“I’m spending my
Kid’s Inheritance!”
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Jim Magay |
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Over the years I’ve seen many friends retire; customers and colleagues alike. There is no parallel to be made. The style of retirement has been as different as the people themselves.
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I’ve known ECPs who sadly dropped over at their desks doing what they loved. Others have sold their carefully nurtured practice and pined away from afar. Still others came back to work breaking in the new management. One dear friend suggests continued ownership at a reduced salary and hiring a bright eyed young protégé at a good rate to actually do most of the work. Hard to know what is best.
In the area of customers retiring – too many of them seem to have been poorly prepared for a new lifestyle. A big trip or two, take the family to Disney, and then what?
A few have pursued adult education and travel abroad, staying in elder-hostels. Still others have started new careers based on deferred dreams when they were youngsters. Running B&B’s, managing Inns, and opening restaurants come to mind. One remarkable couple sold everything and became tour guides for the Wally Byam and the Airstream Caravan Club – living in their own Airstream and guiding tours all over the country!
Sadly, too many end up with health problems and spend far too much time visiting doctors and hospitals with their significant other. Still others mindlessly make the weekly trek down to Foxwoods to blow their social security check, and a surprisingly large number of them have their kids and/or grandchildren move back in.
A terrific newspaper – the Christian Science Monitor, did a major piece on retirement recently called - appropriately, “The New Retirement.” The article looked at worldwide trends in demographics; it called attention to the unrest in Europe over raising the minimum age for retirement, and had a lot of anecdotal evidence about how people all over the world are coping with this issue. A Japanese retiree driving a cab to make ends meet, a Chinese bookkeeper who plans on working into her 70’s, and an Alabaman city clerk who has no plans to retire even though she recently turned 64. Conclusion – We are all going to be working longer!
The old model – a gold watch and off to Florida has definitely been scrapped as the present day model for retirement.
Present day “Boomers” recoil at the idea of living with their parents retirement style - first of all we are living longer, we want to feel fulfilled, we need to keep the gray matter (and musculature) exercised to ward off Alzheimer’s, we want to keep up our active physical pursuits, and we desperately want to remain relevant to this rapidly changing world.
Pension funds have been raided or under-funded, social security is in doubt for future generations, and the politicians’ keep playing chicken with solutions that might help (Think of “means” testing for benefits, a higher limit for contributions, a later starting age to collect, etc.) Most of these things are beyond our control as individuals; while society stews about them we must still go on living day to day.
What are you going to do? Are you like the brokerage ad spokesperson who says, “I don’t want to hear about starting vineyards and buying yachts – lets get real!” or no plans at all?
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