What do you do when you retire?

Brian J. O’Connor, You’re About to Retire. What Are You Doing for the Next 20 or 30 Years? NYTimes, July 18, 2026.

“Most people have never been retired, so they can’t connect their present reality with their future unknown reality,” said Michael Crews, author of the retirement book “Saturday Everyday” and chief executive of North Texas Wealth Management in Allen, Texas.

“The biggest question that people miss is the goal-setting and lifestyle for retirement,” he said. “In retirement, you still have to figure out what’s really important to you. And people just aren’t having those conversations.”

Like Mr. Crews, an increasing number of financial planners now say the most important retirement question to answer isn’t your net worth, your marginal tax rate, your gift-tax exclusions or expected longevity. Instead, it’s this: How do you plan to spend your time?

Unretiring:

Other retirees stop working entirely for a while and then return part-time or as consultants, aiming to balance the social and mental stimulation with shorter hours and less stress than in a full-time job. An AARP study published early this year found that of the 7 percent of retirees returning to work, 15 percent cited boredom as the reason, with 14 percent saying they were motivated to help others. Still, nearly half said they needed the money.

“People unretire, I think, largely because it was part of their plan to do that all along,” said Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, a research fellow at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, who said that academic literature finds that nearly a quarter of retirees unretire at some point. “They’re stressed, they’re done, they retire, and at some point they’re recharged and they come back to work, especially the more educated group, where there’s not a physical component to the job.”

Three phases of a long retirement:

A retirement of 20 years or longer can cover three phases: An active, healthy phase right after leaving work, followed by a period of less activity, and a final period when retirees settle in to a lifestyle with little activity near the end of life.

Phase One: If they have the resources, this is when retirees should travel, before illnesses or ailments show up. Conventional wisdom once held that spending dropped after you left work, but later, research found that spending actually increased as retirees took up new hobbies, traveled, relocated and pursued other long-delayed plans.

Phase Two: After 10 to 15 active years, physical reality catches up with 75- or 80-year-old retirees. Those who were working part time have typically finished but still have time for family, friends and social activities. Spending tapers off.

Phase Three: After an additional five to 10 years, retirees typically stay closer to home with less activity and may develop more serious health issues that can lead to large medical bills. As of 2025, the median cost for nonmedical caregiver services at home was $80,000 a year (assuming 44 hours a week), assisted living was just over $74,000 and a private nursing home room cost about $130,000.

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