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Retirement

Having reached the age when I could get Social Security if I chose to and where the probabilities start working against you for continued good health and an active lifestyle, I decided it might be wise to think more seriously about retirement sooner vs later.

When you approach the retirement decision, it leads you almost immediately to the question of can you afford it? For example, Google the word retirement and you get about 90 million hits where the top 1000 or so are almost all about the money. (Curiously, Google hits on retirement seem to vary between 88.5 million and 91.5 million. I wonder if there are 3.0 million of so out there who are like me and just can't make up our minds?) So I did the retirement calculator thing and I'm OK, I can afford to retire when I choose to. Check, that's not the problem?

So what is the problem? The problem for me is what to do with my time and my mind in retirement. There is a surprisingly large ontology of topics associated with or really comprising retirement in most people's minds (keep drilling down in the Google search and you'll find most of them...insurance, healthcare, communities, estate planning, exercise, diet, nutrition, senior dating, safety/monitoring, etc.). Individually they are all important, but they are also very negative in the sense that they are mostly associated with anti-aging and preparing for the end. What I'm looking for is advice on using my mind and my time in a positive and stimulating way in this last phase of my life. I figure if I do that well, all the other stuff will pretty much take care of itself as it has for my life up until now.

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