Retirement Planning

Hi Leslie,
 
Here are a couple of quick responses to our conversation with Doug.
 
First, he’s a good listener. We were able to raise the points we wanted to raise.
 
On retirement, his written questions embraced the full range of options: work till you drop, retire early, and everything in between. On the phone a stayed with a more conventional view: don’t sit on the porch, but give yourself freedom to do as you like. Here are two problems with the conventional view that go beyond the common question: are you saving enough now to retire when you want to?
 
First, asking that question and acting on it makes you look forward to retirement, even if you like your job. It’s a way the future has of projecting itself on the present. Let’s say you’re involved in an interesting project. You start to plan your vacation to St. John – a reward for finishing the big project. You think about what you want to do there, you remember how great it was last time you went. Suddenly you’re not so interested in your project anymore. You just want to be on the beach!
 
The same thing can happen if you plan for retirement. The difference is that you plan years and years ahead to make sure you’re ready when the time comes. The distraction affects your whole working life! A job that you might like if you let yourself get involved in it becomes a bore because your mind is elsewhere. You just check the balance in your 401(k) to see how many more years you have to put up with your job. The effects of retirement planning become insidious because the future projects on the present.
 
Even tougher to handle is your place in the social organism when you leave the regular work force. You already encountered that after you sold the Olin Center: “You’re retired now, you have a lot of time on your hands: won’t you join me for lunch?” This psychology holds in spades for a man who retires from a company at age sixty-five. It doesn’t matter what people say to you. It doesn’t matter whether or not you sit on the porch. Your whole place in society changes radically. You are not important anymore, not needed every day, not in touch with your colleagues. Your identity changes. That’s why my dad wants to keep his office at the law firm, even though he doesn’t want to do any more legal work: “I’m an attorney – that’s who I am.”
 
Yet there’s no getting around it. At a certain point, your colleagues expect you to leave. At that point, you need to have a plan for what comes next that doesn’t leave you feeling adrift. My conviction is that focusing on the balance in your 401(k) makes it much more difficult to focus on the plans that matter. When you concentrate on how much you have to save, your energy does not go toward what matters the most: how will you use your time? What do I have to do before retirement to prepare for what I want to do later? You can sign up for an Elder Hostel trip without much planning. You can volunteer somewhere without much notice. Doing something you really want to do, where you contribute in a way that’s important to you, can take much more energy and preparation.
 
Enough for now!
 
Steve