What is Retirement?
The term and concept of retirement came about in the early industrial revolution where large manufacturers promised to take care of their workers by putting aside some money for them throughout their working lives, so they could ‘retire’ or ‘rest’ and live out their golden years. In 2020 however, this notion is outdated and the ability to retire is being threatened by changing government regulations about age, asset inclusions or exclusions, tax rates on retirement savings and so much more.
As we are now in our fifties, we don’t feel, mostly, like we thought we were going to when we were in our twenties. Back then we were pretty sure we were going to be exhausted and wanting to never work again and retire somewhere on a beach with a good book – at least for me that is my ideal.
But now we’re here, again at least for me, I still have a lot of energy and things I want to achieve and the notion of stopping ‘work’ is not attractive to me at all. It could be because I’ve always done work outside of any ‘job’ I’ve held and I honestly can’t see myself stopping that any time soon. However, retiring from a job may be forced upon me, but it will be at a much later stage in life than we thought when we first started working.
Retirement age in Australia now sits around 70. The age to access the retirement pension has now been raised officially to 67. So that’s another 15 years for me to keep working at a ‘job’. However, my guess is that this age will be pushed to 75 or more by the time I approach it as our quality of life is getting so much better as we begin ageing through these decades.
Later retirement ages has profound effects on the economy as a whole. Think for a moment how much change we have seen in the last ten years. How many industries have been disrupted? So imagine what the landscape will be in 10 or 15 more years? For me, it’s actually impossible to imagine. I think I can see what might change and there are things that definitely won’t change but everything else is up for grabs.
So retirement from a job will most likely occur much later than we thought, if we choose to. For me, I kind of have to keep working if I want to have any sort of reasonable retirement nest egg to come from my job.
This does not necessarily mean though that I will ‘retire’ in the conventional sense of living out my golden years not contributing to the economy and making some money along the way.
The old idea of retirement is no longer valid as we move into 2020 and the retirement villages and over 50’s communities that have been built will not be, in my view, what most people adopt as a lifestyle choice as we age and decide how we want to live and contribute to the community. It was a great idea at the time, but it has served its purpose.
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