Retirement Adjustment Strategies (A Phenomenological Research)

Retirement, defined as the abandonment of a job or social aspects of life, is associated with widespread changes in everyday life, opportunities, expectations, values, hopes and fears. Since retirement is considered as an important event and as a transition from primary adulthood to secondary adulthood, making adjustments is necessary. The aim of this research was to examine the lived experience of retired people with the challenges of retirement and strategies they used to overcome these challenges. For this purpose, 10 retired male ex-educators in Behshahr city were selected through available and purposeful sampling and were studied using semi-structured interviews to allow participants to freely describe their experience. The data were analyzed by a method that was suggested by Frost (2011). As a result of the analysis, four themes were emerged as main challenges experienced by retired men: financial challenges, health challenges, extra time challenge, and feelings of futility. Financial issues were mentioned more than others and had impacts on the participants’ lives in psychological, physical, health care, marital relationship, and leisure aspects. Finally, the strategies that individuals have reported to overcome these challenges can be divided into four main themes (self-reliance, spirituality, alternative activities and positivism) and 11 sub-themes. Retirement adjustment is possible through self-reliance, spirituality, alternative activities and positivism so that each one of these strategies can be used to solve a range of challenges rather than addressing just one single problem. It is important to mention that the most commonly used strategies for retirement challenges are re-employment and spirituality. Considering the role of the cultural and religious factors in the Iranian society and the life of retirees, it is possible to differentiate the conditions of retirees in Iran with retirees of other communities in terms of the used strategies.