Writing on Retirement
Among the several categories into which I place my blog stories, I include retirement. I’ve had a fascination with retirement for 30 years, ostensibly, because I ran one of the largest retirement businesses in the world. That stint caused me to spend many hours, contemplating the idea of retirement as exemplified in the vast of Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution pension plans that were part of my business domain. You simply cannot run those types of businesses without spending lots of time focusing on what exactly it is that you were providing your customers through the administration, handling and Investment Management of those plans. You get a sense of what is in the head of employers, who set up these plans for their employees, the employees who benefit from these plans (Employees of a vast array of ages, demographics, and social economic status), federal, state, and municipal governments, and how they look at their role and providing for retirement income security, and finally, and most importantly, the way all kinds of people think about the most important aspect of their lives, which is the arc of their retirement cycle.
All of that strategic thinking and research focused on how to make my company a better provider of services for these pension plans, leaves the lasting impression and changes your thought patterns about retirement for years to come. It was just after that tour of duty in retirement land that I began writing short stories. The first stories that I wrote were specifically about the thought processes of a person going through the pre-retirement mindset. They say all writing begins on an autobiographical stage and I believe that to be very true. At the age of 40 I didn’t really want to retire, but especially in an arena like Wall Street, where people regularly leave the high-pressure meat, grinder, and “retire” at an early age, it was not so unusual to be focused on this topic. But there was more to it than that. I think I am what most people characterize as Type A in my personality, I have always thought of work at central to my being uncertainly, my identity. That made me understand, intuitively that thinking about, or acting the issue of stopping or even just down scaling work as a part of one’s life was as profound to change as a human being could face.
When Tony Soprano said to an aging fellow mobster, who wanted to retire, “what are you a hockey player?” I’ve read that quote in several articles about retirement including one. I just read this morning in the Economist. I guess riders enjoy quoting notorious pop fiction characters like Tony Soprano because they’re interpretation of life is so basic. What I think Toni meant by that quote is that people who work in physically demanding Fields might very well need to stop doing that work at some age because their physical capacity simply leaves them uncompetitive or bone weary. I happen to watch the movie Moneyball again yesterday and there is a quote used repeatedly, which makes it clear that those who play major league baseball sooner or later, or called to stop playing the child’s game. Of course, that thinking speaks to both the physical need to retire, and somehow, since that playing a professional sport is not serious enough to take one one’s entire life with the sense of true meaning. I fear that may reflect my personal view that professional sports are not central life on this planet, (something many many people would disagree with), but enough people of substance say “it’s just a game” enough times that there must be more to this notion than just the fact that I was not brought up, terribly engaged and spectating professional sports. So when I speak of the imperative of retirement to some, I usually think of other types of demanding physical jobs like being a carpenter, or a bricklayer, and how there must come a time in their lives, when they simply cannot keep up with the physical demands, and therefore are justified in retirement.
The truth is that one does not have to justify to anyone the life path one chooses least of all, if one decides that they had enough of work as they have known it, and are choosing leisure and the lack of relevance over work. Relevance comes in many flavors, and I would never be so bold as to suggest That the only thing that makes you relevant is what you do for a living and whether you are continuing to do it. Even if you choose at some point in life to spend your time watching TV or simply staring out the window who is to say that engagement or contemplation is not relevant. My mother used to say that when you turn 70 some people look at you as though you are no longer adding to society if you retire. I’m not sure even that adding to society is an imperative of life. Perhaps, like the first requirement of the Hippocratic oath one should think in terms of doing no harm to society, but the subjectivity of adding to society is such that I believe it’s disqualifying relevance as a valid lifestyle judgment.
In the deposition I just gave, the opposing lawyer spent some time at the beginning, discussing my qualifications as an expert witness. It so happens that the case a hinging on the fiduciary obligations involved in a retirement plan. I’ve had a number of those sorts of cases, because of my Investment Management background, so I understand very well the importance of my foundation as an expert in retirement. In my CV I note the books that I have written, one being an academic book about the global pension crisis. That book is quite relevant as a basis for my expert standing in the subject of the financial aspects of retirement plans. Another book called Gulag 401(k), seems like it should be relevant because a 401(k) plan is the principal defined contribution plan type used in the United States for the last 50 years. But the truth of the matter is that Gulag 401(k), which is subtitled as “Tales of a modern prisoner”, has very little to do with retirement plans, per se, and mostly to do with stories that ponder the human thought process about the central topic of retirement.
I have thought for the past 30 years that my musings on retirement were important, and may provide some guidance to people as they thought about their eventual retirement. Now I seem to see more and more articles about why people should not be thinking about retiring, mostly because the human lifespan has changed so much And the economic viability for most people of stopping work is such that retirement is becoming an outdated concept. The truth is that retirement is a construct of modern society. The invention of the pension plan had more to do with governments not wanting to be responsible for supporting people collectively in their dotage, so they recommended, and sometimes even mandated, that people prepare for their dotage by setting money aside, and they felt that it was their imperative to protect those people from themselves and others who might pray upon them by putting walls around that pool of money which constitutes their retirement income security. After World War II, the pension plan also became an employment weapon to attract employees who had just gone through the ravages of war, and had in their minds, a vision of comfortable leisure after a few more years of working. Like the hockey player whose ankles are tired of strapping on the skates The Warriors of World War II were tired of being relied upon and actually wanted to be less relevant and necessary for society.
So here I am once again writing on the topic of retirement except now I’m beginning to think that too many people are writing about retirement as retirement is becoming a bigger and bigger demographic issue for the largest demographic cohort, baby boomers. The bottom line is that retirement is nothing more than how you are able to and choose to spend the last stage of your life. It is nothing more and nothing less at the personal level and I will remind myself of that every time going forward when I read about retirement or am inclined to write about retirement.