Читать книгу The New Retirement - Jan Cullinane - Страница 6

by Kerry Hannon

– Best-selling author of Great Pajama Jobs, Never Too Old to Get Rich, and Great Jobs for Everyone 50+, career/retirement strategist

Demographic transformation and population aging are occurring at a blistering pace around the world. Increasingly, our lifespans are topping 100 years, and this will become increasingly commonplace in the years to come.

That's the backdrop for my curmudgeonly views on retirement. I am not a fan. At least not in the way it has been approached in the past.

I guess you'd have to say I'm the anti-retirement expert. I routinely remark: Let's retire the word retire.

I say this for myriad compelling reasons. In large measure, it's spurred by deep-seated financial concerns. A striking number of Americans have little saved for retirement and do not have access to an employer retirement plan to help them sock away funds for their future financial security.

The ability to choose to retire is tangled in thorny financial choices and more than a little crystal ball gazing.

How much longer will you be able to work from a health perspective and in an ageist workplace culture that resists retaining older workers? How will you pay for healthcare after you leave your employer's plan? Importantly, how will you create a life in this chapter that balances your budget and allows you to embrace new challenges and meaningful experiences?

For many people, the decades that lie ahead, should they step out of the workforce in their 60s or are not financially prepared, are a daunting prospect.

For nearly two decades, I have been concerned, speaking, and writing about the looming elder poverty crisis in this country. That crunch is evolving as Baby Boomers retire and are faced with longevity without the savings to support the years ahead, including surging medical costs, particularly at the end of life. My mother died recently on the cusp of turning 92, and I can assure you, her annual living and healthcare costs in her last few years were staggering.

Experts at Fidelity have estimated that about 15% of the average retiree's annual expenses will be used for healthcare-related expenses, including Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.

According to the Fidelity Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate, an average retired couple age 65 may need approximately $300,000 saved (after tax) to cover healthcare expenses in retirement.

Clearly, that figure comes with provisions that depend on when you step out of the workforce and your health, luck, and so on.

But a successful retirement involves far more than whether you will outlive your money or whether you have saved adequately. To me, work in some fashion engages the mind and provides a social connection and network that is vital to healthy aging.

This doesn't necessarily mean full-blown work scenarios. Part-time, seasonal, contract or consulting positions, a side entrepreneurial gig, can all serve as a financial safety net.

That income is the fourth leg of the retirement stool along with retirement savings, personal savings, and Social Security. Meantime, work can also provide future retirees the ability to delay tapping Social Security retirement benefits.

Social Security's rules essentially give you an 8% bigger benefit for each year you postpone claiming benefits after your full retirement age (currently 66 to 67), until age 70. Put another way, if you're now 66 and wait until 70 to start claiming, you'll see 32% larger benefits than if you filed at your full retirement age.

Jan Cullinane's enlightening new book highlights the significance of a holistic approach to retirement. I'm pleased she includes vital advice on the role working longer can play.

“For some, a long and (hopefully) rewarding job/career, followed by non-working years is the retirement goal,” Cullinane writes. “For others, retirement is more of a process, perhaps involving several forays into and out of alternative projects, pastimes, and careers/jobs.

Many people hope to do a ‘phased transition’ to retirement and combine more leisure time with work, and some insist they will never retire. Some want to retire by age 55. Others want to be part of the FIRE movement – financial independence, retire early – where the goal is to live on your own terms by the time you're in your 30s or 40s”.

The New Retirement: The Ultimate Guide to the Rest of Your Life is a persuasive reminder that retirement is vastly different today than in previous generations and will continue to mutate. But it can be a time of great adventure and purpose if you carefully prepare the foundation for a period of life that may outlast your primary working career.

Different flavors of ice cream is a metaphor for how we all seek different things in the next chapter of our lives.

Cullinane shows us that it is possible to step away from a career and create our own bespoke retirement chapter. She provides solid resources and actionable steps for those nearing retirement as well as those decades away to begin to plan intentionally and embrace the rich possibilities ahead.

For me, the new story of retirement for those who have saved adequately is that it will be in fact a sequence of shifts over time as one calibrates and re-jiggers the puzzle of our next phase from a practical and a deeply personal perspective that centers on that cosmic question we all grapple with: What ultimately matters in a life well led?

As my friend Ken Dychtwald, psychologist, gerontologist, and founder and chief executive of Age Wave, a consulting and research company, told me: “During this transitional period, some people feel unsettled, anxious, or bored, but eventually they realize that ‘I can be fresh. I can be new.’”

A 2021 study by Age Wave, Edward Jones, and the Harris Poll found that most retirees say that all four pillars – health, family, purpose, and finances – are crucial to optimal well-being in retirement, which is common-sense to me. And retirees, when compared with younger Americans, are far more likely to say that “having a sense of purpose” in life is essential to achieve peak well-being.

One of the big takeaways from the report: being useful makes retirees feel youthful. I like that notion. (And it's far cheaper than Botox.)

It plays into my concept that, if you're financially secure, this should be a time of life of engaging in the world, moving to something new, certainly not fading away, or, ahem, retiring, in the timeworn sense of the word.

The new retirement movement needs books like Jan's because, as a respected retirement specialist, her advice is realistic and honest. It resonates. She understands the demographic reality of longevity and shows us the positive pathways to create financial security and a future of opportunity and joy.