The idea of a life of leisure is being replaced by a search for meaning and fulfillment. Bill Carter is one of those lucky people whose life’s work has been valuable and satisfying. As former city manager in several communities, his career was sometimes high-pressure, but seldom dull.
Now at 60, as he looks to retirement, he aspires to a final stage of life that’s equally fulfilling.
“I want to find out what’s out there to make my life at this stage as stimulating as it can be,” says Carter.
During the past year, he’s been mulling ideas for his new path: Continue part-time consulting work for city governments, build a mountain home, travel. But he’s also seeking out advice at a seminar this month, exploring how to achieve a creative retirement.
As Americans live longer, experts stress the importance of this kind of social planning - planning how you’ll spend your retirement, not just how you’ll pay for it.
“We see people who are well-fixed, but they haven’t the faintest idea of what they’re going to do,” says Ron Manheimer, director of the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, based at the University of North Carolina, Asheville.
Denise Loftus, of the American Association of Retired Persons, says, “The reality is you can have all the money in the world, and if you don’t know what you’re going to do to make yourself happy, it’s not going to matter.”
A couple of generations ago, planning for a lengthy retirement wasn’t a pressing problem because chances were you wouldn’t live to see it. In 1900, the American life expectancy was 47. In 1940, it was less than 64.
Even if you reached retirement, poor health or exhaustion after a lifetime of hard, physical labor made it less likely that you longed to fill your days with activities.
Today, though, U.S. life expectancy at birth is nearly 77, and rising. People also stay healthy longer. Studies show that disabilities in people over 65 fell 15 percent from 1982 to 1994. If you’ve reached your 40s or 50s without any pressing health problems, financial advisers often counsel to plan as if you’ll live into your 90s.
That’s one good reason to put thought to retirement: It may last 20 or 30 years. Just as compelling is new research that emphasizes the importance of meaningful retirement to your mental and physical health.
In their book “Successful Aging” (Delacorte Press), authors John Rowe and Robert Kahn argue that your mental and physical health as you age doesn’t primarily depend on whether you’ve got good genes, as many people assume.
Instead, it hinges more on individual choices in diet, exercise, the pursuit of mental challenges, close personal relationships and opportunities for productive activities.
When Loftus conducts retirement-planning workshops, she asks participants to list the benefits - besides pay - that they get from their jobs.
Often, people mention office friendships and the challenge or satisfaction they get from work.
“So how will you replace those friendships and that challenge?” she asks them.
“In your 50s is a good time to start thinking about this,” says Loftus, an employment and retirement specialist. “You’ve got to find out what excites you, what interests you.”
A few decades ago, the ideal retirement was often conceived as a time of leisure - a time for golf, bridge club and travel.
These days, gerontologists say the purely leisure retirement has been succeeded by a productive retirement model.
In a recent survey of Americans 50 to 75, only 28 percent agreed that retirement was “a time to take it easy, take care of yourself, enjoy leisure activities and take a much-deserved rest from work and daily responsibilities.”
“There’s a trend away from the ’keeping busy’ type of activities,” says retirement- and life-planning researcher and writer Carol Anderson, who lives in the state of Washington. “It used to be that ’keeping busy’ was the sign of a successful retiree. But now it’s not enough. People want meaning.”
More retirees are volunteering, or they’re using retirement to launch a second career or start a business. Many, like Carter, continue to work part time in their fields.
“Volunteering is so important. I would say that everyone, if they have good health, should be involved in at least one or two volunteer groups that they can feel good about,” says Frances “Bookie” West, a retired teacher in Charlotte, N.C., whose volunteer activities include work in her church. “That helps your mind to say that you’re contributing in the community.”
