Budget Your Relationships For Your Retirement Living

Budget Your Relationships For Your Retirement Living.

Why budget your relationships for your retirement living?Budget your relationships for your retirement living

To make sure you have a happy retirement time.

Relationships are very important to the success of your retirement.  These relationships can make or break your dream of a happy retirement.  How much of your retirement hour budget will you allow to be spent in a way that is not making you happy? 


The time you spend interacting with others is important to the overall balance of your life. These relationships also affect your health.  As important as good diet, exercise, and sleeping!

Do you have a “plan or Budget” to help you with your retirement time goal of being happy?

If you don’t have a plan or budget your time spent with friends and family will soon overtake your free time, leaving you without the time to make new interests or create new hobbies. 

Your relationship budget

Just think about your plan, your relationship budget.  Your friends during the years of raising your family and working usually consisted of people doing the same thing.  That is who and the kind of people most gravitate to and that you feel a kinship with. 

Usually, this is who you are most comfortable with.  Their schedule meets yours better as they have similar responsibilities.  Have you had a friend go through a difficult time in their life? 

A single friend getting a divorce, for instance.  The times they need your support is after work and on weekends.  Those are the times you need to have some friend time, but you have a family.  This will call for some difficult choices with friends as well as family. Their schedules are different from yours.  It is easier to chose friends who are where you are in life. Single if you are single and a family person if you have a family.

There is limited time during this time of your life for individual friends and interests.  People involved with their families and earning a living, doing what you are. These are the ones you probably most identify with.

In much the same way, your retirement living friends and social contacts will be made the same way. You have similar schedules, lives, and interests.  They are easier to identify with.  It will be up to you to budget your relationships for your retirement living.

Have you changed?

Time seems to take care of the question of who you spend that time with.

This relationship part of your life has just happened up to retirement time in your life.  Not many of you are wise enough to realize that the people you spend your free time with have that much power over your happiness.   

Most of your free time was spent with these friends and your family.  Your married brother, sister, the rest that you are blessed with.  Each of these people is important in your life in retirement as well.  The bonds with them are strong and will last forever.

However, on reflection, getting together on summer afternoons at your house because you were the first to install a pool became the habit that spreads from Thursday afternoon to all day on Saturday, just because you were home, and not busy. 

Your kids are grown.  Now that you are retired, you might enjoy seeing someone else for a change on the weekend.  Learning a new hobby or skill. How much of your time are you willing to spend in the pre-retirement habit? 

What is your dream?Budget your relationships for your retirement living

Being the open door for the family and friends is wonderful if that’s what you want.  If this fulfills your retirement dreams for being happy.  You know that there are some within your “friend circle” who are great on short visits, but not so much with extended times.

Grandparents become easy drops for grandchildren during retirement.  Again, this is wonderful when this is what you want and it makes you happy.  If you haven’t budgeted your relationships you’ll not know when you have reached overload in one area over another.  Are you spending so much time with family, that those old friends feel ignored?

Do you have time to find new friends and interests more suited for this phase of your life?

It is time to budget your relationships

How do you budget your relationships for your retirement living?

The answer is easy.  You budget how much of your life you want to spend in socialization.  Write it down.  Next, write down a list of the people you are willing to spend this time with that you have budgeted for this activity.

If you have no plan for a happy retirement, how will you ever know you are there?  Do you have a plan for travel?  For expanding your garden?  How can you know when you are on the right path if there is no plan? 

You want to work on your golf game, and playing 3 days a week sounds awesome. Do you want to play every day with those who tease you when you use the new swing or grip for your shots?  With that friend who is more interested in the beer kiosks than the actual playing? 

Everyone has those kinds of friends.  You can make changes and budget less time for that particular one.

Same with family.  Your son finds it too convenient to drop that adorable granddaughter off every Friday evening while they go to the ballgame?  How will you make the adjustments and still preserve the relationships?  By making plans of your own.  By budgeting how much you will be available for that drop-off.

Take controlBudget your relationships for your retirement living

You will find that your friends and family will adjust if you have something else scheduled.  It is alright to want to do something different with your time.  Work on a retirement dream you have.  The most of you retire without much thought to how you can be happy. 

Happy is not a given, not automatic. There is not a magic number that once attained guarantees happiness.   You have to want to be happy.  To step up and claim your right to be happy.

Benefits of planning

So many things could work out better for your retirement.  Better happens if you have a plan.  Do you have one?  Check out this slant for planning.  This guide just kind of evolved.  Maybe it can give you an idea of how to start a happy retirement plan. 

You plan vacations and trips.  Why not plan for the other parts of your life.  The benefit far outweighs the cost of taking a bit of time to make your plan.  Don’t allow aimless wandering around in retirement land and not give you the results you want. 

Are you a retiree who is at a crossroads? 

You are not sure just how you want to spend the rest of your retirement.  Have you just had a major lifestyle switch?  Maybe have lost a mate>  Did you just relocate? 

Get your plan going for how to spend the rest of your life.  Live this time as you chose.  Enjoy what you enjoy, not what someone else thinks is good for you. 

Decide what makes up your own happiness.


This all starts with a plan.  A starting place.  Try it, you will be pleasantly surprised.

One word of caution.  Your plan is a work in progress.  You will have changes and tweaking along the way.  Don’t write it down in ink, use a pencil for easy erasing! 

This is a plan for your happiness, not to show how well you can make a plan.  Make the changes needed to ensure your happiness.  Writing down a plan will often make you aware of what is really important to you, and your happiness. 

Often, retirees don’t really know.  You have been so busy living your life that you did not give much thought to what happens next.

Will you take time to plan this?


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