Worrying About Retirement
I’ll dump this little post that terrified me this week into this quiet weekend. A woman writes about her inability to get another job after being out of work for two years. It bookends an article that I read months ago about professional decline. The twins moving into a different stage of life has clearly jump started thoughts on my next stage of life where we’re moving towards retirement.
Let me be honest: I have zero plans to ever retire. I mean, yes, I am saving for retirement while simultaneously trying to figure out whether I’m doing this well or awful at it. (I think I’m awful at it.) But I don’t want to retire. I am terrified of retirement and losing that daily purpose. I’m not someone who is great with down time. I don’t long for days off of work. I really enjoy what I do, and my best days are the ones where I’m ticking items off the to-do list left and right. I need the structure of work.
But according to all of these articles, one day people will likely make me retire. Unlike the guy in the second article, my feelings aren’t tied to career glory. I’m not looking to do something different and incredible. I just want to keep doing my job. It’s about wanting my structure and having my structure remain strong and stable. Not a professional folly but a professional building with a foundation and four walls and the ability to hold up a roof.
This is just me fretting. I’m reading about retirement plans and worrying about the economy and wondering about the future. Don’t mind me — I’m just having a run-of-the-mill, midlife crisis.
10 comments
Yeah, well…there are some professions from which people need to retire (think cops and firefighters), some professions from which people probably should retire (like my job, where vision changes can have a large effect), and some professions where retirement is completely optional. So, you’re really just preparing for a time when you don’t want to work in the same place and/or have some sort of physical issue that prevents you from fulfilling your duties. In other words, keep preparing but don’t think about it as preparing to retire (as a goal). Think of it as preparing for when you can’t or don’t want to work anymore (as a failsafe).
I’m all for rolling with life’s journey – I’ve certainly seen people change course or start to ease back as they see fit – but ageism bothers me. We’re madly trying to develop all this technology to help us live more actively into our later years – our culture needs to keep pace.
I’ve been a state employee since I was 22, meaning that technically i’ll have 30 years in at 52 although I won’t actually be able to retire at that point. It’s scary out there. I plan to work as long as I want to and can. I don’t want to work forever or more importantly have to work forever, but I also understand how quickly things can change. Perhaps I am naive, but I don’t get ageism. If someone has the right skills but is older, why should that matter??? One certainty: nothing is easy any longer (if ever).
I cannot wait to retire. I’ve been a public employee almost my whole career so I will have a good pension at 55. And we’ve been saving very well for retirement. My fear is trump is going to ruin the economy and we’ll have another Great Recession and our 457/401/529 accounts will tank.
I will likely work for a non profit in my dream area or pro bono for 5-10 years after I retire. I want to spend more time with my kids, travel more, and there are so many projects and thing I want to do while I still can. I could also teach part time.
I see rumpled old lawyers in court and I’m like why are you here? Didn’t you plan well financially? (They’re not doing death penalty or other types of cases where I could see someone continuing bc it’s their passion. They’re doing boring run of the mill stuff.)
My mom just retired at 72. She had said for many years that she’d probably die in the classroom… but her pension is set up such that at age 72 she gets no benefit at all from another year of work. She makes the same whether working or not, so she might as well not work.
Retirement plans are good things to have! My DH’s job is super unstable so we’ve likely oversaved just in case.
I’m the opposite of you: I would retire today, if I were in a financial position to do so. I will be 50 years old in a little more than two years, and the grind of full-time work in a demanding profession is really getting to me.
My current goal is retire by age 65 at the latest. Just hoping to live that long, and in decent health!
That stuff terrifies me too.
Except for being made to retire by other people. It seems like you (I) could always find something to do – writing or painting or volunteering… If you have the desire and capacity, why not just keep going?
I am ready to retire but I am not ready to stop having purpose or structure. That is, I do the work I do pretty much just for money and health insurance. But if I did not have those constraints, I would be volunteering in literacy programs and fostering cats.
I don’t understand people who are in regular corporate jobs (not curing cancer, not fighting the death penalty) who say they don’t know what they would do when they retire. It’s not like writing press releases or cut sheets is exactly a life of high purpose! Find a reason to live, people!
Nicoleandmaggie brings up a good question: if you were to make the same whether working or not, would you still work?
I probably would dabble (like you, I like what I do), but not WORK. I would love to have the work but also the freedom to integrate it in with the rest of my life.
I am, by all appearances, retired. I don’t really want to be retired, but after quitting my roles some years ago to take a six-month trip with my husband, I’ve found it much harder to get back into the workforce. Like it or not, it’s a lot harder to do in our 50s, and as women. Though to be honest, I haven’t been desperate in looking for a role. I have too many other things keeping my busy and inspired. Like writing a Microblog Mondays post which I need to do instead of commenting on blogs! lol