You’re excited about retirement, right? You’ve worked hard for, what, four or five decades now? You’re due. No more early alarm. No more meetings. No more deadlines. No more office politics. Can you believe it? It’s just you — out on the links; puttering in the garden; taking care of your grand kids. It’s going to be great.

• Retirement Is Going To Be So Much Fun.. Can You
• Retirement Is Going To Be So Much Fun.. Paid

I’m so torn and scared of how I am going to feel, how my daughter will feel and mostly how my 2 yr old grandson will feel. I am extremely attached to him and he is equally attached to me. Logically I know the move will enable us to have a much easier and financially secure retirement, but my heart is breaking. I feel your pain. Retirement Hobbies. If you feel bored in retirement, explore these hobbies for seniors and find new, fun activities worth trying. Travel; If there were ever a time to explore the world and all it has to offer, it’s during your retirement.

Except, what if it’s not as you pictured? What if those things you’ve looked forward to all these years — more time for your hobbies, more time to travel and more time to relax — aren’t enough to sustain you? What then?

Even soon-to-be retirees with big plans for the next chapter of their lives often harbor big doubts about what comes next, according Stewart Friedman, practice professor of management at Wharton and founding director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project. “The questions people ask at earlier stages of life become more profound at these later stages,” he says. “Am I living the life I want to live? What is most important to me? Who is most important to me? You see the end, and so you think about what you want to do with the time that you have remaining. There is the question of: now what?”

Research indicates that those who are happiest in retirement tend to answer that question by “giving back” and discovering a sense of purpose. While giving back can mean boosting charitable contributions, for a growing number of retirees it often comes in the form of a significant volunteer position or encore career, notes Friedman. “The most successful people in retirement look to use their talents and passions to make a contribution,” he says.

Figuring out how exactly you’ll make this contribution and how you define your sense of purpose is the tricky part. Some introspection is in order. “It’s critical to reflect on what matters to you,” says Friedman. “People at this stage are focused on their legacy. You need to actively inquire of yourself: What do I want to leave behind?”

‘Money Is Not the Panacea’

The great paradox of the golden years is that there is so much time, and yet so very little of it. Retirement, after all, signals the final stage of life. It typically happens after 40-plus years of work, after your children are grown and after your house is paid off. As a result, retirement is often a time when a person contemplates his or her mortality, says Jack Guttentag, emeritus professor of finance at Wharton, who is 92. “When people reach the later stages of life, the realization that their lifespan is coming to an end may generate some anxiety,” he says.

“The questions people ask at earlier stages of life become more profound at these later stages.” –Stewart Friedman

“You always knew intellectually that life was short, but during the years when you were building a career and a family, the emotional recognition of that fact was kept at bay,” he continues. “When the realization that you will soon cease to exist finally comes to call, the response can range from disabling to total equanimity.”

The end may feel near, but in fact, for most people just starting to collect Social Security, there is still plenty of life to be lived. As people lead longer and healthier lives, a person retiring from full-time work at the age of 65 today will likely live another 20 to 30 years. That time horizon is daunting for many people, says Kevin Reardon, owner and president of Shakespeare Wealth Management in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. “There’s often a combination of excitement and anxiety as people approach retirement,” he says. “The excitement comes from having more free time, but the anxiety comes from figuring out how much can I afford to spend? And what will I do with all that time?”

The two are related, but money is the most practical concern. Many prospective retirees have deep-seated worries about having enough money to maintain their lifestyle in retirement — and for good reason: The latest household survey conducted by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System found that as of 2014, about 31% of Americans have no retirement savings or pension at all.

Retirement Is Going To Be So Much Fun.. Can You

According to the latest Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), Americans’ faith in their ability to retire comfortably, which languished at record lows between 2009 and 2013 — the crisis years — has rebounded, but is still quite low: Nearly a quarter of American workers say they are not at all confident they will have enough to be comfortable.

“Retirees are less sure of what their retirement income is going to be,” says Chris Geczy, an adjunct professor of finance at Wharton and the academic director of the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative and the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research.

And yet, he says, “money is not the panacea” for a successful retirement. “Having enough of it so that you are buffeted against antagonistic states of nature — an economic shock, say, or a health scare — is important, but there’s more to it than just money.”

In other words, people approaching retirement need to have a financial plan, but they also must have a plan to stay engaged and productive. “Your psychic value and your economic value are correlated in our society, so find ways to protect both leading up to retirement,” says Geczy. “Aging well and aging gracefully are part of the goal.”

‘It’s Useful to Know Yourself’

Aging well and gracefully in retirement may be the goal, but getting there is often a challenge. After all, it can be traumatic to leave the working world — particularly if your self-concept is wrapped up in your job. You might feel a loss of importance and a loss of vitality; you may grieve the loss of friendships. “A lot of people get their identity from work and they get their social interaction from work, so the idea of stopping means they’re going to lose both,” says Peter Cappelli, professor of management at Wharton and the director of the school’s Center for Human Resources. “[You need to] respect that it’s going to be a huge loss.

“If you’re getting close to that part of your life and you don’t know what you’re going to do, treat it as a worrying sign,” he adds. “Don’t assume it’s going to be OK and that it’s all going to work out. Figure this out now. Get busy.”

“There’s often a combination of excitement and anxiety as people approach retirement. The excitement comes from having more free time, but the anxiety comes from figuring out how much can I afford to spend? And what will I do with all that time?” –Kevin Reardon

The first step is self-reflection. Start by doing a realistic assessment of what you enjoy about your job and what you stand to lose by retiring. On the one hand, you may feel ready to leave the working world, but on the other hand, as the reality of retirement takes hold, you may feel restless and uncertain.

Consider, too, how you will spend the 40 or 50 odd hours a week you previously spent at your job. Do a mental exercise, suggests Cappelli. “Let’s say the office is closed for a week. Ask yourself: What are you going to do with all that extra time? If your answer is, ‘Gee, I have no idea,’ think about your interests. Think about your hobbies. Think about what you like about the work you do and what kinds of volunteer opportunities appeal to you. It’s useful to know yourself.”

Dig deep, says Amy Jo Lauber, a financial planner in West Seneca, New York. “Think about organizations you feel strongly about. Ask yourself: Is there a part of the world I want to make better?”

As you’re making a list of potential opportunities, seek out courses and programs that might be useful to you in this new undertaking. In the years leading up to retirement, it’s wise to invest in activities, relationships and expertise, according to San Asato, the president of a financial advisory group in Minnesota. “The thing is, no one really knows how he or she will feel once retired. Before retirement, it’s all hypothetical,” he says.

“But one of the biggest challenges is when there’s a gap between expectation and reality,” Asato adds. “You take a busy executive who has had a successful career. He is looking forward to retirement because he wants to pursue a hobby or some kind of pet project. But when he retires, he finds that he is not very good at it. It’s difficult. I encourage my clients to take classes, take lessons and brush up on their skills [while they’re still working].”

If you still need time to figure out how you want to spend your retirement – or, indeed, you still need the paycheck — consider a phased retirement, which involves working a part-time schedule while beginning to draw benefits. Many companies, including Intel and Cigna, have programs that allow older employees to scale back on a contract or freelance basis, notes Wharton’s Cappelli. “The [workers] have the same status and they pretty much work in the same groups they did before, but they do not supervise other employees and they have no administrative responsibilities,” he says.

The benefits of these gigs are myriad: You stay socially engaged, your mind stays more acute and alert, and you have ample free time to explore other opportunities. The additional income doesn’t hurt either. “You’re not getting out; you’re tapering down,” Cappelli says.

New Challenges, New Domains

Then again, you may already have your sights set on your next endeavor. Perhaps it’s a cause you’re passionate about — be it disaster relief, autism awareness and treatment, food insecurity or your local school. Perhaps it’s a continuation of a professional pursuit that involves tackling a problem in a new light. Perhaps it’s a venture that uses your hard-earned skills in a new domain.

Your idea already has a name: encore career — a job that blends personal meaning, continued income, and often involves some element of social impact. Research conducted by the consultancy Penn Schoen Berland, on behalf of Encore.org and the MetLife Foundation, suggests that as many as nine million Americans aged 44-70 are engaged in post-retirement careers, and another 31 million Americans want to pursue an encore career.

“The least successful [people in retirement] are those who hated what they did to earn a living, and looked forward to a retirement when they could begin to do what they enjoyed.” –Jack Guttentag

According to the research, encore careers — also known as “post careers” or “second acts” — tend to provide more satisfaction than previous careers. People in encore careers express very high job satisfaction, and overwhelming majorities say they feel good about the work they are doing, see the positive results of their work, know that they are making a difference, feel appreciated and like that they are able to use their skills and experience, note the study’s authors. (While encore careers are not solely in the realm of the nonprofit world, the findings align with similar research on the benefits of volunteering. According to a study by Merrill Lynch published earlier this year, retirees who volunteer have a stronger sense of purpose, higher self-esteem, and are both happier and healthier than those who do not.)

It’s not surprising that people engaged in encore careers feel energized by them, says Friedman. “They’re using their human capital — the knowledge and experience they’ve developed over the course of their lives and their careers — combined with their social capital — who they know and the connections they’ve made — to make the world a little bit better.”

Jack Guttentag, the retired Wharton professor who still works full-time, is one of the ultimate examples. What he’s doing now in his so-called retirement years is not all that different from what he did as an academic and a researcher. He is working on an Internet-based calculator that makes it easier for retired homeowners to assess whether or not they would profit from taking out a reverse mortgage. “This was one of my earliest academic interests going back to the 1970s, but today we have computer-based tools and the Internet, which permit entirely new approaches to the topic,” he says.

Guttentag is philosophical when it comes to describing how he arrived at his current career. “The least successful [people in retirement] are those who hated what they did to earn a living, and looked forward to a retirement when they could begin to do what they enjoyed. The most successful are those who loved what they did during their most productive years, and continued their involvement with the same or closely related activities, possibly at a reduced scale, as they became older.

“A third group had rewarding and productive careers, which they were forced to terminate on retirement, at which point they switch to a new activity,” he continues. “How well they do depends heavily on how early they had begun to engage in what was to become their major post-retirement activity.”

But in the end, says Lauber, the financial planner, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. “There is no one formula. Retirement can take a lot of shapes. There’s a lot of different ways you can be successful in retirement.”

Funny Retirement Wishes: Looking for humorous notes and quirky messages to write on a sweet card or to use in a speech? This post is a roller coaster ride through some of the silliest and funniest quotes about retiring. The best part about is that they will be relatable to just about everyone including teachers, professors, doctors, engineers, IT guys, nurses, accountants, business executives or even the friendly oldie working at the neighborhood supermarket. Read them and think of how you can infuse humor in your greetings. Whether it is for your colleagues, bosses, dad, mom, friends or someone in the family – make sure your witty lines put a smile on the new retiree’s face. Don’t forget to share your words on Facebook and Pinterest.

1) Retirement is the beginning of the time when you can sit back and give advice to others, even though you never followed it in your own life. Congratulations.

2) Old age, fragile bones, doctor visits, medical checkups and a weak bladder – are you still looking forward to retirement? Congratulations.

3) The funny thing about retirement is that it makes you realize the importance of medical insurance.

4) Do you think that life after retirement is an adventure? Well, it is if you count trekking out of bed, climbing atop sofas and diving into takeaways. Have fun.

5) After retirement the body grows older, the heart grows fonder and the mind becomes younger. All the best at trying to handle an old body with a young mind and fond heart.

6) Retirement is the only thing that will make you realize how you wasted all these years trying to be mature when you can get back to being a child at the end of it all. Have fun.

7) Remember all those things that you wanted to do in your life, but didn’t because you never had the time? Don’t plan on doing them after your retirement either – you will either be too old or too poor to afford them now. Wish you a happy retirement.

8) Thankfully, retirement is mandatory and not an option. Otherwise I would be stuck with an annoying colleague like you. xoxo

9) Congratulations for gaining two new best friends upon your retirement. Their names are Bed and Couch. You will be hanging out with them a lot.

10) Retirement is like a never-ending weekend party except that you can’t drink, can’t hook up and can’t stay up all night even if you want to. So in short, it is boring. Congratulations.

11) Retirement is like a lifelong vacation, except that you are no longer fit to do most of the fun stuff. Congratulations.

12) All your life you sacrificed your health so you could earn more money to retire happily. Now you’ll realize that you’ll be spending all the money to keep up your health. Congratulations.

13) Most people spend their whole lives planning their retirement but when they actually retire, they don’t know what to do. Don’t let this happen to you.

14) Congratulations on your retirement but don’t get too eager to relax yet. Get ready to tire yourself out with grandkids, gardening and many other chores.

15) No matter how many college degrees, skill development courses and professional accreditations you have received, there is one more qualification you will still receive after your retirement – Master of Doing Nothing. Congratulations.

16) Retirement is just a nice way for your company to say that you are getting too old to work. Congratulations for stepping into this league, old timer.

17) Doing the things you always wanted to do is not the real challenge of retirement. Remembering them is the real challenge. Good luck at being a forgetful pensioner.

18) Reaching retirement age is like getting to the top of a cliff. You will be at the zenith of your career, well knowing that the next step is a downward plunge toward old age. Good luck.

19) Some people say that retirement signifies the end of all of life’s tension, but that’s true only if you have a grand pension.

20) Retirement is just a nice way for the company to tell you that they have found more energetic, talented, youthful and skilled staff than you. Happy retirement.

21) For someone as lazy as you, retirement will make no difference in your life except the fact that you can now do nothing, officially. Congratulations.

22) Congratulations for your retirement. Now you will be forced to work on a never-ending project that will take up all your time and it’s called – Doing Nothing.

23) Until now, when you slacked at work your boss shouted at you. Now when you slack at household chores, your wife will shout at you. Happy retirement.

24) Was working hard all your life worth it? You are about to realize that now. Congratulations on retiring.

25) All these years you argued with your colleagues, juniors, managers and your boss at work. After retirement, you will argue with your grandkids, children and wife at home. Life remains the same.

26) It doesn’t matter whether you behave like a grumpy retiree or not, because people are going to assume that anyways. Good luck dealing with that.

27) Consider yourself officially and truly retired on the day you don’t feel like changing your underwear. Good luck.

28) Retirement is the turning point in your life which makes you realize that you had your priorities messed up all this while. Congratulations, better late than never.

29) Retirement marks the transition from working under one boss to a new one called WIFE. Congratulations.

30) Health, family, friends and relationships are some of the things that you sacrificed in your life so that you could work harder and earn more money. Now you will realize that you need these things to enjoy retirement. Such is the irony of life.

Retirement Is Going To Be So Much Fun.. Paid

31) Retirement – the only real excuse you’ll ever have to spend your entire life’s savings. Have fun.

32) Retirement is said to be the slow and painful lead up to the sunset years of your life. Have fun old timer.

33) Retirement is a fence – on one side lies hard work and on the other lies boredom. Either ways, it’s no fun.

34) Retirement is like a bubble that burst just when you think you are at the zenith of your career. Good luck buddy.

35) Retirement is the company way of indirectly telling you that it has no more use of an old and lazy bum like you. Goodbye.

36) Retirement is life’s way of telling you that you are too old and too weak to work any longer. Congratulations.

37) Being retired is the only time in your life when you won’t mind if you don’t get a holiday. Have fun.

38) Every day of your retired life will feel like a happy Friday night. But it’s useless because being old will make you feel dull like Monday morning all the time. Happy retirement.

39) You always cursed your body when you were ill which made you miss an important deadline at work. Retirement is when you will finally curse yourself for using an important deadline at work as an excuse for not taking care of your body all these years.

40) Congratulations on retiring. Have fun watching your life’s savings dwindle out.