5 minute read
FINANCIALLY SPEAKING
LIFE AFTER WORK
BY NANCY E. BOWES, CFP®
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THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SIDE
According to the Stanford Center on Longevity, children born in the year 2000 will likely live to be 100 years old. Moreover, there is a direct link between education and life expectancy, the more educated you are the longer, healthier life you’ll live. You can see the trend in financial planning models which now use 93 as a standard life expectancy for females and 91 for males. That means you have about 30 years or one third of your life to plan for after work.
In her lectures on longevity, Dr. Laura Carstensen founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity says that as a society, we need to plan for living longer starting in early childhood years. Think about the obesity crisis, children in poverty are experiencing early onset of diabetes, and diabetes leads to dementia. Compare this to the more privileged, highly educated population where the dementia rate has declined globally by 24% in recent years. There is a lot of work to be done. Dr. Carstensen describes the timeline of life, where the first 50 years we are “taking” from parents, educators, and employers, then the last 50 years we are “giving back,” sharing our knowledge and experience. As we age into our fifties, striving for healthy foods, the right amount of sleep and exercise, it becomes even more imperative if we want to live our last year’s productive and with less pain!
Equally important is our mental health. The place to start is by trying to get more out of life outside of work. Diversify your social network. Reach out to family, friends, and individuals whom you share common interests. Go back to school, explore hobbies, or join organizations that are meaningful to you. These are investments in your
emotional wellbeing. In the United States we have a more difficult challenge because of the five-day work schedule. Our society really needs to re-evaluate and consider a four-day work week.
Marc Freedman, author of “How to Live Forever” published in 2009, warns us about the devastating effects of loneliness, it is the primary cause of illness in seniors today. He believes in the enduring power of connecting the generations. If you think about it, age segmentation is relatively new in society. The Happy Birthday song didn’t exist until the 1930’s. Before then, no one knew their age, it wasn’t important. Then Social Security came along and brought with it the expectation that when you retire you become “old” at age 65.
When you look at our society, the children are in schools, the parents are in workplaces and the elderly live in senior facilities, the three are separated. In his book, he talks about the importance of proximity – bringing people of all ages together in their daily lives.
He highlights an example, where Singapore government officials in 2018 legislated that all new developments of senior centers must have a child daycare on the premises to bring the generations together. Another heartwarming example is the story about a senior apartment building near the Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve called Judd Manor. The culture loving residents offered free room and board to university music students in exchange for playing free concerts. The web of relationships generated was ever lasting. One of the viola students was
marrying another student and asked one of the residents (90 years old) to be their matron of honor. The more integrated we are, the happier we will be.
To stem the bias of “ageism”, Freedman founded Encore.org and Experience Corps with the idea of linking career ”second acts” to the greater good and to mobilize people over fifty to improve the school performance and prospects of lowincome elementary school students in 22 cities. This led to the creation of the Encore Fellowship program, a oneyear fellowship helping individuals translate their midlife skills into second acts focused on social impact. There is even an annual cash award of $100,000 for those individuals who really make a difference with their efforts. These programs are now coordinated through AARP and you can go onto their website to learn more.
Instead of planning for retirement, we ought to plan for our “second middle age” with freedom and independence. Dr. Bill Roiter* explains how the transition of a “career” focused life to a “meaning” focused life after retirement relies on the same skills we used during earlier transitions in our life, such as entering the work force, getting married, or starting a family. We need to evaluate our own skills and focus on the parts of our job that we really enjoy in order to figure out how to apply those talents in retirement. If you have strong organizational skills, you can help in coordinating a project in your neighborhood. If you’re a good
communicator, you could publish a community newsletter.
If you are wondering about your own life expectancy, there are several longevity calculators available online, including (1) Living to 100, (2) Blue Zones Vitality Compass, and (3) Blueprint Income. Lifetime expectancy calculators use data to help assess the likelihood of how long you are going to live. These calculators offer no guarantees of accuracy, but they might help with a life expectancy that is more realistic for you.
Retirement planning is not just worrying about saving enough money. We must envision a long life. We cannot do what our parents did, and we must consider more than just staying out of a nursing home. If you are getting close to retirement and you don’t know what you’re going to do, treat it as a worrying sign. Don’t assume it’s going to be oaky and that it is all going to work out. Figure it out now before leaving your job so you don’t waste time during your hard-earned retirement years with disappointment and boredom.
Get busy.
Remember, the biggest risk of failure in retirement is setting the bar too low.
Nancy E. Bowes, CFP®, is Vice President – Wealth Advisor, CNB Wealth Management, Canandaigua National Bank & Trust Company. She can be reached at (585) 419-0670 x50673 or by email at NBowes@ cnbank.com.
