the joy of retirement Work

I’ve had some dreadful jobs in my life. I spent one summer putting metal plates under a huge press eight hours a day. Once the plates were in the right place, I would push some buttons that would cause the press to crash down and shape them into something useful.

Frankly, I was glad I didn’t lose a finger or hand to that press because I had incentives to work fast. Some of the workers disabled the safety features so they could produce more widgets and earn the extra money. It was a joyful day when I walked out of that factory for the last time with all ten fingers still attached.

Factory jobs made me appreciate landing a job in finance. The industry pays above average wages, it’s not back breaking work and you get to use your brain to find creative solutions for customers.

But even a cushy finance career came with some curses. Granted, they weren’t physical curses, but more mental in nature. For one thing, everyone in finance is focused on the money. As a result, I think there are more fights over salaries and bonuses than other industries.

Those experiences shape my view of why I find work in retirement to be so liberating. One key: in this season of life, many of us can untether for the first time the value of our work from the money.

The habit of thinking about work as something one does to make money is ingrained in us.  We can scarcely imagine what a Copernican revolution it would be to evaluate work without considering the money.

To be clear, there is a time to maximize our income in life. We have bills to pay and old age to plan for among other needs. But as we attain financial freedom in our lives, we have a wonderful opportunity to sever our old assumptions about the relationship between work and money.

If you are enjoying financial freedom, or hoping to get there one day, here are four suggestions to help rethink the relationship between work and money that might lead to a more joyful life.

First, turn on its head the idea that work is what we need to do to live. Instead, consider that work of our own choosing is what we live to do. In its optimal form, work is not drudgery, but a delight in and of itself. A creative activity done for the love of work itself.

We see a love of craftsmanship coming out in many retirees who don’t want to pursue strictly leisure activities. A retired banker I know has restored numerous old Corvettes since leaving his banking job. He is now considered a world class restorer of these vintage models. He doesn’t do it for the money, but because of his love of the craft.

In the first half of life when we get an idea we ask, “Will it sell?” In retirement, we might change the question and ask, “Is it good?” Instead of considering what kind of profit it can turn, we are free to focus on if it will challenge our spirits to pursue it.

Second, it’s helpful to rewire our thinking in retirement that work is not something that we want to get done as soon as possible in order to get to our leisure. Most of us looked forward to Fridays in anticipation of a full weekend of leisure while working in our careers. The retirement view is that our leisure is often found in our work.

A personal example comes from my pursuing writing on various topics. I never had much time while running banks to pursue writing. When I did write, it was what I did in my leisure time. Today, I write because I have more time, but also because it is one form of work that I love to do.

I have a good friend who pursued drag racing in his spare time while he was managing a company. Now that he has sold his company, he is “working” more on his drag racing and finding success. But it doesn’t feel like work. He doesn’t try to hurry and finish up working on his cars so he can go fishing.

Third, we find in retirement we have work worth doing because we take pride in it. For successful retirees, it’s not the applause of others we stive for or the monetary reward, but the self-satisfied feeling that comes from looking at the results of our labor. This is a reason many retirees find volunteering so fulfilling as they see needs in the community met because of their unpaid efforts.

It’s not surprising many retirement communities have a wood working shop for the residents. It’s the craftsmanship that feels so rewarding when a good product is created. He or she doesn’t need to win an award, or sell the product for a high price, it’s merely the pride in workmanship that is the satisfying motivation to devote hours of time.

Fourth, we are able to devote ourselves to work in retirement that fits our nature. Unfortunately, too often employers running businesses target the cheapest labor rather than devoting time to find the individuals most fitted to the job requirements. Or, employees pursue the highest salary whether it fits their nature or not.

All of us are wired differently. Some are gifted in creativity, others in technology or interpersonal relations. Retirement provides the time to eliminate work that we have no particular interest or skills in and find something that matches our personality and gifts.

To be clear, some may find themselves “tap dancing to work” everyday like Warren Buffett who is still a CEO at age 90. For those lucky ones, there is no reason to change. But for the rest of us who chose to retire from our career with adequate resources to live on, this is a season of life that can be more fulfilling than the first half as we discover the joy of retirement work.

Joe Kesler

Smart Money with Purpose