By Shannah Koss, EVP Community Development
Is retirement outdated or perhaps not our parent’s retirement…
I have always had misgivings about retirement having watched my father get pushed into early retirement, get depressed and lose a sense of his identity. I often say “retirement is not for the faint of heart” particularly if we enjoyed work and it is part of what gives us our sense of self-worth.
Retirement is one of life’s biggest changes and can have an impact equivalent to the loss of a loved one. Retirement can also be more of what we want it to be including partial retirement, time to consider a new career, time to give back to society or community, time to do what we love.
Retirement is something that we should ideally plan for with our significant other and with input from the family and friends we anticipate being a part of our daily lives. Planning needs to include our picture of what retirement will be like, an honest assessment of what our finances can support and consideration of our mental and emotional expectations.
An interesting article for people who have reasonable financial security is: The Holistic Approach to Retirement Planning in Next Avenue. Here are two concepts to consider.
One of the biggest problems Birke sees among the newly retired is that they “didn’t anticipate the negative side effects of the ending of their work,” she says, so they’re not used to the isolation and begin to question their sense of purpose and meaning.
Norr advises his client to clarify your life imperative… “values, activities, goals and lifestyle that give us the richest sense of being alive, …It’s aligning your money with your heart.”
Unfortunately, more than half of the aging US population will not have the luxury of retiring in today’s environment at least not in a manner that is remotely close to the lifestyle they could afford when working. In addition, they may not be healthy enough to work.
Retirement gets complicated when we consider most people want to age in place or community where they have a social support network, but this is much more easily said than done. Social Security helps, but it is rarely enough to maintain our lifestyle pre-retirement.
A recent Forbes article suggests thinking of our life time as having a second middle age, because being retired for 25 years may be too expensive!
As you transition out of your first middle age, it’s important to distinguish whether you want to transition into full retirement or into your second middle age. During your second middle age, you’re still active, vital, and productive, but you’re no longer raising a family or aggressively pursuing the career of your first middle age. “Freedom” can be one good word to describe this second middle age. At this stage, you’re free from the expectations of others. Free from preconceived notions of how you might live your life.
The article goes on to characterize the period after the second middle age as “full retirement, increased dependence”. Most of us will have dependencies in our final stages of life when we can’t work, but planning this time focused on some freedom may make the last part feel less daunting.
There is hope in the form of aging in community initiatives, a shrinking work force and the gig economy (short term contracts for work). Thinking about our second middle age lets us keep a younger self-image or a sense of vital aging and explore how we can reshape or transform work with more freedom. There are many options including: finding out about all of the age friendly activities in our communities, consulting in our area of expertise; doing something completely different — Uber/Lyft driver, seasonal work, teaching; share our home or our car and our costs; participating in online services – dog walking, tutoring, repairs, as much or as little as we want. Let’s plan for the rainy days but live for every day!