A theme that kept coming up from the Retirement re…

Transcript

A common recurring theme from the retirement readiness survey was that most of us don't have hobbies established. And I know from my own retirement in those early months, not having established hobbies that I enjoy created sort of headwinds for me. And had I learned what sort of hobbies would be enjoyable to me, it would have made those early months a lot easier. So I wanted to put together a couple of thoughts and a resource that I found through going through this myself. And I know sometimes my videos can kind of go on a little long, so I'm going to give you the ending first. And then if you want, you can stick around for the middle. So the resource I want to share is... It's called the Master List of Hobbies. If you go out and you search online for hobby ideas, frankly, they're kind of awful. Like, it's just things that you would just think of if you stopped and paused. But there's a list on Reddit of over 2,000 hobbies, and they're alphabetized. And each one of them links to the subreddit for that hobby. So just go out on your favorite search engine and search Reddit. And you'll find the Master Hobby List. And it'll be in the top results. And that is a great start. I found so many cool ideas there. The experience that I wanted to share from my retirement was... When I retired, out of a series of coincidences, I started working on an off-grid solar setup. And for... A shop that I have on my property. And during the process of setting that up, I remembered something about when I was little. I was like, you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of when I was a little kid and I had these science project kits. And I realized... Mosquito. And I realized that I love discovery and science and invention. But I hadn't thought about it. Not once. Until I did this little solar lab, I call it, that I set up. And then I started reading about this. And I found out that one of the quickest ways to recover the fundamentals of things you enjoy is to look back to when you were a kid. And what did you enjoy doing before life kicked all the fun out of you? So for a lot of people, it might be helpful to think back like, what is it that I liked doing? When I was a kid. So like for me, one of the things I loved doing was riding my bicycle. But not just specifically riding my bicycle. I liked riding places I hadn't ridden before. And that's that sort of discovery gene that I have. Where I want to go discover things. So think back to your childhood. And you may realize something that you've overlooked as far as things you enjoy. Now I want to break hobbies down just really quickly. Because I think this is important. As far as... From my experience, I found that there were three types of hobbies that I looked into. There were hobbies that created no utility value. Meaning a hobby like fishing, for example. For me, it didn't create any material value. Like I didn't keep the fish. I didn't sell the fish. I didn't feed my family the fish. It was just something I did that I enjoyed that created no utility value. Then there's hobbies that create utility. Value for you or your family. And that would be like a side hustle, essentially. And then there's hobbies that create utility value for others. And that would be like volunteering. One of the things that I've recently discovered has been really fun for me. Is I like finding free appliances, free tools. Fixing them up. And donating them to the local Habitat for Humanity store. And then they sell them. And the proceeds of those sales go to building homes for people who need homes. Nobody's getting rich off of that. It's not going into some billionaire CEO's pocket. The thing that I restore goes straight into the store, gets sold. And those proceeds go to building somebody a home or replacing their wheelchair ramp or the roof or whatever. So that's the third type of hobby. It's a hobby that creates a utility value for someone else. And there is a little watch out in that. I learned that. I learned this from my son. He said, you have to be careful. He said a lot of people grow up basically being taught accidentally that you're not allowed to enjoy things for their just inherent fun. That in order for you to admit you enjoy something, it has to have utility value. And it's a psychological thing that happens to us. So he's always warning me. He's like, hey, if you catch yourself skilling your hobby. Like trying. To turn it into something you can monetize. You may be falling prey to a psychological trap. And or you may be showing symptoms of an issue that needs addressed. I just share this because I ran across it. So if you want to, you know, sort of upscale or skill your hobby or monetize your hobby. That's awesome. There's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that you know why you're monetizing your hobby. And that may take a little bit of work. But if you're monetizing your hobby because you want to create a side hustle. Because you need the money or you want the money. I think that's awesome. Just know that's why you're doing it. But that's my sort of that's that's what I have learned about hobbies on my little journey of explanation exploration so far. I hope it's helpful. If you found hobbies that were really amazing to you that that really helped. Please post them. Yeah. Just comment. You know, just say I found this to be really fun. I've already seen a lot of hobbies people have posted that gave me some good ideas. So I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear anything that you've been into. And, you know, good luck with your retirement.