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Definition Of Retirement Changes For Americans
Times Record
July 26, 2004
Retire (verb): 1) to withdraw, as for rest or seclusion 2) to move back or away; recede 3) to withdraw from one's occupation, business or office; stop working 4) to fall back or retreat, as from battle.
What is your personal definition or vision of retirement?
It may not square with any of the above definitions, but one thing is for sure, the definition is changing for most Americans. Baby boomers who make up almost one-third of the U.S. population are turning 50 at the rate of 10,000 a day. This demographical onslaught is just one factor that will continue to change the paradigm of retirement.
The June 14 issue of U.S. News & World Report defined the emerging vision of retirement as plainly as I have encountered in the following excerpt:
"Retirement as we know it, is dead," said Ken Dychtwald, president of the consulting firm Age Wave and author of many books on baby boomers and aging. "It's no longer an end, it's a turning point. A chance to take a break and then reinvent yourself. Retirement is morphing into a rich and enriching third act of work, education and leisure. It still takes a good deal of money and planning to pull it off. But, as the boomers are about to prove, there is much more to having a life later in life than that."
I like that definition so much that I am going to morph from retirement planning to "morph planning."
I had written in an earlier column in this very publication that "Retirement today should be about retiring TO something, not FROM something."
The new and changing paradigm of retirement or morphing mandates that we think of that stage of life as a turning point, an exciting destination, an opportunity to reinvent.
In an effort to jump-start your creative thinking about your retirement or morph years, let's take a look at a few nontraditional morph destinations and lifestyles.
All of these have been featured in recent published articles on retirement.
. Winfield Airpark in Altus. (www.winfieldairpark.com). This is a "fly-in" community featuring a 2,600-foot Bermuda grass runway where residents can taxi their airplane right to their front door.
. Las Vegas. The relocation guide on the Web site for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce touts the "most reasonable housing prices in the country," low property taxes, no state income tax as well as an abundance of health-care facilities and social service agencies.
Being from a state where the state bird could be the mosquito, I find the following line in their pitch amusing - "Gardening, entertaining and just plain lounging on the patio are all enhanced by the absence of annoying insects like mosquitoes."
. Wyoming. According to the census projections, by 2020 about 40 percent of state residents will be older than 60, making it the oldest population in the country, out-stripping even Florida.
Factors mentioned as driving the influx of retirees are natural beauty, affordability (low property and sales tax as well as no state income tax) and sense of community. As Wyoming Gov. David Freudenthal says - "People don't stop living anymore when they retire."
. Fayetteville. The July 20 issue of The AARP Magazine rated Fayetteville No. 5 on its list of "The 15 best places to reinvent your life."
Among other factors, AARP cited the low unemployment, natural beauty, low crime and that the "University of Arkansas fosters an appealing intellectual microclimate."
. Del Webb Active Adult Communities, (www.delwebb.com) a part of multibillion-dollar builder Pulte homes (PHM).
Del Webb claims to be the leader in building homes for the "active adult." The company, which has communities in at least a dozen states, defines an active adult community as "an age-restricted community that typically requires at least one resident to be age 55 or better and restricts anyone under age 19 from being a permanent resident."
One of Del Webb's newest communities, Corte Bella, northwest of Phoenix, "offers the benefits and amenities of country club living without the stuffy attitude often associated with country clubs.
"Corte Bella is a country club where friendship matters more than business connections, and social gatherings aren't about high society."
What do your retirement or morph years look like in your mind's eye?
Does your vision include an active lifestyle, staying close to family, volunteering, continuing to work? The possibilities to morph or reinvent ourselves are exciting but also challenging. Any worthwhile challenge requires advance planning.
Begin by dreaming, evaluating and investigating. Happy morphing!
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