This week on the One Minute Retirement Tip podcast, I’m talking about the 3 things you need to get right for a happy, meaningful, and fulfilling retirement. 

So far this week, I’ve been talking about the 3 things according to The University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study of retirees starting in 1994 that surveys a representative sample of approximately 20,000 people in America.

What did they find out about happiness in retirement? That you need to have a combination of 3 things for real, lasting happiness - money, health, and relationships. 

Today, I’m talking about things that are commonly associated with happiness in retirement but are not actually strong contributors to happiness according to the research findings. 

Michael Finke, one of the researchers in the study, said: “The one relationship that does not provide greater life satisfaction in retirement is the relationship you have with your children. This is a bit surprising. The frequency of contact with your children is not a source of greater life satisfaction. Even the depth of the relationship is not a source of life satisfaction as it is with your spouse and as it is with your friends. I see a lot of retirees thinking they’re going to spend a lot more time with their children, and that relationship is going to deepen in retirement, when the reality is there’s not a whole lot of data to back that up.”

What about that Porsche GT3 or the beach house you’ve been dreaming about? Will any of these make you happy in retirement? According to Finke, the answer is...it depends. 

He says: “If you buy a sports car and it gives you entrée into a new social group, if it becomes a hobby that increases your probability of interactions with other people who are interested in the same kind of thing and that you enjoy talking with, then that’s worth doing,” Finke said. But simply buying the sports car or the RV or the vacation home is not going to lead to happiness and satisfaction”

He continued: “The problem with the working years is we want to get away from social interactions because we get enough of it during our weekdays, but in retirement we can easily become more socially isolated to the point where we actually crave more of those types of social interactions,” he said, and suddenly that beautiful beach cottage is a detractor. “We’re not very good at imagining what’s going to make us happy in the future. Very often what we do is we look at what makes us happy today, but retirement is different. And what makes us happier is a new lifestyle, a new lifestyle that gives us the opportunities for social interaction, for living a more meaningful life.”

The insights from this long-term study on so many retirees is incredibly valuable, because you can take these common predictors of happiness in retirement and use it to invest now in these areas that will bring lasting happiness, as well as have a guide for designing your lifestyle in retirement, based on what’s most likely to bring YOU meaning and fulfillment in retirement. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip podcast. 

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance