Retired? Yes. Relevant? Yes.

By Karen and Erica

Retired, and wondering why your aren’t enjoying life more, now that you are able to do anything you want to do–so long as you are playing golf or traveling or working on a hobby? 

It’s not you. It’s retirement.

For many, how retirement is done has not changed for almost 100 years. It can be hard to envision a rewarding retirement that will engage you for the next decades if so few people are doing it. But that’s why the times we live in are so exciting. If we can change our own mindsets, and those of everyone else, by demonstrating that our decades of work make us incredibly valuable to the wider world, we can make a new vision of retirement come alive. For everyone.

Retirement in the United States was invented in the 1950s. Back then, life expectancy was shorter, so the timespan of retirement was much shorter–a few years. Most retirees were men, many of whom had toiled for many years at hard physical jobs, and many had served in two world wars..These men were glad to enjoy some hard earned leisure with wives who were also tired from years of work in the home and little time off.  

Everything has changed, especially for us. We are the first large cohort of women who worked until retirement, mostly at knowledge jobs that do not require physical labor. Many of us faced obstacles when we entered the workforce, and had to fight to stay in jobs we wanted. We loved what we did, we loved being players in the wider world, we loved our work communities, we loved the purpose our jobs gave us. And of course we loved our paychecks. We do not want to give all of that up just because our careers have ended.

But retirement has not changed from the time it was invented decades ago.

Unfortunately, too many still cling to an outdated traditional view of retirement, where one ceases work and becomes 100% reliant on retirement savings to eke out some sort of restrained, linear existence. This view evolved from the 1950s and 1960s when retirement was defined more by the formulas and social norms of Social Security, pensions, and Medicare, but it is just not so today. 

The traditional picture of retirement painted with a monotone brush of leisure and dependence doesn’t capture the vibrant kaleidoscope of possibilities it truly represents.  It’s time to dismantle these outdated notions and embrace a more dynamic view of what retirement can be.

Now that we are retired, not always voluntarily, we surely want to have fun. But we also want to stay in the world, to do meaningful things, to serve other people or principles. Our runway is long—often thirty years or more. So we need something different from what was satisfying many decades ago for people living different lives.

How do we figure that out?

Retirement books don’t help much. Many concern finances. That is a critical part of retirement—one reason we are glad we worked til we retired is because doing so gave us independence—but finances need to be considered long before you retire. Other books concern strategies for filling your day so you won’t be bored. Also critical, of course, but not being bored is a rather low standard. 

We want more than that. We want to be players for these next decades. Not like we were—no need to be starting as interns and then climbing ladders—unless it’s the bottom of some fabulous new thing so everyone is at the bottom. No–we are players because of our unique assets–assets that can be acquired only by decades of experience. Assets that are valuable to the wider world. Players for whom new jobs are invented so we can work in ways that make sense. No more 24/7. Jobs where our experience is the point.

Some see this future.

Retirement today is empowerment.  Today, retirement means having the financial freedom to make choices that can lead to greater life satisfaction.  Financial freedom does not necessarily mean you have enough resources to sail off into the sunset, or that you want to sail off into the sunset, but rather that you have enough resources to yield flexibility to make choices to improve your life’s satisfaction now.  Tomorrow is not promised.     

Retirement can be a transition.  Retirement doesn’t have to be considered a complete withdrawal from engagement with the world.  It can be a shift in how we engage, reducing hours to part-time, shifting work to more virtual hours, prioritizing passion projects, or starting a venture fueled by accumulated wisdom and experience.  The possibilities are as diverse as the individuals.

We want more people to share that vision–for our benefit, and also for the benefit of everyone else.

How do we get there? It is not going to be easy, because new ideas never are. Employers need to be imaginative when they design engagement for us. We need to be imaginative when we offer ourselves to organizations that need us. But if we all put our minds to it, we can build a future for retired career women that will include the best parts of our jobs, and will allow us to offer younger people tips and tricks that only we know.

Retirement books don’t talk about keeping you relevant to the wider world. But if that is what you want, let’s put our brains to work and come up with something new and different and fantastic. 

We can do it if we work together.