volunteering

Dear Liz: I was very disappointed in your response to the reader who was unable to cope with unplanned retirement. The reader has sufficient assets but was unable to manage the loss of purpose. This is common, and maintaining purpose is one of the most important components of a healthy retirement.

You did not mention volunteer work as an option, and that is a shame. There are hundreds of organizations that need volunteers of all skill levels, and they come in every shape and size you can imagine.

There are social services, cultural, civic, social justice, child development, healthcare and senior organizations that exist only because of their volunteers. You can volunteer long term or short term, or even on occasion.

I have just spent the last five months running a series of events connecting retirees to organizations who need volunteers. My own retirement will be completely focused on doing all of the volunteer work I did not have time for while working.

Retirement is an excellent time to make your contribution to the community that helped you along the way.

Answer: Several people wrote in to suggest volunteering was the answer to the reader’s unhappiness with an involuntary retirement. Volunteering may indeed fill her time, but her point was that she found fulfillment in paid work. She rightly warned others that they need to think through what they might lose by retiring too early.

People may get more than paychecks for their labor. They can get recognition, respect, a feeling of achievement and a sense of mission. What they do may be a significant part of who they are — perhaps far more than they realize.

If they give that up without sufficient thought and planning, they may feel as if they’ve gone from a “somebody” to a “nobody” overnight. That can be a terribly hard adjustment that volunteering may not alleviate. Here’s another perspective:

Dear Liz: Your recent writing about considering when to retire and the dangers of a too-early retirement rings a big bell.

I am a psychotherapist who has worked with a number of people who were either considering retirement or who took early retirement. For those who took early retirement, the emotional problems associated with the large amount of both time and space in their lives after retirement, which they never fully considered, have been very surprising and upsetting for them.

To those working every day at jobs they don’t love, retirement seems like a great thing. But the reality of an open, unstructured life can present an array of problems — financial, relational and emotional — for the newly retired.

People should think about this decision carefully because it is hard to re-create a steady job. Or, even better, have a long hard conversation about it with someone close to you or a specialist like me.

Answer: Excellent advice. In addition to traditional therapists, there is a growing field of professionals who combine financial advice with psychological counseling. People can get referrals from the Financial Therapy Assn. at www.financialtherapyassociation.org.