To Retire or Not to Retire II?

To Retire or Not to Retire?

The question assumes we have the choice. Many people simply have no choice but to keep working because they cannot afford not to be gainfully employed. Headlines such as “Work forever: Japan’s seniors brace for life without retirement” and “2 in 3 Singaporean retirees regret not planning earlier for retirement” are scary. We should be grateful if we are financially sound and enjoy the privilege of choosing to stay or withdraw (fully or partially) from gainful employment.

Retirement is by no means a “natural” event. There was no retirement before the 19th century. People just worked until they could work no more. Then came the industrial revolution. It brought wealth and dramatic changes in working life. In 1881, German chancellor Otto Von Bismarck stated that anyone over 65 must retire, and the state would pay a pension. So, Germany invented retirement and took the lead in supporting the elderly, funded by the state. Today retirement is firmly in place. It is a social right, a new stage of life, has a legal structure, and is a subject for academic research.

“Golden years” is synonymous with retirement. This expression was invented in 1959 to market the first-ever large-scale retirement community in Sun City, Arizona. The marketers came up with “golden years” to convey the next phase of life – a time of leisure and relaxation. Back in those days, people retired at 55 years old. They could look forward to 8 years of retirement. Retirement then was “too old to work, too young to die.”

Our Golden years are getting longer – and can be happier too!

A helpful way to look at retirement (and related dilemmas) is through the idea of purposeful encore years. When I was born (1953), the life expectancy of Singaporeans was 60 years. Today, 70 years later (2023), it has improved by 24 years (40%) to 84 years. People can expect to live 20 years beyond the retirement age of 65. Look at it this way: retirement could exceed all our years in primary, secondary, and tertiary education! What should we do with our post-retirement years?

In his 2011 book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife, Marc Freedman discussed the challenges and the opportunities presented by the encore years – a new stage of life that he said begins roughly at 55 and continues for the next 15 to 20 years. John Gardner, a Stanford professor (co-founding Encore.org), further developed the idea by introducing programmes to marshal the time and talent of seniors to work to revitalize communities and help youth. During the last year of his life, Gardner had a piece of paper with one word, “PURPOSE,” taped on his desk to help him, even in terminal illness, never to forget what mattered the most to him.

Researchers who have studied the topic of purpose define the concept: as “A sustained commitment to goals that are meaningful to the self and contribute to the common good, to something larger than or beyond the self.” To Gardner, “true happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents” in purposeful living.

A sense of purpose contributes to well-being across all cultures and socioeconomic levels at any stage in life. Purpose is not limited to one particular form – we can choose the purpose that suits us; for example, I have a friend who retired to take care of her mother personally. Living with purpose is not a zero-sum game – it does not crowd out other pleasures and personal goals. People with high-priority, beyond-the-self goals often have more self-oriented plans – travel, family, friends, and learning. These self-oriented activities are equally important in their lives.

So, to retire or not to retire? Can afford or cannot afford to retire? The more important question is whether we can or cannot articulate the purpose of our encore lives. It does not matter whether we are working full-time, part-time, or not at all but we must have a purpose to live. The aim is to live a full life and savour life’s joy.