I was twenty six, young, when Daughter our first child was born. Friends would ask what parenthood was like; I’d say it’s incommensurable. You can’t compare life on this side of the line with life on the other.
Deciding whether to retire before I had to, I asked friends what retirement was like. I can’t really explain, they’d similarly say (but it’s great).
I went ahead and retired, two years early. My “first day of inactivity”, to use the caring phraseology of my employer the European Commission, was 1 July last year. Travelling Companion and I moved from Holland to London. It’s true, it’s like parenthood. As someone who used to get equal pleasure from helping the EU make climate policy and helping people get satisfaction from their work, it’s hard to explain why this life, in which I do neither, is good nevertheless. It’s not entirely incommensurable this time, though, because I’ve been measuring. Using data for my first year of retirement, up to the end of June 2023, this is an attempt to send a quantitative message from the other side.
Doing this feels pretentious. For my own part I’m glad I’ve put in the effort to work these numbers out. It will be interesting, for example, to compare the second year of retirement with the first. But why should you care about the number of cups of coffee I drink or the subjects of my dreams? Sister said she’d be interested, though, and I enjoyed the recent blog post of my friend the Diplomat on a similar topic1. So here goes. The post’s about what I do nowadays, whether retirement’s good for me and how it makes me feel.
I What do I do?
The Scottish Resident of St Albans told me I wouldn’t have the time I expect. She’s right. I used to be required to work at least 40 hours a week. My plan was to replace that with designing a wargame, writing this blog, learning Greek and keeping a daily diary. In practice, during my first year of retirement, I spent about five hours a week on the wargame, three on the blog, two and a half on Greek, an hour on my diary and half an hour on other bits of writing. That makes twelve hours in total – where have the other twenty-eight gone?
First and most wonderfully, Travelling Companion and I have spent on average half a day a week looking after Newest Grandchild. She was born in March 2022 and lives in north London. We knew we’d see more of her – that was one reason for retiring early – but spending this much time with her has been a blessing.
Jenny’s café, Muswell hill
Second, and most significantly in time terms, we have travelled. We went to the Nordic countries last summer, to Taiwan to see the Even Newer Nieces, to Rwanda where the Older Grandchildren live, to Bristol and Portsmouth and Ramsgate and Oxford and Bakewell and Wakefield and Edinburgh and Glasgow in our own country; and I went on a bike trip along the north coast of France (the picture at the top shows my bike as I was crossing the Belgium-France border).2 In total I was away from home for 138 nights between July 2022 and June 2023 – double my average as an employed person (pre-Covid).
bus Egilsstaðir-Akureyri, Iceland, August 2022
Taken together, then, looking after Granddaughter and extra travel accounted for about fifteen hours a week. What about the still-missing thirteen?
- Travelling Companion used to do all the cooking. Now I do some.
A mackerel pie I cooked yesterday. It was too strong: it looks better than it tasted. Next time I will try replacing the smoked mackerel with tuna, mushrooms and capers.
- There’s a family game we used to play about gang warfare in Paris in the 30s.
A tactic players can use is implantation dans le mitan, protecting yourself by making yourself at home in the local community. When I asked Travelling Companion where our time goes she said implantation dans le mitan.
- I always used to say that as a retired person I hoped not to read the newspaper from end to end – which I never did when at work, But I do.
II Is it good for me?
Physically, not necessarily.
Another reason for retiring early was to do so before I lose the capacity for physical activity. I thought I’d use some of the 40 hours for exercise. But in fact I exercise for about two hours a week less than I did when I was working in Holland. There I used to go for a bike ride most mornings as well as cycling 50 km to work and back once a week. Here the roads and drivers are not conducive to that. I cycle less and slower, and walk a bit less too. Against that I’ve added in some swimming (an hour a week) and running (a trivial amount). I expected to do more of those things but was knocked off my path last October when a dog knocked me off my bike. (Now, in September 2023, I’m back at last at the speed I was swimming before that happened. One recent morning at Richmond’s outdoor pool I was the fastest thing in the slow lane.)
I measure my weight and circumference. My weight went up by 3% almost as soon as I stopped working and has stayed there. Its relationship to my circumference has changed, with circumference going up by only half a percent. I don’t think this is because the new weight comes from new muscle. I think it is because, trying to fix the results, I am subconsciously pulling the tape measure tighter.
I aim to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. I used to average three (though Travelling Companion thinks my definition of a portion is generous). During the lockdown it went up to four and in retirement that’s where it’s stayed. Something similar is true of coffee consumption – down from five cups a day in the office to two or three when at home, whether working or retired. The common factor is eating more with Travelling Companion and spending less time in cafés.
Mentally, I love the time with Granddaughter, the travel, working on wargame design, spending time with old friends.
When you retire from a job you have loved I think you have to purge work from your mind. I think I have done a good job of this. Two examples:
- Each day I guess how the pound will move against the euro from that day to the next. When I was working for the Commission and following the British news at the same time I scored better than chance. A notional sum of €100 at the end of 2020, gambled each day, would’ve grown to €100.67 by the time I retired. Nowadays I’m doing worse than chance. My notional pile of money would’ve been down to €96.40 by the end of June 2023, despite a bonanza from betting against the pound during the Liz Truss weeks. I think this is because I’ve lost touch with the European end of the equation.
- In July and August 2022, the months after I retired, 43% of the dreams I could remember were about work. Giving a presentation, worrying about filing left undone, abolishing the role of Directors in DG Competition. The proportion of work dreams during the rest of the year was half that. Instead I dreamed of valleys and canyons, of nomads and Joni Mitchell, of cycling down mountains.
Joni Mitchell, The hissing of summer lawns
III How does it make me feel?
Pretty good. Two indicators:
- My sleep quality (meaning, the proportion of sleep that is deep or rapid-eye-movement) is 44%, compared to 42% while I was at work.
- Contentment: since 2015 I write down a daily score out of 10 for how contented I feel. Contentment is known to reach a low point in middle age and then increase. In line with that, my score has been increasing by an average of 0.13 points per year. After I retired, my contentment score didn’t go backwards as it had done in 2020, the first Covid year. Nor did it leap up. It improved by 0.14 in 2022 compared to the year before, in line with my long term average.
IV Conclusion
I hope these numbers tell you something about what retirement’s like. I’m afraid they don’t really explain why I like it, though.
Dancing (with Sister) in a pub in Glasgow last June
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1 https://rleighturner.com/full-time-writing/
2 I think we can’t decarbonise without stopping flying. I used to have to fly for work sometimes; retirement means no more of that. These holidays were by train, boat, bus and bike. But the family trips were by plane because at the moment, though I’ve got the time and the willingness to use a slower mode of transport, that’s not possible and flying’s the only way to get to Taipei and Kigali. I wish it were not so.
Paul Hodson 