Retirement is one of the few big changes you can see coming from years away. You may know roughly when it will happen, and you may already have strong opinions about how you want it to look. That makes it a natural subject for a letter.
This article is about writing to the person you will be on your first retired Monday. Money belongs to a financial adviser and stays out of this letter. This one is about the texture of the days: who you see, what you do, and what you hope to keep from the life you have now.
A change researchers describe
Psychologists have studied how our goals shift as we feel time running shorter. In 1999, Laura Carstensen, Derek Isaacowitz and Susan Charles published “Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity” in the American Psychologist.
The theory claims that our sense of time plays a basic role in the social goals we pursue: who we want to spend our hours with, and what we want from that time. When time feels open-ended, people tend to prioritize goals about gaining knowledge. When time feels limited, emotional goals, such as meaningful moments with people we care about, move to the front.
What this means for your days
The authors also showed that the sense of time can change. Social goals shift in younger people as well when time limits are imposed, so the pattern is not only about age. Whether retirement does this to you is your own experiment; the paper's claim is only that time limits, whatever their source, shift goals.
You do not need to accept the theory as a forecast. It is a useful frame for a question worth asking: which parts of your current life will matter more when the working days are gone, and which will matter less? The answers are different for everyone, and nobody can tell you yours.
Questions for the letter
Imagine your first retired Monday. No alarm, nowhere to be. Then ask the person who is living it:
- Who do you see in a week?
- What does an ordinary weekday contain, now that the weekdays are yours?
- Which friendship from work did you carry over?
- What did you stop missing, and what did you not expect to miss?
- Where do you spend your mornings?
- What ritual from your working life did you keep on purpose?
- What does your body let you do now that surprises you?
Keep your questions concrete. “Are you happy?” invites a short answer. “Who did you talk to yesterday?” invites a real one.
What to put in the letter
Start with the present. Describe your life now in plain terms: your days, your colleagues, the commute, the project you are tired of and the one you love. These details disappear quickly once the routine ends.
Then say what you hope to keep. It might be a friend you see only at work, or a habit of walking at lunch, or the feeling of being useful. Say what you are looking forward to, and what you are a little afraid of. Retirement is a loss as well as a gain, and your future self will recognize an honest mix.
You can also think past the first years. What do you hope the person you will be at eighty remembers? What do you want them to forgive? Put a line or two of that in this letter. If you are 60 or older, you can even send that person a letter of their own, since dates run up to 20 years ahead.
Stay inside what you know
Predictions about your own future days are unreliable, so keep them loose. You may be sure you will garden every morning and then find you hate the cold. You may think you will travel, and then discover that you love staying home.
The letter works best as a set of questions and honest hopes, not a schedule. Your retired self may smile at what you guessed, and that smile is part of the point.
Where the letter stops
It will not give advice about pensions, savings or health care. Those are decisions for a financial adviser, a doctor or a trusted professional. And it will not promise that retirement will be happy. People go through it in many ways, and some find it harder than they expected.
If you are worried about the change, writing may help you see what is behind the worry. If the worry is large, it is worth talking to someone you trust.
How far ahead
Pick a date a few months after the date you expect to retire. That gives you time to settle in, and you will be able to answer the questions with some experience. If you plan to stop gradually, count from your last full-time week. Dates can be up to 20 years ahead. If retirement is further away than that, write to a nearer milestone, such as the year you turn fifty, and write this letter when the date comes within range.
For a date that far out, think about the email address. Do not use a work address, because that mailbox may close when you retire. Choose one you expect to have for a long time, and note somewhere else that the letter is coming. We email the letter on the day you choose, between 8:00 and noon in your time zone, and once it is saved the words cannot change.
Reading it, a few months in
Read it on your first quiet morning. You may smile, or feel a pang, at what you wrote about the person you used to be. Then answer the questions. If the answers feel thin, give yourself a few months and write a reply.
You can also use the letter as a starting point for a conversation. If you share your plans with a partner or a friend, reading it aloud can open up a talk that a calendar will not.
A letter with four years to go
Dear future me,
It is a Thursday in March and I have thirty-one years of classroom behind me and four to go. I still love the first ten minutes of the day, when the building is empty. I am afraid of the quiet. By the time you read this, I hope you still see Jo from the staff room every other Friday. What does your first September sound like without the bell? Who do you talk to on an ordinary Wednesday? Be easy on me. I will have tried.
[your name]
To borrow the shape: one line about your working life now, one fear, one named person, one question and one kind request.
Write it now
Picture your first retired Monday, and write down three questions for the person living it. Describe your working life as it is today, name one thing you hope to keep and one thing you are nervous about. Choose a date a few months after you expect to retire, and send it.
