By Karen and Erica

You have been working 24/7 for decades, in a great job, earning enough to allow you to get help to run your home and raise your babies. You did grocery shopping and cleaning, but you have been lucky enough to have others to help, since you are usually in the office when the stores are open and the kids are awake. 

Now, you have retired. Suddenly, people think that you are the housekeeper. The plumber. The electrician. The chief cook and bottlewasher. The scheduler. Your children, your spouse, your friends, have jobs (maybe as students), so you can now do all the stuff they do not want to do. Or have no time to do. They ask, and you feel as if you can’t say no.

Do not let this happen to you. You did not work as hard as you did so that when you retired you could become everyone’s dogsbody. Sure, you have just finished a long and illustrious career.  But the whole point of ending that phase should be that you can now choose what you want to do with your time. Maybe you like cooking for the family, or rewiring that lamp. Fine. But maybe you don’t. It's your choice.

Same with ventures you undertake. Have you found an amazing not for profit that seems to need your expertise? Once you get involved, are you relegated to party planner? If you enjoy that, fine. If not, just say no. You offered them your expertise. You did not offer them administrative support for activities that bore you.

How you think about your time is key. It is yours. You earned it. If you need to make money, that is a true external constraint. But otherwise, you should think about how you want to spend your time. And spend it exactly as you wish.