There’s a murmuring doing the rounds mocking those of my generation (mid 60’s) who cannot stop working but who know their children wish they would. They result in announcement of a career end.
But these retirement announcements always promise another act. Not because the people writing them are vainglorious, but because they’ve spent 30 years + in a profession that never really teaches you how to stop.
The article’s from Craig Coben, a writer who’s himself a former global head of equity capital markets at Bank of America. He now takes it easy writing articles for the FT – perhaps he’s evidence of his point, his linked in profile makes him pretty busy!
I know how this feels!
Here is his cute observation on what one of his (former) colleagues is announcing;
A senior investment banker I know recently announced his retirement on LinkedIn. He wrote a thoughtful, graceful post, thanking clients, colleagues and family. He said he had great memories, no regrets and an enduring feeling of purpose and impact from his three decades in the job.
The post didn’t stop there. He went on to list everything he was looking forward to pursuing: private investments, non-executive directorships, charitable endeavours, film projects, wine projects and collaborations in the sectors he was interested in. He promised further updates after the summer. Retirement, it seemed, was going to be pretty hectic.
He likens this kind of post to the Christmas mailer we get announcing the achievement of the family. Each individual achievement of grandparents to new-born are individually noteworthy , but put together the mailer becomes noxious.
Some of us just can’t let go of progression, can’t recognise that slowing down is in itself a target.
This is particularly the problem for America which has found in Biden and Trump a gerontocracy that mocks the Obamas and Kennedys as something in the past rather than role models for the future. There are a lot of very elderly business leaders who unlike Warren Buffets are yet to retire
I write this, being in charge of a mutual company full of people who are refusing to slow down but who are throwing themselves into a project which we hope will lead to a better kind of way of converting pay into pension.
I do not think we are being driven by the prospect of reward so much as by a fear of slowing down! We laugh between ourselves that age is not yet catching up with us. We are redefining our retirement age.
When is the new retirement age? We have a review of our state pension age going on right now. It should be having our children work till they are “threescore years and ten”.
For those not brought up on the bible (almost all of us) the description of threescore years and ten is from the King James translation of the Psalms (Psalm 90:10)
The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
This made sense to us 400 years ago; it made us recognise the limits of our longevity and prepare to meet our maker.
Nowadays, we should be using 7o to normalise not the age to die but to retire. A radical rethink of what we consider our “end game” is needed.
I retired at 58, four years ago, after a successful career as a software engineer, which for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ve hardly touched software since I retired. I have no non-executive directorships. No film projects. No wine projects. I enjoy time without the distractions of work and without deadlines. Days where I can set my own schedule. If the weather is nice, I’m outdoors enjoying it, not watching summer fly by looking out of a window from a desk. If there’s a personal project I want to do then I do it, when I want to and to my own time.
I think there’s a problem that those setting the retirement agenda, forever claiming that retirement should be later and later, are speaking for a vocal, privileged minority that work for themselves and/or love what they do. For the vast majority in this country and globally, work is a way to put food on the table, a roof over our heads, to raise children and to enjoy that part of life that is not work. Work is often a drudge and something to get through. By the time many people get to their 60s, they’ve seen through all the BS of work and working to make someone else rich and have had enough of prostituting their own lives to the god of unnecessary, wasteful, environmentally damaging growth. Every new technical revolution promises more leisure and yet what we get is less interesting work and less personal wealth from that work.
For those of us that took the red pill, retirement is the reward and can’t come soon enough.
Two verses later, Henry, in Psalm 90:12, we’re told “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”.
This seems to me to point in almost the opposite direction from much of the modern rhetoric around “productive ageing.”
Psalm 90 focuses on mortality, not productivity, and is strikingly unsentimental about human life.
Its concern is that our days are limited, and that recognising this should produce wisdom.
mortality → awareness of time → wisdom → an ordered life.
Modern “productive ageing” disputes this.
longer life → opportunities for productivity → continued economic/social contributions → “successful” ageing.
That turns longevity into an obligation (as actuaries are wont to do).
If we’re healthy at 70, 75 or 80, why aren’t we all still working, volunteering, mentoring, exercising, learning, helping to start up businesses, or otherwise contributing?
Psalm 90 doesn’t say that.
It says in effect we have a finite number of days. Learn to use them wisely.
I’m with Peter Wilson on this.