A separate category for household related issues? Hmmmm — another one that might not seem to make immediate sense. Trust me, many of you will become increasingly focused on the events and details related to the day-to-day and long-term operation of your household in retirement.
Questions that will arise for you might include, will the division of labour of household tasks need to be reconfigured if there are two of you not heading of to work anymore? How do you manage your property if you begin to travel for extended periods? Do the costs to operate your current home suddenly eat up a substantial portion of your retirement income? Does your health begin to impact your ability to do yard work or other chores or repairs, or simply to go up and down stairs? There are many new considerations.
One question that most of us will face is, how long do we stay in our current home? Some will opt to downsize for financial reasons, lifestyle choices, or to make their lives easier to manage. Others will choose to stay right where they are until they are forced to move into an assisted living situation.
Having just gone through the downsizing process, and lived to tell the tale, I can speak to that with some understanding. The experience provided a number of straightforward, and some very Kafkaesque, situations to deal with. This will probably be amongst the first “Household” topics I address.