I should point out that above all, I’m an optimist! But I am also a realist. I understand the uncertainty of our newly redefined futures based on the foibles of our past and the pressures of our present. We are faced with the potential of longer lives, underfunded retirement goals and the very possible chance that when we reach the arbitrary age of not being able to work, we don’t want to or worse can’t.
When I stumbled across Dr. Ken Dychtwald’s feel good portrayal of this future at the Huffington Post, I felt less so. He suggested that there are basically five ways to prepare to retirement, one of which is to not retire at all. These lower-your-expectations while raising- your-expectations approach to what we are barreling head first towards, I wondered if they were even practical for the vast majority of us. Broken into five steps, he outlines that if we understand how hard our parents and grandparents struggled, we might better appreciate the hand we have been dealt.
He suggests that we are caught in an “existential battle going on to create a better balance between the Dow and the Tao – between the material and the spiritual, work and play, spending and saving, now and tomorrow.” To which he added: “Millions of us are now looking for new meaning in our lives, and there’s a growing desire – along with the vitality and life experience – to make something of the next decades of our lives. There seem to be five new retirement rules that are emerging”. Boiling it down in this manner makes it seem manageable, even do-able.
1)Dr. Dychtwald starts by telling su that we will all have to work longer because the vast majority of us are not in a position financially to endure a quarter of a century of not working. That’s an easy observation drawn from the headlines that basically suggests that what we have to deal with (diminished retirement accounts, poor saving and investment habits, over-reaching consumerism) will force us to work longer than we had anticipated. he points to the previous generations as an example of this, calling our parents and grandparents the generations of “rough sledders”. They did have their challenges. But they had some built in advantages that simply don’t exist anymore.
Our parents and grandparents had pensions. Families tended to be closer to home. And living within your means was not only possible, it was mandatory. Credit was much more difficult to get and harder to qualify for giving them little wiggle room to live beyond their means. They faced a retirement that was more of a challenge budget-wise than we previously assumed. So based on this he concludes that we will have to work longer because we have to.
People can afford a 25+ year non-working retirement if they understand that to do so they will need to live on 30% less than they did while working – and they can because working costs money. Pensions were designed to cover only 70% of the working income with Social Security making up some of the rest. Now, we think that we can maintain a lifestyle that we had during our working careers but only if we have a working career number two.
He calls it an “encore career” which is a nice turn of phrase but only the determined, the ones with the foresight and stamina to give up sleep to try and develop that “career” while they are still working will be able to segue once they jettison the first career. I have been an advocate of the development of a second career for over a decade, long before it was fashionable to suggest it. But I knew it was advice falling on deaf ears – until recently. Most folks I know work too much now to even contemplate a second career. And, because conservative is the new black, most of us are unwilling to risk trying something new.
Then he suggests that we change. Almost worse than suggesting a work change is a change in how you approach relationships. As Dr. Seuss once said, “there’s no one Youer than you”. By retirement, we are who we are! Most relationships are built on our interaction with each other because of the work we do. Once retired, we either are faced with the daunting task of re-inventing those relationships or simply finding a way to deal with them on a day-to-day basis. He asks and doesn’t answer the following questions: “How do you create intimacies with family members who might live at a distance? How do you forge new friendships with people from different backgrounds or different generations? How do you better connect with your parents, siblings, children and grandchildren?” How do you convince them they should?
He then attacks our worst fear, that of our fast approaching expiration date. He is convinced, he tells us that we should attempt to vercome our “psycho-sclerosis, the hardening of the attitudes”. By “learn[ing] about new ideas, media and technologies, taking an interest in the lives and interests of younger people, continually stretching yourself, trying new things” we can readjust our outlooks. College at 65? Not a bad idea because in many instances, it might be free. And we will finally have the time to kill. Unless of course we are working career two.
By suggesting that we all begin to live within our means is excellent advice until your college aged kid moves back, your parents (those rough sledders) tell you they’re broke and because you’re older and more expensive, your employer is cutting your hours. Living within your means is, for many of us, the new indentured servitude. He then suggests self-reliance, something our parents and grandparents knew all too well.
And lastly, we should, as the good doctor suggests, do it all while living a healthy stress-free life, with lots of sleep, veggies and yoga! Really?
Perhaps he should have added that we should become less rigid. Our belief that we can’t change, that we have become so accustomed to what we do, what we can afford (or not) and how we invest in that far-off distant future is our own worst enemy. If it truly is an “existential battle”, they we are fighting an unseen foe, one that shape-changes long before we have had the opportunity to comprehend the old incarnation. Instead of waging a war on our future, we should first build up our defenses the old fashioned way.
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