The average retiree spends 43.5 hours per week watching television

The average retiree spends 43.5 hours per week watching television. (Age Wave, 2012)

Identify your values in life and discuss with others how your vision of retirement should be. Pleasure is external (eg. TV), while Happiness is intrinsic (eg. fulfilling activities aligned with your Values).

Diarise your time with these Values including family time, friends, socialising, mini-break holidays, hobby or courses.

Researchers in Australia recently released a study that found watching TV or videos for an average of six hours a day could shorten a viewer’s life expectancy by almost five years.

The researchers extrapolated these figures to estimate that every hour spent watching TV shortened a viewer’s life by almost 22 minutes. If you suspended your TV watching and instead spent the same amount of time planning for your retirement, it would only take you a month or two to do the job right.

If you don’t properly plan for retirement, the consequences can be unpleasant.

You might run out of money before you die, or get wiped out by high bills for medical or long-term care expenses. Do the job right, and you’ll increase the odds of living a long, prosperous life!

But it’s not the TV watching itself that shortens lifespans, researchers say; it’s the dangers associated with the lack of exercise that’s often a direct result of prolonged periods in front of the television.

Numerous other studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity — the very conditions that are expensive and debilitating for people in retirement, and the ones that can lead to an earlier-than-average death.

If you believe the results of this study, then it’s easy to see that watching too much TV will shorten your retirement and create an increased risk of chronic disease that can drain your retirement savings and impair your enjoyment of life.

There’s one more critical way that TV can ruin your retirement.

The statistics from the A.C. Nielsen Company also show that in a 65-year life, a person will have spent nine years in front of the TV!

That’s a wasted opportunity. Spend time, with family and friends, pursuue your hobbies and interests, exercising, and giving back to the community.

“Retirement is much, much more than reaching a target of accumulated cash”.