F2 NY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
by 2028 there will be 43 million people 55 and
older in the work force — nearly one-quarter
of all workers. Yet even as they age, the word
retirement is becoming less and less clear.
For starters, people have the potential to live
well into their 70s and 80s and beyond,
which often makes a plan of retiring in one’s
60s less necessary or desirable.
“Gone is the traditional vision of retiring,
getting the gold watch and setting off for the
golf course,” said Catherine Collinson, presi-
dent of the nonprofit Transamerica Center
for Retirement Studies. The trend now is to-
ward a much more active retirement, she
says, where work and time for personal pur-
suits or leisure are not mutually exclusive,
and where the transition itself — to “retire-
ment” — is highly personalized.
Eighty-six percent of 5,168 workers across
three generations who participated in an on-
line survey in 2018 conducted by the center
had positive associations with retirement,
citing words like “freedom,” “enjoyment”
and “stress-free.” And although their retire-
ment plans include the expected, like travel,
hobbies and spending more time with
friends and family, they also include work-
ing. In an interview, Ms. Collinson spoke
about how the definition of retirement is
changing and the trends she sees.
The following conversation has been
edited and condensed.How is the vision of life after age 65 chang-
ing for American workers?
Today, people have a very exciting and com-
pelling vision of retirement, a very person-
alized transition. It might involve switching
from full-time to part-time employment,
working in a different capacity, maybe start-
ing a business. In our survey, “What Is ‘Re-
tirement?’ Three Generations Prepare for
Older Age,”80 percent of people plan to con-
tinue working for financial reasons — but 72
percent also want to do so for healthy aging
reasons.
We also see less and less of this “pedal to
the metal” work activity and then a full stop.
Forty-four percent of workers envision a
phased transition into retirement, where
they will reduce work hours and add more
leisure time, or work in a way that is less de-
manding but brings them greater personal
satisfaction.
Our survey also asked about retirement
dreams and 30 percent cited some form of
paid work, with 13 percent pursuing an en-
core career, 13 percent starting a business
and/or 11 percent continuing to work in the
same field.Retirement?
That Idea Is So
Yesterday.
By EILENE ZIMMERMANCatherine Collinson, president of the nonprofit
Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.BRIAN GUIDO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESWhat about those who are part of the gig
economy — self-employed contractors and
entrepreneurs — who do not have corporate
benefits to help sustain them as they get
older? What will retirement look like for this
group?
The whole idea of traditional retirement isn’t
as relevant to the self-employed. They gen-
erally love what they do and it’s a part of who
they are, so they plan to keep doing it as long
as possible. In fact, 68 percent of self-em-
ployed workers we surveyed said they ex-
pect to work past age 65 or do not plan to re-
tire. Being self-employed means they also
have the flexibility in their schedules to dial
up or down as needed; they can work on
their own terms.
In some ways, the self-employed have to
be even more diligent about their savings
because they don’t have corporate benefits,
like life insurance and retirement plan bene-
fits, to fall back on.For those who will be of retirement age
within the next decade, what do you see as
their top concerns?
Several things concern me as a researcher.
More than half of U.S. workers plan to work
past age 65, and when we look at baby
boomers, who are nearing and entering re-
tirement, nearly 70 percent plan to retire af-
ter age 65 or do not plan to retire at all. Plan-
ning not to retire is not a retirement strategy.
When we ask workers what steps they’ve
taken to prepare for working longer, only 56
percent of boomers say they are focused on
staying healthy, less than half say they are
focused on performing well in their current
job and only 40 percent say they are keeping
their job skills up to date. And we all know,
the older we are, the harder it is to find a job.
We aren’t saving enough for retirement,
and because of that I think many workers
will have to continue working whether or not
they want to, as a way to bridge that savings
gap. When we ask workers how much they
have saved in total household retirement ac-
counts, the estimated median among
boomers is $152,000. Trying to stretch
$152,000 across potentially 25 or more years
in retirement is going to be tough.When Jeff Hutchinson, 65, retired two years
ago after four decades with Dominion Ener-
gy in Richmond, Va., he took a gap year to
figure out what he wanted to do.
“I was emotionally ready to go,” said Mr.
Hutchinson, who has adjusted well to life af-
ter work.
His days are full, getting together with
former co-workers for lunch and tackling
the pile of “when I retire projects” stored in
his garage over the years.
And he enjoys helping around the barn
with the half-dozen horses he and his wife,
Mary Beth Donnelly, tend to, along with
keeping the fields and fencing of their 56-
acre Beaverdam, Va., farm in shape.
Mr. Hutchinson knows he’s lucky to have a
lot on his plate. “I tell my friends, don’t let
retirement scare you. So many people are so
worried that they’re not going to have any-
thing to do. You need to plan a little.”
But many retirees do not have a plan. And
for those who encounter retirement earlier
than expected because of a health crisis or
downsizing, facing the new reality can be
rocky.
Isolation and loneliness can emerge. “All
too often the shift to retirement is viewed
narrowly as a vocational one, a move from
working to not working,” said Marc Freed-
man, who leads Encore.org, a nonprofit
group that aims to tap the skills and experi-
ence of people in midlife and beyond.
“Yet something much deeper and more
fundamental is underway,” he said. “It can
be an uncertain, scary time.”
And traversing the emotional realities can
be a solitary journey. “All too often, individu-
als are left to their own devices when it
comes to finding a new sense of purpose in a
post-retirement period that could be as long
as the middle years in duration,” said Mr.
Freedman, author of “How to Live Forever:
The Enduring Power of Connecting the Gen-
erations.” “Many feel like they are all alone
in navigating the new terrain, practically
and emotionally.”
Add in the underlying awareness for
many that there are fewer days ahead than
behind, and this emotional shift becomes
even more weighted, he added. “Time is
more precious. Questions of purpose and
legacy are more prominent. That can sound
depressing, but for many people it is a pow-
erful source of motivation for making the
most of this period.”
The Human Connection
Part of the fear stems from a loss of identity
when people no longer work, according to
Dorian Mintzer, a retirement transition
coach. “Often people don’t recognize the role
that work has played in their life — the struc-
ture it provided, the reason to get up in the
morning, self-esteem, community, camara-
derie. That’s the emotional piece that
catches people unaware,” she said.
Compounding that can be pressure to feel
happy. “Some people aren’t prepared that
there is some grieving to do, and that’s why
they’re feeling sad and depressed when, hey,
this is supposed to be the best time of their
life,” Ms. Mintzer said.
It took a few years for Phyllis Rhoton, 73,
who hired Ms. Mintzer, to realize something
was missing. Ten years ago, because of a
health issue, she retired without much of a
plan from her job as a customer service
agent at the Massachusetts Bay Transporta-
tion Authority.
“For the first couple of years, I took care of
myself. I did a lot of things I couldn’t do when
I was working. I traveled and visited friends
and family. My mother was ill, and I spent a
lot of time taking care of her. Then everyone
started dying — my aunt, my brother, my
mother. My family was dwindling away,”
said Ms. Rhoton, who is single and has no
children.
“That’s part of aging, but I felt like there
was a vacuum. I was just sitting around
watching Netflix all the time, and that’s not
real.”
Working with Ms. Mintzer helped her re-
alize that she missed the human connec-
tion. So Ms. Rhoton, who lives in Medford,
Mass., enrolled in courses at adult educa-
tion centers. She has studied Vietnamese
cooking, public speaking and how to teach
English as a second language, and contin-
ues to sign up for new courses. “I meet new
people, and my mind has become engaged
again,” she said. “It’s fun.”
She also started volunteering, initially
serving meals at a veterans’ shelter. “That
got me out of my funk,” she said. “You’re
working with a whole bunch of volunteers
on projects so you see these people on an
ongoing basis, and you feel like you are a
part of something.”
Now she tutors people learning to speak
English. “I’m both student and teacher at
the same time,” she said. “I learn so much
from them about their culture and customs
and experiences here in this country.”Adjusting to Change
Retiring is a sequence of shifts over time, as
Ms. Rhoton has found. Three substantial
changes take place, said Ken Dychtwald,
founder and chief executive of Age Wave, a
consulting and research company.
“For most of the changes in our lives
there is ritual,” he said. “In high school,
when you contemplated college, you go vis-
it campuses. There’s counseling. When it
comes to retirement, people are basically
told ‘good luck, have a good time.’ ”
The first big change is identity. “Whether
we realize it or not, we have our identity
linked to our work, and the way we describe
ourselves, how we introduce ourselves, and
what we might say if we are sitting next to
someone on a train. Our identity has been
forged and tweaked and shaped by our
work life.”
In addition, relationships change. “When
we asked retirees in a study, conducted by
Merrill Lynch in partnership with Age
Wave, what do you miss the most, way at
the top of the list was the relationships,” Mr.
Dychtwald said. “They didn’t realize how
much they would miss the person whose
desk was next to theirs, or whose office, and
asking about their kids and all of those
things.”
The third shift is activity. “Most of us, un-
til our retirement day, have lived our lives in
a structured lifestyle,” he said. “You retire,
and all of that is dissolved. For some people,
that’s a kind of terror. They feel that they
are in a state of free-fall. Others see it as
freedom.”So often, Mr. Dychtwald said, the focus is
on finances. But, he added, “I think it’s re-
ally a psychological metamorphosis. Dur-
ing this transitional period, some people
still feel unsettled, anxious or bored, but
eventually they realize that ‘I can be fresh. I
can be new.’ ”Getting Involved
Three years ago, Lester Strong, then 67, re-
tired from a large nonprofit in Washington,
where his work focused on older adults tu-
toring and mentoring elementary school
children. “I was feeling stale,” Mr. Strong
said. “I wasn’t growing and developing, so I
decided it was time to retire. I didn’t know if
I was going to be sitting around the house in
my slippers, but I knew I needed to keep
searching.”
What he didn’t expect, he said, was the
period of wandering around that followed,
as he tried to sort out what he wanted to do.
Then Mr. Strong and his wife, Patrice, went
to a police community forum in Kingston,
N.Y., where they now live.
There had been an incident in the city in-
volving the use of force by police against a
black man and the community was upset.
The police were trying to explain what was
going on, and people were talking past each
other, recalled Mr. Strong. “I thought maybe
there is something I can do here with my
past experience and as an African-Ameri-
can.”
He decided to get involved. “I wanted to
give back in a more hands-on way. I felt in
my heart of hearts that I was a teacher. I had
even majored in education in college, but
had never pursued it.”
In January, he started a pilot program,
The Peaceful Guardians Project. The initia-
tive links Kingston City School District mid-
dle-school students with the Kingston Po-
lice Department to bridge the gap between
local youth and law enforcement. Police of-
ficers and young people form teams and
work on activities that foster understand-
ing, empathy and trust. The goal is to learn
to see a situation through other eyes.
“I still don’t know exactly where I’m go-
ing, or what it will be like, but I’ve started,”
Mr. Strong said. “I have something to say,
something to offer, and this is something I
can do that will bring me the enthusiasm.”
For now, Mr. Strong has decided that his
job is to pay attention and keep asking ‘how
can I help?, how can I help make things bet-
ter?’ “I get up every morning to do some-
thing new and make a difference,” he said.After Work, What’s Next?
For some, emotional challenges come
with finding a new purpose.
By KERRY HANNONTop, Jeff Hutchinson and
his wife, Mary Beth
Donnelly, hold Tater Tot
on their Virginia farm.
Hutchinson retired in
2017 and keeps busy
meeting with friends and
working on home
projects. Bottom, Lester
Strong at the Center for
Creative Education in
Kingston, N.Y. “I have
something to say,
something to offer, and
this is something I can do
that will bring me the
enthusiasm.”‘When it comes to
retirement, people
are basically told
‘good luck.’’
JULIA RENDLEMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESMEREDITH HEUER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESMore from the interview with Catherine
Collinson is available at
nytimes.com/spotlight/the-new-retirementONLINE:Q. AND A.