could kind of walk through

this and Merce, you kind of want to get us started on this idea this idea of

things that you might do in retirement. – Yeah, and let’s talk about why it’s so

important to think through what you want post-retirement life, because for a long

time, when you’re working, earning and saving and building your career, that really

becomes your focus. And in a lot of ways, your career and your family really just

becomes your identity. And what we see happen over time is that, you know,

kids move out, they start their own lives. And then also, where our career starts

to get to a stopping point. And so, these things that we’ve tied so much of our

identity to are starting to transition away from us. And so, a big concern that

people have is, well, what am I going to do next? What’s the next phase of my

life? And we would say, you know, think it through and start thinking about what

you want out of retirement. It gives you goals to work towards. It gives you

excitement to get retired. And so, you know, why they met, why it matters so much

Is, it keeps you active in a mental and physical way.

When you’re working, you’re very active mentally. You’re very active physically in the

rigmarole of going to work, getting, you know, the habits that you have in place.

So, you want to still have habits when you stop working and you transition into

retirement and staying mentally active and physically active. And which also then goes

into your health, right? The last thing we want is to stop working and then just

become, you know, very, I don’t know the word here, but just, you know, not moving

around much and

sitting on the couch the entire time. We want to have things that are going to inspire

us to get up and move around and contribute to our overall health. And maybe even

some of the health aspects that have been neglected while we were working so hard.

Another benefit of having things to look forward to after retirement is social

connections. So, a lot of times people are joining clubs, they’re joining memberships.

And so, you get that social connection as well, which keeps you involved, keeps you

mentally active still, having conversations regularly, and it gives you,

like I said earlier, purpose and enjoyment out of retirement, a whole new section of

your life dedicated towards things that you like doing, things that maybe you

neglected while you were working because you didn’t have time, and things that are

going to give you a reason to, you know, be excited to wake up every day in all

essence. And there’s facts and data around the fact that having active, having

hobbies after retirement does improve quality of life. And it also lowers depression

rates around among retirees. So that’s kind of the why we want to be exploring

these things before we get into retirement. So, we have something to look forward to.

Right. And let’s talk about some examples as far are some of the top hobbies that

we’re hearing about, we’re seeing and then also some of the data around them.

– Yeah, I think that we’re going to talk about really eight ideas and these ideas may

not, they may not be the thing that you want to do, but maybe it gives you an idea.

So, look at it that way. I will say of these eight ideas, we have heard from our

client’s real-life situations that these are at least something that they do.

We’ve actually curated events around these particular topics and it has been very,

very, very well received. Also want to give a little bit of context that as we

talk these through, because if you’re still working right now, it might be a little

bit hard for your brain to kind of come around to some of these. If you’re

retired, you might go, wow, that’s a good idea. Because one of the things that

occurs when you retire is you’ve driven this decades long time of every day you get

up at a certain time you got to be at the office or you got to be on a video

screen or you got all these things and you just didn’t have time to do other stuff

and so I think as you hear these things it’s kind of like oh man that would be

fun I didn’t I never had the time to do it and I think that’s the thing that

changes as we get into retirement so I’m going to handle a couple and then you can

handle a couple mercy and we’ll kind of go back and forth on that So, the first

one sounds really simple, but if you’ve not done it over your life, it can be a

thing that you might just want to get a little bit better at, and that’s cooking

and baking. Now, the kind of a cool thing about this, 50 % of retirees, this is a

big time hobby of theirs. And, you know, I think about my life today, my wife and

I, we both are working, both, you know, have a full -time life when it comes to

that and family, we, our thing is we eat out a lot and, but when we do have a

day where we can just concentrate on cooking and not just throwing something

together, we enjoy it. It’s such a, it’s a fun thing to do. I know that when it

comes to baking, that’s one of those skill sets that you don’t just go out there

and do it. Cause then you, you know, you, you learn how good a baker is. Cause if

you had a piece of dry cake before, it’s, it’s not that good. So, spending some

time and there’s classes that you can go to that’s fun. A lot of times you can

get together with friends and go to a cooking class. That’s some of the things that

we’ve done. And I tell you, man, it’s great for all the things that Merced. It’s

relieving stress. It’s social. You’re not just doing it by yourself. It’s fun.

You learn a new way to prepare a meal so you can look for it. And I know in

Raleigh where our home office is we have a lot of different resources like that.

All right, number two is reading. Now, I go back to this context,

you know, when you’re busy, I mean, I know for me, the way I actually consume

information is through podcasts, like we’re doing right here, we’re actually having a

book read to me, meaning I listen to it read, read while I’m on a walk. That’s

when I do it. So I go on a walk in the morning and that’s how I consume. But

the whole idea of sitting down and saying, I want to read a book just seems

cumbersome to me because of all the other things that I have to do. But if I had

the time, that would be a wonderful thing. Again, very, very top activity for

retirees. Obviously, that keeps your mind engaged as well. So, you want to hand on a

couple, Merce? – Yeah, and on the reading one, I think, you know, like in our world

today, the majority of the reading that I do is all kind of all geared around our

work, our field, and financial planning, retirement, investment, all those types of

things in the nonfiction space because we need to keep up with all of that. And

you may have something like that in your world too, that that’s the bulk of your

reading, whether it’s on a computer or articles or white papers and when you

transition away from work, maybe you get to pick up some of the reading that you’ve

been putting off and maybe some of those fiction novels and stuff like that that

keeps your brain active. Another big one is gardening. People pick up gardening as a

hobby and that is a, for some, I would say it could be a massive stress reliever.

If you’re not in the gardening, it could be a stress adder. So just depending on

how good or how much you are interested in that, I know in my household, we

struggle to keep any plants alive. So, I don’t see that being one for me, but I

know it’s incredibly popular. And there are a lot of classes out there too, just

like with cooking, to help you understand how it works and the best way to start

picking up Gardening 101. And I’d say, we’ll move it on to the next one. The more

talked about one is travel. What are we going to do when we retire,

when it comes to travel? What can we afford when it comes to travel? That kind of

takes us back to the financial plan aspect of it. And what we see and realize is

that we’ve put off a good amount of travel, things that we want to do, you could

call them bucket list items because we’re busy in our careers, because we’re busy

raising our families. And so, what we see clients do is in the first five to 10

years of retirement, they front load their travel in all essence. We’re going to tend,

in most cases, a little bit heavier in those first five to 10 years, because

imagine you retire at 60 and you want to do the bulk of your traveling, say in

those first 10 years, while you’re kind of in that willing and able physically and

emotionally type of mindset. So, travel is a big one. We’ve got resources there.

There’s a podcast on a travel type of specialist that helps curate really nice

itineraries for you, if you wanted to look back on that episode. But that’s another

massive one to start thinking through of what bucket list items have I put off so

far. – All right, the next one to me as a favorite, I think for clients who have

done this, they get a lot of satisfaction out of it. And that’s volunteering. Now,

there are all kinds of different volunteering programs that a person can do, but this

idea of helping or giving back with their time is just something that we hear a

tremendous amount of positive feedback from clients. And there’s just all kinds of

different things that we’ve heard clients volunteer on. And so that to me takes a

little bit of research, looking at different organizations, different programs, and

going, which one of these things really resonates with me, and putting out some

efforts to say, hey, I, you know, it’s one of those things, you know, I retire, I

mean, I volunteer on Wednesdays or, so it’s not like it’s an everyday thing for

everybody, but it’s at least something to consider. That’s also one of those things

that you might do and start doing research on prior to retirement and just kind of

like talking to folks. Again, that brings back a couple of different things. Number

one, you feel good about it. Number two, it a lot of times reduces stress. And

then also there’s a social aspect because you meet other people while you’re doing

that. All right, number six is photography and the arts. That is something that

we’ve heard quite a few clients talk about is, you know, just learning how to do

that. You know, a lot of us just take our phones out and take a picture and you

look at it and you go, okay, well, that was okay. And then you see a professional

take a picture and you’re like, whoa, that’s a whole different look than I’ve ever

thought about before. And again, there’s classes that you can go to on this and we

keep coming back to this idea as a lot of times all of our social activity was at

work and we Had all the folks that we worked with another opportunity To have

some of that interaction when we go to a class or something along those lines Yeah,

and with art. I’ll give you an example my mother -in -law recently retired At

the end of last year and my son who is currently five or just turned five. She

never had the time to just paint and not paint, you know, magnificent things.

It’s really just the stress reliever of painting because it does take time. And if

you enjoy it, and now that has become her thing with my son is that they’ll get

together and paint, paint a picture or these color by numbers types of things.

So, some of these are hobbies that you could start to take on with your grandchild.

I’ll bring us home with the last two, learning. You always want to be learning and

the world is always changing. Today, a focus that we have as a firm and I think a

lot of people do in the world of business is understanding AI, artificial

intelligence and where that is headed. So, I think learning, even though you are

retired and done with working or working towards retirement, learning doesn’t shouldn’t

ever stop. Now, it could be simple learning as far as a new recipe or it could be

bigger learning as far as topics or things that you have always had interest in.

You know, my son loves space and now he’s got that relationship with my father -in

-law because he enjoys space. So, and they’re learning about space together.

You know, it could be learning more about strategies around investing so that you

can kind of keep up with your portfolio. So learning is limitless and endless. And

if you always had that ambition, then that shouldn’t stop when you retire and you

can actually get more focused on it. And the final one is another big one all

around fitness and outdoor or activities in general. So, this could be Maybe you

finally using that membership that you have at the gym that you’ve been paying for

for a very long time. I know that’s a common story. Or it could be starting a

membership somewhere to understand what it is to have an active lifestyle or a gym

type of lifestyle. It could be as simple as just getting in the habit of walking

like Raiden does every morning. Walking, there’s a ton of science around how

beneficial, that can be to a lot of aspects of your health. And then the big thing

in this area and all over the country, really, that has happened really since the

pandemic is pickleball has been a huge hobby that we have heard and seen clients

taken up. Pickleball is kind of like a tennis slash ping pong type of hybrid that

you can do indoors and outdoors there’s facility facilities being built all over the

country. and it’s a really cool sport. And there’s other sports out there, golf,

card games like bridge, all these different things that are going to keep you

physically, mentally and emotionally active are only going to be better for you as we

do walk into retirement. So, this is not an exhaustive list by any means. There’s

all types of hobbies out there. We just wanted to come up with a few really good

examples that are rather common for you to start thinking about. – Yeah, so you hear

and you say, well, what’s the game plan? You know, none of those or one of those

didn’t really pop out. Here’s the thing, you probably don’t know which one of these

things are going to be the thing that you like or the thing that is there. So

here’s some just closing tips. Try one thing a quarter. Like you say, hey,

I’m just going to try it. I don’t know if I’m going to like it or not. So, you try it

and then you go, well, that’s knocked that off the list. Or man, that was amazing.

You can look into different groups, organizational groups, senior groups, hobby groups,

those things like that and kind of just get some more information on that. You can

look up information, it’s really nice now. There are so many tools, days of saying

Google it, are going away and you can chat GPT it, right? And just say,

hey, here is my hobbies. And by the way, that might be one there for yourself. Let

me learn about AI and learn how to utilize it. We are using it a lot, but I’m

telling you, it’s a great research tool. When you start learning how to use some of

these AI tools. And then you can take a class. We talked about this all the way

through, take a class with your spouse, your significant other, your friend, whatever

that might be. And just just explore. And that’s the thing. And I think that makes

it more exciting when you think about environment. And you say, well, I’ve got these

goals and I want to make sure I can reach out and figure out what I want to do

to make it myself, to be happy, I guess. Anyway, we hope this has been helpful. As

always, we always like to let you know whether it’s a topic of general nature or

on a specific topic, always feel free to reach out to us. You can go to our

website, pomwealth.net, top right hand corner schedule call, and we’re glad to hop

on a call on any topic that you might want to discuss. Have a great week. We’ll

talk to you again next Monday.