Retirement brings a lot of changes. Many of them are welcome but not all of them are. You may find yourself being more sedentary, or you might have less of a social life since you aren’t going in to work each day. You may need to start putting in some extra effort to maintain a healthy lifestyle for all the reasons below. If you were already leading an unhealthy lifestyle prior to retirement, this is a great time to make changes.
Everyday Tasks
The older you get, the more the saying use it or lose it is true. If you were athletic when you were young, you may not be able to hit the personal bests that you did decades earlier, but you can still do a lot to stay in shape. This becomes increasingly important as you get older because you will lose strength and flexibility at a faster rate than when you were younger. Continuing to be active will help ensure that you can still complete ordinary tasks as you age, such as actions that involve bending, stretching, or carrying heavy things. Additionally, exercise reduces stress which is critical at this stage of life because too much stress can be quite damaging.
Cheaper Insurance Premiums
You may pay less throughout your life for various types of insurance premiums if you are healthy. If you don’t smoke or you exercise regularly, insurers may assume that you are less of a risk. Furthermore, once you are ready for retirement, you might not need that life insurance policy any longer. If this is the case, you may be able to sell your policy through a life settlement. While this is not as high as the death benefit, it is money you can use to supplement your retirement savings. You can review a guide that gives you more information if you decide to sell your term life insurance policy as part of a life settlement.
Maintaining Social Ties
One stereotype of older people is that they are lonely. There’s a reason for this stereotype. While there are plenty of older adults out there running businesses, traveling, going back to school, and volunteering, isolation is a problem for some. Making an effort to maintain social ties and spend time with other people is good for your physical, emotional and mental health and will improve your quality of life as you age.
Time For You
Yet another reason to aim for a healthy lifestyle after you retire is that this is the reward for a lifetime of hard work. You owe it to yourself and your family to stay healthy so you can spend more time with the people that you love and do the things that give your life meaning or that you just enjoy. You don’t want to spend your retirement years going from one doctor’s appointment to another or having to frequently turn down invitations because you don’t feel well enough to attend. You also don’t want to spend decades of your life postponing something, such as travel, only to reach retirement and find that your health is too poor now to pursue it.