My Biggest Retirement Mistake: Volunteering Too Much

He looked forward to donating his newly free time — but then learned the pitfalls of never saying ‘no’

Theresa Sullivan Barger,

AARP

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Published July 30, 2025

a man stands in a garden, looking into the distance

Rick Hanson in his garden in Simsbury, Connecticut. Hanson threw himself into volunteering when he retired in 2022 but quickly spread himself too thin. "I guess I really didn’t have a plan," he says.

Alex Fradkin

Rick Hanson was already a prolific volunteer when he retired three years ago. After a 50-year career in catering, conference and convention management, and customer service, he’d planned to donate even more of his time.

Hanson, 72, wanted to do something to help people directly, and on his own terms. For example, he became a certified master gardener, which in his home state of Connecticut requires at least 20 hours a year of volunteer service in community gardens and state extension offices.

He also got more involved at his church. He volunteered as a worship assistant, then agreed to serve on the church council, then became its vice chair. He was tapped to serve on another church committee and, drawing on his professional background, renewed a food-safety certification to lighten the load of a fellow volunteer in managing events. This was on top of his longtime commitment to coordinating the local Alcoholics Anonymous group he had started.

He added even more volunteer tasks after a foot injury in September 2024 took thrice-weekly pickleball games with his wife, Jane, out of his schedule. Before he knew it, volunteering was swallowing up his days. “If I have three different commitments on the same day, it kind of precludes doing much else,” he says. “I guess I didn’t really have a plan.”

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Hanson now understands he was spreading himself too thin. “It’s a phenomenon you see in almost every church,” he says. “They keep going to the same people over and over.”

His own personality contributed to the dynamic, he adds: “Someone says there’s a need and my hand automatically goes up.”

But while he was committed to volunteering, Hanson didn’t want it to interfere with his time with his family. He couldn’t keep up with the weeds in his own garden and had to hire another master gardener to help. He had less time for self-care. When his multiple commitments conflict, he says, “I start getting anxious because I’m not in control.”

Taking stock

Three years into retirement, “I am learning to say no,” Hanson says. “I don’t want to be involved in something just because there’s a perceived need. I like to be involved in things that utilize my skills and my passions.”

To set priorities, he conducted a purpose analysis, a familiar exercise from his time in the corporate world, including stints as a conference manager for a Fortune 500 company and director of customer success for an education tech firm. He asked himself how he wanted to spend this chapter of his life — what he wanted to keep and what he wanted to let go of.

“I have to remind myself I’m not the center of the universe. Sometimes I’m just a cog in the wheel,” he says. Rather than jumping into the kind of leadership roles that marked his career, Hanson now tries to empower others to grow and develop themselves, offering up his experience, expertise and support rather than trying to do it all himself. “Watching people grow from that is pretty amazing,” he says.

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Recognizing that he doesn’t have unlimited energy “is probably the biggest mistake I’ve always made in my life. When things get hectic, the first thing to suffer is self-care.”

Now he focuses on volunteer tasks that energize him and that don’t feel so much like work. When someone asks him to take on a task, he asks why they want him and why they want it done. If you overextend yourself, he says, you could start to resent the organizations you’re trying to support.

Scaling back is still a work in progress for him, but his wife helps keep him grounded. She isn’t afraid to tell him when his volunteer-life balance gets out of whack.

“I think I learned that it’s healthier for me if I manage my expectations about my capacity, about what I can accomplish,” says Hanson. “I want to keep it as a labor of love.”

a man laughs in the middle of his garden

Hanson has been certified by his home state as a master gardener and commits at least 20 hours a year to gardening-related community service.

Alex Fradkin

What the pros say

When people retire from full-time work, it can be tempting to dive into full-time volunteering. There are so many worthy causes and so much more time, or so it seems.

“The needs, even the demands, of others can be relentless. One only has to read the papers each day to be very aware of the suffering locally and worldwide,” says Catherine Bernard, a clinical psychologist in Takoma Park, Maryland. “The requests are real, important and constant.”

Before jumping in, remember that your calendar is not blank, advises Raymond Jetson, a community activist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and cofounder of Aging While Black, an organization that works to engage and empower Black older adults.

Ask yourself some questions about the volunteer activities you plan to take on, Jetson says. Does this service align with your sense of purpose and the impact you want to have in the world? Is it something you can sustain over time? He suggests selecting one or two causes that best correspond with your interests, passions and skills.

“One of the things I really caution people to look at are the other things in life that place demands on your time,” he says. “Some people have family obligations. Some people are beginning to become caregivers.”

“When someone is struggling with a decision on what they want a life to be like after retirement, I would ask them to pause and notice how they feel when they look at options,” says Bernard. “They might be feeling thrilled at all the options, or overwhelmed by options, or sometimes depressed.” Those feelings need to be explored.

“I remind people that usually there is no right answer to how much time or money, [to spend],” Bernard continues. “The only right answer is to be self-directed rather than be directed by the needs or wants of others, or by obligation or guilt.”

Hanson takes a break in his inflatable pool. He says he has learned to manage his expectations about what he can do as a volunteer because “I want to keep it as a labor of love.”

Alex Fradkin

How to scale back

Here are some tips Jetson and Bernard offer for getting control of your volunteer life.

Think hard about time. Bernard urges retirees to think through each volunteer opportunity and every ask. Evaluate how much time you can give to a cause or a new role, and how much time, in defined hours, it would take. Weigh that against the time you need to, say, spend with an aging parent or play a sport you enjoy.

Chart your activities. List out the costs of taking on new commitments, Bernard recommends. They can be financial (like having to pay someone to help weed your garden) but can also include stress, or shortchanging commitments to your children, your social life or your self-care. Use the list or chart to help determine whether a particular commitment is one you truly want to take on and can fulfill.

“Don’t set up a situation where [fellow volunteers] think they can count on you and then you can’t come through,” Bernard says. “You do no one any favors by doing this.”

Recruit younger people to volunteer with you. Pairing up with, say, a former work colleague, a fellow congregant or a niece or nephew can help older adults increase their impact without getting overextended, Jetson says. “Pass on this spirit of service so service becomes shared and not this individual burden.”

Studies have shown that intergenerational volunteering also deepens relationships in ways that benefit both parties.

Micro-volunteer. That’s Jetson’s term for taking on smaller volunteer tasks that fulfill your desire to serve without upsetting your life balance. He cites a retired friend who, rather than committing to things like a one-year tenure on a board, takes on projects that might last a month and have goals that are “reasonable, attainable and verifiable.”

Such short-term commitments give you an exit ramp in evaluating whether to keep working with that group or charity, he says.

There are also plenty of opportunities for one-off volunteering that can be both fulfilling and fun, such as helping out at a fundraising road race, joining a community cleanup project, or lending a hand at a food, clothing or toy drive.

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