Everything you are going through and quite possibly what you are thinking about regarding your federal retirement, you are not alone. Whether you are FERS or CSRS, retirement is a huge step in our lives and those steps are uncertain at best because we have never been there before. The unknown is always a little scary.
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When we talk about retiring from federal service it is one emotion that is experienced, but when the time actually comes – the emotion takes on a whole new form. We leave the familiar and venture into new and unknown territory. For 20 to 30 years you have known exactly what you had to do each day. The requirements of your job set your agenda and your schedule. Your life was centered around the hours and days your worked – in retirement, that changes dramatically.
Hair appointments, doctors appointments, even vacations were predicated on your job. You didn’t center your life around your job. Your job was the center from which everything else emanated. No matter how we attempted to structure that dynamic, the job always prevailed because it was the source of our income. Without income, for most of us, living and surviving is nearly impossible.
As horrible as some of this might sound, as members of the workforce our lives are carved out for us to the tune of about 12 hours per day. The remaining 12 hours are limited to sleep, a little something extra, eating and getting prepared for the next day. In other words the majority of our daylight hours are spent working and traveling to and from work.
What happens when those 12 hours in a day are given back to us in federal retirement. What do we do? How do we structure ourselves? How do we use all of that free time? We could ask at least a dozen other questions. Federal retirement brings about many changes and we can prepare ourselves for those changes by talking to others who have retired and planning to make every minute of our lives count by making a contribution to humanity.
P. S. Always Remember to Share What You Know.
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