Retirement is commonly known as the end of your career and the beginning of a new life of leisure. But is there another way to move into this new phase of life?
A way to remain relevant as an individual, to expand your knowledge and to continue to have an impact on the world?
Of course. Join the anti-retirement movement by becoming a Resolutionist. Choosing to thrive at this stage of life, with purpose and intention, will inspire you and those around you to embrace each and every day to the fullest.
Looking for a place to retire? Try our Where Should I Retire tool
According to the Stanford University Center for Longevity, in less than a century, average life expectancy in the developed world has increased by nearly 30 years, with many of those years coming in what we traditionally thought of as retirement.
What does this mean? It means that you could spend as many years “post career” as you did fully employed. It means that retirement planning, which has normally been focused on making sure that you don’t exhaust your financial resources, needs to be replaced with longevity planning, so you can design a plan to use all of this newfound extra time.
How we plan for retirement is dictated by how we define retirement. Is it a time to fade away or is it a time to engage in your passions? Is it a time of peaceful solitude or a time to have new adventures? Is it a time to watch your hard-earned pennies or a time to apply your financial resources to travel, start a business, be charitable, or make your lifelong dreams come true? One thing is for certain: This is not your parents’ retirement.
The generation that is considering retirement today has always had a lot to say, and the fact that we are entering this new stage of life is unlikely to change that behavior. The concept of “retirement” signifying a period where we slow down and take a back seat to what is going on around us is fast becoming outdated, as this generation has consistently defied norms. It is a cohort that has changed cultural, social and corporate mores during their lives and there is no reason to accept an outdated narrative about your retirement years. Instead, we look forward to these years as Resolutionists, continuing to live fulfilled and interesting lives.
Reaching retirement age once meant leaving the workforce to relax, recline and recede, but today’s population finds themselves at the precipice of retirement and are healthy, energized and interested in life’s many dimensions. Retirement is no longer a story of old age. It is a story of long life.
It is the dawning of the anti-retirement movement.
Many Resolutionists are leaving the full-time workforce and starting their own businesses. While these new businesses come in all shapes and sizes, we have seen common themes in a majority of the companies. One of the key themes is that a passion is fulfilled by this new activity. As an example, dog walking, pet-sitting and pet grooming businesses have cropped up as many of our members are passionate about animals.
Others who love cooking and baking are catering, becoming personal chefs, starting a bakery or founding an online sweet shop. Many with enthusiasm for crafts started businesses selling knitwear, restoring furniture or creating all kinds of art, including sculpture, paintings and ceramics.
Other than turning passion into a business, individuals are using the skills they learned during their careers to make money, barter or offset costs. These businesses tend to be more lifestyle oriented and don’t consume the copious hours that our careers demanded. Most do not require offices and are run out of the owners’ homes and allow a work-life balance. Examples of these are corporate adviser, life coach, consulting, tax advice and preparation, investment advice or navigating the myriad systems of Medicare and Social Security.
Being anti-retirement doesn’t mean we intend to keep our nose to the proverbial grindstone. It means that we can move from one invigorating chapter to another by changing the model for ourselves and those who follow. We are resolving to do it our way.
But it isn’t always easy. Your career provided you with structure, goals and people who relied on you and gave you the feeling of relevance that we all desire. Now it is up to you to find your own path, develop your personal framework and find new ways to measure your outcomes.
We have navigated through the transition phase from accomplished executive to successfully retired Resolutionist. Along the way we have developed and tested a series of Resolutions that can be useful tools as your life shifts from “being in the workforce” to being free and in control of your own destiny. In the coming months we will share our story along with the tools that can be applied to heighten your happiness and fulfillment in this stage of life. Come along on the journey with us. You will be glad that you did.
Welcome to the anti-retirement movement.
Patti and Milledge Hart, co-authors of The Resolutionist: Welcome to the Anti-Retirement Movement (www.antiretirement.com), spent more than 30 years as executive leaders in numerous technology and investment banking businesses. Today, in what they refer to as the “Resolutionist”—rather than retirement—phase of their lives, they are applying their resources and skills in new ways to advance philanthropic and corporate activities around the globe.