OK, \u201cPart One\u201d was just an invitation for comments. \u00a0And I spent most of my free time over the weekend writing about other topics.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019d been reading a book called Unretirement<\/i> (subtitled, \u201cHow Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think about Work, Community, and the Good Life\u201d, and authored by Chris Farrell) and recently came across two relevant articles:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Outside Factors Dictate Retirement Age<\/a>\u201d \u2013 an article in the NYT shared by the Center for Retirement Research via twitter, and<\/p>\n \u201cSigns of aging may soon affect financial advisers \u2014 and brokerages<\/a>\u201d at the Chicago Tribune. \u00a0(Click here<\/a> for a link to a google search for an indirect way of viewing the article.)<\/p>\n and I wanted to, first, tell you all about what they have to say, and then, in a later post, give you my own thoughts.<\/p>\n The basic premise of Unretirement is that the new trend is for people to continue working well into late adulthood* and that we should encourage and accelerate that trend for the sake of the American economy and the oldsters themselves.<\/p>\n (* Remember, \u201clate adulthood\u201d = my new term for adults aged 60 \u2013 80, so as to make no presumptions about when or whether they leave paid work. \u00a0I\u2019m experimenting with that term in this post, to see how it works.)<\/p>\n What\u2019s the benefit of working past retirement age? \u00a0Money, for one. \u00a0It solves the worry that late adults won\u2019t have enough money for a suitable retirement, and, by virtue of the FICA taxes from their wages, props up the Social Security funding itself. \u00a0But beyond this, working is, he says, for most people, a Good Thing. \u00a0Sure, retirees may have all manner of plans for pursuing hobbies and the like, but working at a job, whether as a professional or a manual laborer, provides self-worth, opportunities to socialize, and keeps one active.<\/p>\n Farrell is very optimistic about all of this. \u00a0Not for him the fears that late adults lose the mental sharpness for white collar jobs, or the physical capacity for blue collar work. \u00a0Older workers may not learn new things as quickly as their juniors, but they will be able to draw on a great reservoir of experience, and \u00a0employers can make a few simple ergonomic changes to the production line. <\/p>\n But his stories, which he shares liberally throughout the book, and form the basis of his argument much more than hard data, are largely of professionals re-creating themselves in a second career, often self-employed. \u00a0He pulls out a statistic that 1\/3 of American workers are in the \u201ccreative class\u201d (remind me to read about that, as I think it\u2019s mostly a bunch of nonsense), and claims, anecdotally, that later adults have proven themselves to be just as \u201ccreative\u201d as anyone else.<\/p>\n What about the fact that, as things stand, plenty of workers not only are unable to work into traditional retirement years, but find themselves unemployed and involuntarily early-retiring? \u00a0How will there be enough jobs for late adults to not only continue working up to traditional retirement age, but beyond that point?<\/p>\n Here Farrell gives two contradictory answers: \u00a0first, he says, essentially, \u201cof course there will be enough jobs for everyone because, after all, there were enough jobs for women when they began entering the workforce\u201d (though it seems to me that Megan McArdle once wrote a piece referencing another economist who said that the stagnation in men\u2019s wages could be tied to women\u2019s entry into the workforce, though there\u2019s so much going on that you can\u2019t isolate a single variable), but he also gives the \u201cif we can send a man to the moon\u201d answer, or, rather, the Volker variant: \u00a0\u201cwhen Volker made it his goal to end the scourge of inflation, people said it couldn\u2019t be done; so, in the same way, we can achieve full employment if only we try hard enough.\u201d<\/p>\n On top of that, there are other problems that will need to be fixed: \u00a0age discrimination, most notably. \u00a0And he proposes a few policy changes: \u00a0a universal savings program (e.g., Australia) that would provide portability and encourage career mobility (in contrast to DB plans \u2013 which are a moot point now anyway). \u00a0He cheerleads for Obamacare, for eliminating \u201cjob lock\u201d and making health insurance easier to obtain for the self-employed. \u00a0He suggests that, to encourage delayed Social Security benefits and continued work, a lump sum option for the value of the deferred benefit be available. \u00a0 And he proposes that the 401(k)\/IRA minimum distribution rules be delayed or eliminated.<\/p>\n He also has a significant section on the history of retirement, writing that, in the days before Social Security and pensions, the lucky ones worked \u2019til they died, or had family to care for them, or had the \u201cpension\u201d of a farm they could pass down contingent on being taken care of; the unlucky ones consigned to almshouses, living out their final days in penury, with the company of the mentally ill.<\/p>\n You won\u2019t be surprised to hear that I think he\u2019s far too optimistic. \u00a0Not that I disagree with the idea of working to a later age, or with the value of working, in general. \u00a0But it is a difficult thing to reinvent yourself, and unless we reach the point of a true labor shortage (which is always predicted, particularly as grounds for bringing in immigrants, but never happens), employers aren\u2019t going to be any more interested in providing workplace flexibility for \u201ctraditional\u201d jobs than in the past. \u00a0Sure, maybe you could work half-time, and maybe jobs which are seasonal, hiring people year-round but alternating between times when they\u2019re a bit bored and other times when they work their tails off, might want to hire late adults as supplemental workers during the busy season, like tax season, for instance. \u00a0But what many late adults want is the ability to take more vacation time, go visit grandchildren who live out-of-town, and employers aren\u2019t interested in employees who won\u2019t predictably show up for work.<\/p>\n Besides which, he is also too optimistic about the ability of individuals to work well into late adulthood. \u00a0Maybe he really, when it comes down to it, only perceives his proposal of \u201cunretirement\u201d as working beyond an \u201cearly retirement age\u201d or maybe he considers individuals who simply aren\u2019t able to keep working any longer to be in the minority.<\/p>\n The second of the two articles focuses on a specific industry, financial advising, and, rather than supporting the concept of \u201cunretirement\u201d or suggesting that financial advisors could scale back by, for instance, offering their services to middle-class families, as Farrell says, voices concern that brokerage firms face risks, as the industry ages, of \u201cerrors in client accounts because of the declining mental skills of financial advisers.\u201d <\/p>\n As an adviser ages, he or she is more likely to have senior moments, including forgetting to put in a sell order, misunderstanding the number of shares asked to be bought or sold, or getting confused about clients\u2019 investment goals, says Chicago securities lawyer Andrew Stoltmann.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Yeah, we know this \u2014 these sorts of problems were exactly what caused my dad to fail to do his taxes for multiple years, and that was before his head injury.)<\/p>\n And the first of the articles, from the New York Times, starts with the fact that you may well intend to retire at a late age, but may find yourself obliged to retire earlier for health reasons. \u00a0Beyond that, people with family histories of dying early or those who are in poor health themselves may choose to retire early, to avoid \u201cmissing out on\u201d the retirement years.<\/p>\n Now, here\u2019s the annoying thing. \u00a0I saved this link a couple days ago, and in the meantime, hit my 10 article limit at the Times, so I have to go on memory \u2014 so forgive me if I don\u2019t get this entirely right \u2014<\/p>\n but the article seemed to imply (a) that you could reasonably choose to retire with a lower level of assets if you\u2019re pretty sure you\u2019re going to die early (a pretty risky strategy, if you ask me \u2014 though the individual they quoted could, conceiveably, have been thinking of a decision between a higher and a lower, but still acceptable, living standard), and (b) that you have a \u201cright\u201d to a given number of years of postretirement leisure, and it\u2019s \u201cunfair\u201d to be unable to enjoy them. <\/p>\n And that is really a direction we\u2019ve moved towards. \u00a0Does it make sense? \u00a0Of course, anyone who has saved dilligently indeed has the \u201cright\u201d to the leisure they\u2019ve earned. \u00a0But is the purpose of retirement programs, and government safety-net programs, to provide individuals with a given quantity of leisure time at the end of their lives, not just to provide for them after they lose the ability to support themselves with paid work?<\/p>\n Inquiring minds want to know.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" OK, \u201cPart One\u201d was just an invitation for comments. \u00a0And I spent most of my free time over the weekend writing about other topics. But I\u2019d been reading a book called Unretirement (subtitled, \u201cHow Baby Boomers are Changing the Way We Think about Work, Community, and the Good Life\u201d, and authored by Chris Farrell) and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[450],"tags":[25,87],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actuarial","tag-retirement","tag-retirement-age"],"yoast_head":"\n