Teaching to Learn

Teaching to Learn

I am way too impressionable. Not like Trump, who adopts whatever posture he has been advised to consider by the latest person to talk to him. But when I hear or read something that strikes me as valid, I take it to heart and most importantly, I try and act on it. Yesterday, my wife and I were talking about how to keep track of things we need to do. She likes to mull things over and process and thus runs the risks that things she should do something about get left in the email inbox clutter. I, on the other hand, insist on triaging inbox items as they come in. That way, every issue gets filled or killed on the spot. I know it sometimes seems as though I’m being impulsive, but at least things get done.

The other day I read an interesting Op/Ed in the Financial Times. It seems that some industrial psychologists and medical professionals are suggesting that the retirement age needs to be raised immediately by ten years to seventy-five. Most advisors who are recommending such changes are doing so for financial reasons. With longevity stretching into the mid-eighties, individuals need more time to save and less years of disinvesting in order to have some chance to balance the books. That’s the micro side of the issue. On the macro side there is growing concern of the insufficiency of overall retirement savings, specifically federal, state and municipal pensions which are increasingly underfunded and the unfunded liabilities risk creating a global economic crisis of insufficiency and vastly curtailed growth. The drain on the economy of having what’s called a burdensome old age dependency ratio is increasingly putting a strain on global GDP.

But this article was not primarily about the financial need for more pension prudence. The observation was that the current retirement age is putting multiple pressures on individuals of retirement age to their own detriment. First, there is the financial concern by people who had thought they had saved enough for a comfortable retirement. The angst of suddenly facing mortality risk of their own and all on their own is significant. Remember that this generational cohort is the first one to have considerably less defined benefit coverage and more reliance on defined contribution. People have been saying for some time that one of the hardest days for people of this generation would be the day they got a lump sum payment from their 401k and had to figure out how to invest and/or spend it to last them an uncertain lifespan. But beyond that this cohort is looking at some twenty years (approximately half again of their adult life to that point) and needs to find purpose that goes beyond playing golf and taking cruises.

If you go back to the end of WWII, men’s estimated lifespan was about sixty-five and getting a few years of retirement was fine. But it’s been 75 years since then and medical science and improved child nutrition has gradually pushed longevity by twenty years or so with a healthy debate about where it goes from here. Most psychologists would say that twenty years is simply too long for people to be “hanging around” taking up space in leisure. Obviously, some people have or find things that give them purpose during their retirement years. But the demographics have pushed the masses into the same circumstances that previously had been the province of a select and fortunate few.

I have been thinking about all of this for over twenty-five years now. Back in 1992 I was asked to take charge of the Retirement Services Department at Bankers Trust (actually, that was the name I renamed the various pension businesses I was given). We were the third-largest trustee and administrator of Defined Benefit pension plans in the U.S. and the largest record keeper and trustee of Defined Contribution pension plans in the country. We had 4,000 staff working on every form of pension arrangement in a world where the landscape of the pension market was faced by tremendous change and disruption. This forced me to spend a lot of time thinking about the arena and strategizing about where the retirement world was going. That tends to galvanize the mind given the complexity, breadth and importance of the topic.

So, now that I have reached that epic age of sixty-five, the worldwide symbolic retirement age. The year the medical profession defines as “old”. The age one must go onto Medicare. The year one prepares for social security (my age cohort has to wait to 66) and needs to ponder the financial equation of when to start social security, trading off current income for higher future income. Everyone needs a mini-MBA at this age to do all the time-value-of-money calculations. We could probably also use an actuarial course as well to better understand our all-important longevity conundrum. It was this year that I decided to put the stake in the ground for my move to San Diego. Like most people my age, I had bought the house several (7) years ago, but deciding to move there full-time is key. I forced the issue on a somewhat unnatural schedule and extended my lease in Manhattan for eight months (which I was allowed to do only once they say). That happens now in six months, and the clock is ticking.

When I read the article in the FT it triggered a thought I had been quietly mulling. One of the things I have started doing this year is writing this blog. I have done it now for six months. I have written 298 stories with an average 1,182 words over the 179 days (that’s 1.66 stories per day) and I currently have an unbroken streak of 132 days without missing a post. I figure this gets me up in the morning, but it also forces me to do minor research on almost every topic I choose to write about. Sometimes its just an exact definition of a word or the history of some incident. In any case, I have come to enjoy the learning that the writing involves by necessity. Call it learning-light, but it keeps me very current and always adding to my knowledge base (hopefully more than the average grey matter loss going on naturally). This writing leads to learning and let’s at least suggest that the blog stories may have some form of teaching to them, call it teaching-light.

That prompted me to wonder whether I needed to consider taking my teaching robes out of their two-year retirement. For ten years, as a Clinical Professor at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, I traveled 230 miles to Ithaca each week to teach. I taught four different courses (one on Pensions unsurprisingly). I wrote one academic book (also on Pensions). I traveled internationally to speak on my areas of expertise. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. So this weekend I started reaching out to Universities with business programs out in San Diego. I had no idea if there was a demand for teachers in those programs. I don’t pretend to know the population composition out in San Diego yet. I reached out to three schools at the provost level and heard back from all three within twenty-four hours. It seems there is a demand for the services and capabilities I have to offer. I am surprised how energizing and empowering that response makes me feel. There is still lots to discuss, explore and decide, but just knowing that I can keep teaching and learning has done something to my pre-retirement psyche. I finally have a use for that 60’s expression; Keep on Truckin’.