Entry #8: Retirement

The current issue of The Actuary (Society of Actuaries publication - yes I occasionally read it and yes I know that makes me a geek but it is technically work related since it helps to understand the business you are marketing even if it's a field no outsider ever truly has a hope of comprehending); anyway. The current issue of The Actuary has an article on redefining retirement.

There are a lot of trends and factors that are changing the way employers and employees think about and get ready for retirement - we've all read or heard about most of them: aging workforce, multigen workforce, economic tsunami, death of DB, low to nearly nil savings rates, trillions lost in DC plans, longevity, and so on. The traditional orderly flow of older workers out to allow younger workers in has been radically disrupted.

As I said in my last entry, I've always known I was going to work longer and harder than the mainstream myth. But I'm not sure anyone really could have foreseen what we're facing now. We've got the intersection of "can't afford to retire" with "don't want to retire" and it is creating a blockage in the workforce that may truly limit not only my career growth options but worse, may impede my children's entry into the workforce.

If older workers don't leave or only leave on their terms - that is keeping the fun work for themselves and leaving the boring stuff for the rest of us - that may have the down the line impact of delaying my kids' departure from my home (the ultimate goal of parenting: get them out of the house. didn't you learn anything from Bill Cosby?).

Some of the other important things we need to talk about for redefining retirement are communicating how much it costs to retire (think 20 to 25 times your current household budget); saving for healthcare or, in the US moving toward national healthcare as an economic necessity (if we haven't saved enough to live on, we certainly haven't saved enough to pay for healthy longevity); and starting a national debate about who should be the conduit for retirement: the individual, the employer or the government; same goes for healthcare.

Also, we need a robust debate on the nature of work. The great management consulting theory of the 80s (delayering enabled by technology) is the corollary failure of the current economy. Think about it: eliminating several layers of management and workers without eliminating the work and without really replicating or replacing the control those managers and workers provided must have had a direct impact on both the risk taking behavior that seems to have surprised the world in today's crisis and the similarly bad behaviors that led to the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley. Why was everyone surprised leadership, executives and the board didn't know what was going on? How could they? We all have too much on our plates to really know.

It's no wonder therefore that older workers (the ones stuck holding the bag after the intensive restructuring and delayerings of the prior decades) want to keep the best work for themselves and leave all the crap to the rest of us - in some ways they've earned it, being the survivors they are. But what does that mean for the rest of us who are aware of the scope of the challenge we face fixing the American economy and way of working (think Grand Canyon) and the type and extent of the tools currently offered to cross the chasm (tissue paper wings anyone?). Personally, if I wasn't already midstream, I'd choose to stay on my side and learn to live with the limits rather than kill myself trying to get to the other side.

So, really, rethinking retirement should be a discussion on the subject of rethinking work and must include workers, employers and the government and must cover education, healthcare and money. And we must look at it in the context of lifestyle and longevity. Maybe a period of sustained economic woe will force the inward looking internal work we as Americans must do to reflect on and remedy our excesses. And maybe we'll find a cure for cancer, end global poverty and find world peace.