Retirement
11/01/14 05:46
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines retirement as “withdrawal from one’s position or occupation or from active working life.” It falls short of defining retirement as the point where a person stops employment completely. There are a lot of different factors that can influence retirement, chief among them being physical illness and disability. The concept is quite a bit more complex in contemporary society.
To begin, retirement is a relatively recent idea. For most of the history of humans on this planet, life expectancies were relatively short. People reached adulthood and began doing the tasks required for survival. They continued those tasks until they died. In the event that a person was injured or had a severe illness resulting in a disability, the time until death was quite short. If they couldn’t gather food, they starved. End of story. Some communities developed capacity to care for those who couldn’t care for themselves, but those abilities were limited, especially for those living in harsh climates. The result was that when one became old and infirm, one soon died.
The rise of complex economies, where people work for wages and the wages are exchanged for commodities is a relatively recent development in human societies. The concept of retirement from work is even more recent. In the late 19th and 20th centuries the concept of retirement with support from the wider community was introduced. Pensions were created to provide income for retired persons. Wikipedia reports that Germany was the first country to introduce a standardized retirement in 1889.
After the Great Depression, the United States developed the Social Security Act to provide support to aging and disabled persons who are not able to work. I am not certain of the original intention of those who created the program, but I’m sure that their concepts and motivations were complex. The system we have in place now is a tax assessed against the wages of active workers that supports financial assistance to those who are no longer working. There is a portion of the system that supports those whose disabilities prevent them from earning a living wage and support for minor children of workers who die prematurely.
Retirement has another important function in the economy. It encourages experienced workers to move out of the work force and creates jobs for young people entering employment.
Our system in the United States functioned fairly well for one or two generations. After the Great Depression, those who were young adults received great financial support from the government in the form of generous GI benefits for those who served in World War II and a functioning Social Security system. Most of the World War II generation were able to retire between the ages of 62 and 65 and with the combined resources of personal savings, investment income and Social Security were able to live in reasonable comfort. Many of them lived 25 to 30 years beyond retirement.
It is still possible for people to retire, but the concept of universal retirement is being questioned in contemporary society. One of the factors is the high cost of health care and the reality that the vast majority of all health care consumption in our country is invested in end-of-life care. To put it simply, it is incredibly expensive to die in the United States today. The fear of high medical bills can be a big factor in retirement.
The design of the Social Security system did not take into account the rises and falls in population levels. Because the birth rate was high at the time that the system was established it assumed that the number of people actively working would always exceed the number of people who are retired. Throw in long life expectancy and mix that with a decrease in family size and the so called “Baby Boom” generation threatens to overwhelm and bankrupt the system.
Although you would hardly come to this conclusion by looking at the web sites devoted to retirement, money is only one of the factors involved in decisions about retirement. People work for income, to be sure, but they also work for a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of contributing to society and a way to remain actively engaged with others.
There are a lot of people who are “semi-retired” or “partially retired” these days. And age seems to be only one of the factors that go with the label “retired.” I have a neighbor who is in his mid-forties who introduces himself as retired from the United States Marie Corps. He considers himself to be retired only in the sense that he draws benefits earned from 20 years of military service. He is not interested in having no job at all. He plans to work for many more years before he stops working for a salary. Last night we were at dinner with friends, one of whom is in his early 50’s and is eagerly looking forward to retirement this spring. His financial circumstances are different from those of my neighbor, but it seems unlikely that the things he speaks most excitedly about right now - golfing trips, mountain bike adventures, and the like - will take up all of his time when he isn’t working for a salary. Other close friends retired at a comparatively early age and have developed a very full and busy life with a lot of volunteer activities and personally doing a lot of work that others might hire done. To describe any of these people as “not working” would be inaccurate. They may have figured out how to earn income from investments, live frugally off if savings, draw pensions from years of honorable service, or in other ways have a different financial situation than wage earners, but they continue to engage in meaningful work.
It is clear that we are moving toward a future where there is no single model of life for aging and elderly people. We have many options, including continuing employment beyond the traditional “age of retirement.” I suspect that our grandchildren will find a common age, such as 65, to be a foreign concept. People won’t think in terms of a standard age for the end of their employment.
In the meantime, I get letters every day urging me to plan for retirement. I am invited to pre-retirement seminars. I am urged to engage in retirement planning and recommit to retirement goals. I receive retirement money guides and no small amount of correspondence from people who believe they can manage my money better than I. And in the midst of all of this, I really don’t know what I am going to do. I am fortunate to be in a vocation were there is no “magic” to the age 65, and I belong to a generation whose health means that active employment can continue for many more years. I try to be responsible, but frankly, I am confused.
It is another opportunity to listen and pray carefully to discern God’s call.
To begin, retirement is a relatively recent idea. For most of the history of humans on this planet, life expectancies were relatively short. People reached adulthood and began doing the tasks required for survival. They continued those tasks until they died. In the event that a person was injured or had a severe illness resulting in a disability, the time until death was quite short. If they couldn’t gather food, they starved. End of story. Some communities developed capacity to care for those who couldn’t care for themselves, but those abilities were limited, especially for those living in harsh climates. The result was that when one became old and infirm, one soon died.
The rise of complex economies, where people work for wages and the wages are exchanged for commodities is a relatively recent development in human societies. The concept of retirement from work is even more recent. In the late 19th and 20th centuries the concept of retirement with support from the wider community was introduced. Pensions were created to provide income for retired persons. Wikipedia reports that Germany was the first country to introduce a standardized retirement in 1889.
After the Great Depression, the United States developed the Social Security Act to provide support to aging and disabled persons who are not able to work. I am not certain of the original intention of those who created the program, but I’m sure that their concepts and motivations were complex. The system we have in place now is a tax assessed against the wages of active workers that supports financial assistance to those who are no longer working. There is a portion of the system that supports those whose disabilities prevent them from earning a living wage and support for minor children of workers who die prematurely.
Retirement has another important function in the economy. It encourages experienced workers to move out of the work force and creates jobs for young people entering employment.
Our system in the United States functioned fairly well for one or two generations. After the Great Depression, those who were young adults received great financial support from the government in the form of generous GI benefits for those who served in World War II and a functioning Social Security system. Most of the World War II generation were able to retire between the ages of 62 and 65 and with the combined resources of personal savings, investment income and Social Security were able to live in reasonable comfort. Many of them lived 25 to 30 years beyond retirement.
It is still possible for people to retire, but the concept of universal retirement is being questioned in contemporary society. One of the factors is the high cost of health care and the reality that the vast majority of all health care consumption in our country is invested in end-of-life care. To put it simply, it is incredibly expensive to die in the United States today. The fear of high medical bills can be a big factor in retirement.
The design of the Social Security system did not take into account the rises and falls in population levels. Because the birth rate was high at the time that the system was established it assumed that the number of people actively working would always exceed the number of people who are retired. Throw in long life expectancy and mix that with a decrease in family size and the so called “Baby Boom” generation threatens to overwhelm and bankrupt the system.
Although you would hardly come to this conclusion by looking at the web sites devoted to retirement, money is only one of the factors involved in decisions about retirement. People work for income, to be sure, but they also work for a sense of accomplishment, a feeling of contributing to society and a way to remain actively engaged with others.
There are a lot of people who are “semi-retired” or “partially retired” these days. And age seems to be only one of the factors that go with the label “retired.” I have a neighbor who is in his mid-forties who introduces himself as retired from the United States Marie Corps. He considers himself to be retired only in the sense that he draws benefits earned from 20 years of military service. He is not interested in having no job at all. He plans to work for many more years before he stops working for a salary. Last night we were at dinner with friends, one of whom is in his early 50’s and is eagerly looking forward to retirement this spring. His financial circumstances are different from those of my neighbor, but it seems unlikely that the things he speaks most excitedly about right now - golfing trips, mountain bike adventures, and the like - will take up all of his time when he isn’t working for a salary. Other close friends retired at a comparatively early age and have developed a very full and busy life with a lot of volunteer activities and personally doing a lot of work that others might hire done. To describe any of these people as “not working” would be inaccurate. They may have figured out how to earn income from investments, live frugally off if savings, draw pensions from years of honorable service, or in other ways have a different financial situation than wage earners, but they continue to engage in meaningful work.
It is clear that we are moving toward a future where there is no single model of life for aging and elderly people. We have many options, including continuing employment beyond the traditional “age of retirement.” I suspect that our grandchildren will find a common age, such as 65, to be a foreign concept. People won’t think in terms of a standard age for the end of their employment.
In the meantime, I get letters every day urging me to plan for retirement. I am invited to pre-retirement seminars. I am urged to engage in retirement planning and recommit to retirement goals. I receive retirement money guides and no small amount of correspondence from people who believe they can manage my money better than I. And in the midst of all of this, I really don’t know what I am going to do. I am fortunate to be in a vocation were there is no “magic” to the age 65, and I belong to a generation whose health means that active employment can continue for many more years. I try to be responsible, but frankly, I am confused.
It is another opportunity to listen and pray carefully to discern God’s call.