Retirement

Retirement as a concept may be in the process of retiring. Take a look at this graph that shows how much retirement is mentioned in books from 1800 till the present. Prior to the 20th century, retirement was often something you did because your body couldn’t keep up anymore.

Ken Dychtwald’s AgeWave puts out some of the most insightful studies on retirement. Their most recent study, "The Four Pillars of the New Retirement: What a Difference a Year Makes," explores how the pandemic has affected many older Americans’ perspectives on health and financial security.

Today’s topic may seem like a strange segue after yesterday’s post expressing concern about a potentially declining population. But, while the juxtaposition of these two trends may cause some demographic agita, these are the kinds of questions we like to ask at MEA when we’re donning our sociologist hats.

In the U.S., most of us are familiar with how Social Security, 401k plans, and company pension plans help us save for retirement. Many of us may also be familiar with 529 plans, a tax-advantaged investment vehicle designed to encourage saving for future higher education expenses for one’s children or other beneficiaries.

Retirement is to regeneration what recreation is to re-creation. Sixty years ago upon their advent, retirement communities promised endless leisure in an age-apartheid gated neighborhood with your home facing a fairway. Today, regenerative communities are offering programs that help you repurpose yourself in intergenerational villages with your home facing a farm.

(Adapted from The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul - September, 2021 - by Connie Zweig, Ph.D.) I trained as a depth psychologist and spent my career exploring and writing about the shadow, a name for the personal unconscious coined by Carl Jung.

My friend, MarketWatch Editor-in-Chief Jeremy Olshan, posed the following inquiry that I found provocative: “Laura Carstensen at Stanford’s Center on Longevity has argued that we should abolish retirement and spread periods of work, education and sabbatical throughout our lives, abandoning the old school/work/retirement timeline. She recently asked me if I’d be willing to give up the chance to retire in the future in exchange for a four-day workweek now.”

Each year, Money magazine publishes its well-known top 10 “best places to retire.” And, each year, I scratch my head wondering about their criteria. It’s not that I quarrel with lovely places like Madison, Wisconsin, Boise, Idaho, or Asheville, North Carolina.

Re·tire·ment /rəˈtī(ə)rmənt/ “withdrawal from one’s position or occupation or from active working life; to be in seclusion”

This week, I discussed aging in the unique and unsettling time of COVID-19 with my good friend, psychologist, gerontologist, Age Wave CEO, and best-selling author of 17 books, Ken Dychtwald, PhD.