Dayton Morning News

July 10, 2005

 

Some boomers aren't the retiring type

By Jim Dillon

Here's the scene: Three colleagues are driving to lunch when the conversation turns to retirement.

Now, these guys are in their mid-to-late 40s with many productive work years (and college education bills) ahead of them. Yet they've pondered what they're going to do when they're older.

The first guy foresees working in journalism until he drops dead. His alternative is to become one of those leathery old men who sit by the pier and greet the fishermen as they go home.

The second colleague plans to work a few more years, retire, then do nothing but cook and snarl when his kids ask him to baby-sit the grandkids. Of course, this guy could merely be trying to hide a secret desire to become publisher of the New York Times.

The third colleague plans to remain in journalism for another 10 years, then start a new career. Furnace and air-conditioner repair looks promising. So does making wooden signs. Obviously, this guy loves working with tools, even if has no idea how to use them.

This was a fleeting conversation among friends, yet it exemplifies the changing nature of retirement.

Ken Dychtwald, a boomer and one-time hippie turned best-selling author and speaker, has foreseen these changes, which are examined in the July 11 edition of Fortune magazine.

Dychtwald's research shows that 80 percent of boomers want to keep working when they reach retirement age. Not necessarily for money, but a desire to remain engaged and active. Boomers have a hard time sitting still.

But boomers don't want to maintain the status quo, either. More than 40 percent want to rotate between leisure and work, while 56 percent want to start entirely new careers, Dychtwald says. To Dychtwald, that shows the traditional notion of retirement is changing, even though boomers don't know exactly what they want to do as senior citizens.

This uncertainty is a good thing, Dychtwald says.

It will lead boomers into a new stage of life that he calls "middlescence" - a period that offers "rich opportunities for reinvention and exploration," to use Fortune's words.

How big will this movement be?

Dychtwald says 78 million boomers will enter middlescence in the next 20 years. That's a huge number. It means being older and uncertain will be considered hip, much like being being young and cocksure was in the gogo '90s.

All of which makes me feel better about my "retirement." Now all I have to do is make sure my toolbox is full.