They are not “too old” – embrace your peers and learn from them in early retirement

My wife and I know a few people who are retired and had been retired for decades who refused to go to senior centers because those people are “old” or “too old.” Thus, they didn’t develop much of a network beyond home and whatever family is in the area. I’ve always felt that mentality was detrimental to the retiree. It resulted in a a quickly diminishing group of people the retiree interacted with and didn’t expose them to new experiences and things to do.

Fast forward to my wife (56) and my retirement (49 now 50) this spring when we learned that the best retirement gift we received was membership in a 50+ educational propgram Encore Learning here in Alrington County, VA. After a few months I started to feel guilty that we had not looked at the gift. They hold a Breakfast Club on Wednesdays so that was our first event. We found that they have a lot in common with us, they are traveling during the summer, attending cultural events and reporting back, and just sharing something from the week that they find notable. The group seems to average about 75 years old. The next club we joined was a hiking club that does about four mile hikes on Friday mornings at 10. We are also enjoying those and happy that the distance is manageable since we are not ready to join the serious hiker meetups that would be longer and beyond our physical levels. This week their classes opened for next season and we signed up for an introduction to birding class.

So my message is don’t get scared by older peers.

Posted to Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/earlyretirement/comments/1fgnymt/they_are_not_too_old_embrace_and_learn_from_your/