Today's post will look at a couple of different retirement articles that I stumbled into this weekend. Maybe they will connect, maybe not.
The Economist posted an opinion piece titled Why You Should Never Retire that I found via a Thread from Unusual Whales. The main takeaway from the author was that nothing will replace "the buzz of being part of the action" working full time. The implication was that downshifting into anything less than continuing to be all in will result in loss of purpose and depression.
As is often the case, the comment replies to Unusual Whales were worth reading. There were quite a few that alleged some sort of top down conspiracy to have us all work as long as possible and then die. I'm not 100% dismissive of the idea even if I don't think The Economist would be in on such a thing. It not that I would draw some sort of truly nefarious, Matrix-like manipulation conclusion but more like from the perspective of the government, it might be easier to manage society if more people had more of their day structured for them. Not great, but not necessarily nefarious either.
I don't think that everyone loses purpose by retiring or otherwise moving on to a new chapter. Clearly, some people do lose their sense of purpose and those folks, whether it is a few or many, would be better off not giving up their sense of purpose if they are wired that way. The idea that the only way to stay purposeful is by staying in your career is absurd on its face. The article was dismissive of hobbies and made no mention of actively volunteering. Finding new, purposeful things to take on makes life more interesting and is probably better for our mental health from finding new things to get excited about.
Side bar: I talk all the time about actively volunteering. The context is not two hours a week in a soup kitchen. Not that volunteering in that manner is not helpful, it is but in terms of really engaging into something to make an impact in your community, I think that takes more than an hour or two.
The other article was not about retiring but there is a clear an obvious parallel related to big lifetime milestones. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the burgeoning field of empty nest coaching. Kids turning 18 and going off to college, leaving the nest, is a life event for the parents that per the article can be emotionally traumatic and the coaches can help parents with this transition.
Again, the comments had all sorts of ideas mostly focusing on this being a ridiculous thing to seek help for. We can all draw our own conclusions either way, we all handle life events differently but to the extent some people sink their identity into being parents so too do people sink their identity into their primary career. The end of that primary career can also be emotionally traumatic. Giving The Economist the benefit of the doubt, that might have been the point of that article.
This sort of loss, from a kid going on their own or your career ending, has a very long runway, you know it is coming, there is a natural order to it. I've referred to my day job in this context to say that I don't plan to really retire from but at some age, 60 (very unlikely), 70 (probably not), 75 (maybe), people will probably not want to work with me for thinking I am too old. Maybe not until I am well past 75, who knows but at some point our primary career will end. This is true for just about all of us, The Economist cited Giorgio Armani and Charlie Munger as exceptions. With that sort of visibility, I don't think there is any reason to get caught off guard by the probability (maybe you are Munger or Armani, maybe I am) that we will no longer be spending time the way we once did.
If we can be quite certain of this outcome then we can start to figure out other things we might want to do that are just as purposeful to us regardless of whether they pay money or not, a second or maybe a third act.
Some people need a second act that pays in order to make their retirement math work. If you think that might describe your situation, don't sit around waiting to start working on this. The sooner you start, the easier it will be.
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