Pension system reforms has changed a lot over the decades and therefore influenced towards lives of past, present and future generations of pensioners. Pensions are more often of a lower amount while pensioners live more and more challenging lives. Even the working life of a human is getting longer in order to get pensions system to function better. After long working era, delicate health and too low pensions to lead a decent life, one is struggling in life with ongoing challenges. Since the beginning of retirement older people are going through phase of adaptation to the new life era of retirement with so many different aspects. Adaptation process is individual for each and every one of us, as social and financial circumstances are. Also, someone has wide social network around in life while someone is alone in a household. Many try to be active putting themselves in direction of re-employment or inclusion through associations for pensioners while some migrate abroad. Many patriates who return to our homeland with foreign pensions return not only because of nostalgia. Foreign pensions are often much higher than ours which leads to automatically lower risks in a life of a pensioner. Retirement poverty has become a great issue for the Governmentof the Republic of Croatia as for society because demographic factors are devastating as well. A large proportion of the elderly in combination with decreasing number of newborns represents a big challenge to pension systems. Today's pensioner's life is filled with the concept of active aging. Pensioners active in the community can live a less challenging life, especially if they are of good mental and physical health with a richer social network and a decent standard of living.