The Golden Years

Here is a fact: Whereas we all know what it is to be young, only the old know what it is to be old.

You can look back on your youth, but it is impossible to know what it will feel like to be 75 years old until you arrive there.

“The Golden Years!” Yeah, right! There’s no greater line of bull ever thrown than that! I heard one guy say, “The only thing golden about my retirement is my pee.”

We (my wife and I) talk to a lot of old people. Not to mention that all of our siblings are older, and many of them are already dead.

The point is, we have a lot of experience with ‘old’. So it’s easy to take in “what being old means” and “what being old is like” without merely expressing our own sentiments about it.

Young / Old — You Only Get To Do Them Once!

We did ‘the young’ part, and now it’s our time to be old! A special time of reminiscing, learning, pondering, and for ME…a special time for communicating what I’ve learned to you!

Lesson #1 — EVERY aging experience is as unique as the individuals themselves.

Don’t Listen To The Hype!

If you’re talking to one of those investment bankers or retirement specialists, they are going to tell you how to “retire in style.”

If you worked a good, hard-working life, raising children, putting them through school, or just helping them to get established in life, then you know that you will not, and/or do not, have the millions stashed that will put you on a yacht or in a private villa in Italy!

If I recall correctly, she and I were both in our mid-fifties when we began planning. The children all appeared to be settled, and our finances were improving. So, it seemed to be the right time to prepare for retirement.

Then came the day of the “BIG REVEAL.” The day our financial planner pulled out the charts showing that we should plan to have at least $1.5 million by the time we retire to maintain our current lifestyle and travel, and to provide for LONG-TERM CARE!

We (she and I) just laughed and laughed.

After nearly fifty years in the workforce, we had amassed about $100K in a 401K, give or take a little. Not quite enough for a yacht, or even a visit to someone else’s island.

Speaking pragmatically, and barring any unforeseen disasters, we hoped that, along with Social Security, we could survive on about $ 4,000-$ 5,000 per month.

What Can I Offer As A Retiree?

Many retirees retain—and often possess in greater measure—judgment, experience, memory, perspective, patience, and most importantly, freedom to speak without protecting a career.

A career is always a self-indulgent effort. It’s the time when we amass our wealth, build our home, raise our family, and be productive.

Many retirees can and do contribute through family mentorship, caregiving, volunteering, creating, questioning, or simply helping others feel less alone.

Which is what I refer to as: Self-employed usefulness. The retiree invents unpaid duties to replace an occupation that once confirmed his/her value.

And yet, to me there is something insulting in the expectation of:

“Now that your economically productive years are over, you can give away your remaining time so that you may continue to feel worthy.“

Making Yourself Feel Better

Volunteer, mentor, babysitting, caregiving, writing, whatever it is, stay busy to occupy yourself.

In exchange, although some appreciation will be shown, the reward is internal, the self-consolation that he or she has not yet become completely superfluous.

Not truly useful, per se, but to some small degree, because the intangible reward is only as great as the effort given to the task.

“There is more happiness in giving, than in receiving.”

But the question remains: Are retirees obligated to give away their time, their remaining life, without expectation of a reward greater than the gratification of those to whom they gave it?

Must A Retiree Remain Productive?

(See: NIH (National Library of Medicine)

Once the world no longer needs what I can produce, what evidence remains that my being here matters?

Touché; it is difficult to challenge — that a person must remain useful to justify their existence. That leaves us with an uncomfortable distinction:

• Productive means generating something the economic or social system values.
• Useful means serving some purpose, however small or temporary.
• Necessary means the purpose cannot be fulfilled without you.
• Valuable means possessing worth that need not depend upon any of the above.

The real injury occurs when society quietly converts those facts into:

Therefore, you no longer matter.

How Do YOU View Life After Retiring?

Personally, I do not accept that a retiree is obligated to donate the remainder of their life to anything.

Again, you can look back on your youth, but it is impossible to know what it will feel like to be 75 years old until you arrive there.

Fifty years of exchanging our time for wages, raising children, maintaining a household, and satisfying everyone else’s demands should have its rewards.

Not to mention the contributions to society, the economy, and to the welfare of others through our taxes and other contributions made along the way. (Such as years of military service.)

Our remaining hours belong to us. We may volunteer, write, mentor, sit silently beside a lake, or do absolutely nothing conventionally “useful.” Because we earned that privilege.

We have no debt to society for continuing to exist.

The Exploitation of Retirees

It is the machinery of society that has set its sights on us. On both our income and our highly valued contributions to their stockholders.

America’s corporations have inserted themselves into the revenue streams of America’s retirees, endeavoring to take back every cent that they can from those who contributed for so long to the monetary machine of America.

Each year, as thousands more Boomers retire, they are exploited by large corporations and private equity firms who own and control ‘everything’ related to retirees.

From manufactured home parks to nursing homes, long-term-care facilities, senior housing, apartments, and so on.

As for those that control the largest share of institutional senior housing in America, these three would almost always top the list: Brookdale Senior Living, Welltower, and Ventas.

Are Retirees Useless?

It is a cruel question to ask — “Are retirees useless?”

And the answer is much harder than the cheerful assurances about volunteering, nurturing grandchildren, etc., would have us believe.

From the perspective of BIG BUSINESS: retirees are a very valuable revenue stream that is maximized through every fiscal year. Their stockholders highly depend on us to pad their retirements!

From a personal perspective: We become useless only if we wish to be. There is always SOMETHING to do, even if it’s nothing more than finding ways to keep corporate America out of your bank account.

Quant à moi, j’apprends le français et j’écris sur mon blog.
Je vous souhaite le meilleur. (Google Translate)