How Retirees Spend Their New-Found Free Time

Hey welcome to this segment on how retirees are spending their new found freedom. The very first one is sleep. On average if you’re 75 or older you’re getting about 9.9 hours a day of sleep. That time includes you know bathing, dressing and relaxing as you get out of bed. If you’re younger, you’re the only one that gets a little bit more time. On average people that are 25 or younger are getting about 10 hours of sleep and that personal time. The next thing retirees are doing is watching TV. On average if you’re 65 or older you’re watching about 4.6 hours of TV per day. The other range of ages from 25-44, you’re watching about two hours a day of TV. And then as you’re preparing for retirement, that age group from age 55-64, you’ve increased a little bit to about 3.3 hours a day. The next home maintenance. If you’re 65 or older, you’re spending about 2.5 hours a day working around the house, working around the yard making it look just right. Finishing those projects that you had started, but you never finished because of working. The next one is working. So surprisingly people age 64-75 average about one hour a day at work for pay. What does that work look like? Maybe not the traditional kind of work that you might be used to. These would be like arts, building crafts, going to garage sales and selling that stuff. You might be maintaining a rental property. But you’re averaging about one hour a day in getting paid. Meals, this is a big change because now you have extra time and freedom. You get that extra cup of coffee. You get that sense of relaxation. Right now the average retiree is spending about 1.3 hours a day around meal time and dining. This does increase as you get older. You get more time to just sit and relax and enjoy that conversation that you might be having. The next one would be shopping. People between the ages of 54-74 spend about 40 minutes a day shopping online, in person or on the phone. They get a little bit of extra time to find that stuff to need. Volunteering, retirees will volunteer on average about 30 minutes a day whether it’s at a non-profit or maybe it’s a civic duty that they’re doing. It’s about 30 minutes a day that they’re spending. Reading, this is a time where now that all of distractions and maybe stress of life and work go away. If you’re 75 or older, you’re spending about 41 minutes a day reading. Now that compares to about 16 minutes per day for the overall population. Surfing the internet, retirees spend about the same time as the overall population. And it’s about 15 minutes a day communicating whether it’s via phone or over the actual internet mail, email and so forth. One thing that I always laugh at is when my Dad will say hey, did you see my Facebook post? I didn’t even know you knew how to use Facebook and no, I didn’t. Just tell me about it. The next one is socializing. You know retirees spend about 30 minutes a day socializing face to face. And if you’re 75 or older that doubles to about one hour a day that they’re spending just having those good human connections of conversation. Relaxing, the retirees are learning how to relax. They are fortunate to have more time to do that. And they’re spending about 30 minutes a day just sitting there and doing nothing. This last one is one that I thought was pretty interesting. It comes to exercise. Now the time spent exercising accounts for about 17 minutes per day for those age 65 and older. I thought it would be a lot more. But I think what happens is it’s just like what’s happening in my own life where when my wife will ask me if I’m going to be exercising I just simply tell her yep, I’m starting tomorrow. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this. Thanks for watching.