Retirement Guilt Trip

“Retirement is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of an open highway.” —Internet meme

Photo by Documerica on Unsplash

"Don’t retire. Retirement is a modern invention,” declared three books on retirement I recently read. “An unending vacation is not good for you.”

I bristled.

I am retired. I am NOT on permanent vacation. I volunteer for several nonprofit organizations in town. I lead a Bible study. I write. I teach ELL (English as a Learned Language).

My retired friends are not lolling around on permanent vacation either. Granted, they do not work 50- or 60-hour weeks, but they do help build a better world.

I do not want to go back to paid work! I rebel against juggling family duties, employment, and church responsibilities. The to-do list that is never done. Going to bed bone-tired at night. The always-too-early alarm.

I think my experience of mid-life pressure is common. Some people in low-paying jobs need to work two jobs to make ends meet. Others in higher paying jobs feel the pressure to work long hours in a company that keeps raising the productivity bar.

Before we retire, we have unbalanced lives. Life is supposed to be a balance of work and play. Not work, work, work. So I rebel against the suggestion I find gainful employment.

But I do not believe I am on a permanent vacation. I wondered if other retirees see these years as a permanent vacation. I did some research.

I discovered that retirement is indeed a fairly new concept, which became widespread in the United States with the Social Security Act of 1935. In Germany, the first state-sponsored pension program was launched by Chancellor Otto von Bismark in 1883. Before that, in an agriculture-based society, most farmers worked until they were unable to, leaving the more demanding work to their children as the years went by.

As I researched, I uncovered one myth. Several books maintained that in the early years of social security, people would only to live a year or two after they retired. The average life expectancy at birth in 1940 was only 62.9 years. But that average is so low because of high infant death rates. That same year, a 60-year-old could expect to live to age 75. Today the life expectancy at 60 is 83.5 years. That change is an increase, but not as dramatic as the life expectancy of 62.9 years at birth seems to indicate.

I learned that many older adults still do paid work. In 2019 more than 20 percent of adults over 65 were still working for pay or looking for paid work (That percentage is double the number of people over 65 who were still working for pay in 1985.)

I read an AARP survey revealing 42 percent of retired Americans do some sort of volunteer work. A 2020 “Philanthropy News Digest” survey said that number was 58 percent. I found myself skeptical about those numbers. I suspect that those percentages include only volunteer work for organizations. I wondered if the percentages included taking a pot of soup to an ailing neighbor? Or giving a ride to the doctor to someone no longer able to drive? What about babysitting for grandchildren? I suspect that there is a lot of volunteer work going on that was not counted in this survey, but that is intuition, not data. If volunteering is defined broadly, every retiree I know does useful volunteer work.

When I was taking a spiritual-formation class that required I find a mentor, I asked an 86-year-old to fill that role. She answered, “I have been praying for some way to be useful, and here you come with this request.” She said yes. She was now doing volunteer work, although she would not have counted that if she were taking a survey.

In my search for data on the number of people who treat retirement as a permanent vacation, I came up empty. But after my research, writers who see retirees as permanent vacationers and advise returning to work irritate me even more.

Perhaps I have a skewed understanding of the word “work.” I equate it with being driven and pressured. However, these do seem to be common conditions of paid workers in our country.

Retirement as continuous vacation is certainly an image promoted in ads. But I’m still don’t know many retirees who fill their lives with coffee times and cruises and golf and pickleball, without also making themselves useful. Where are these permanent vacationers? Is my circle of acquaintances not typical?

I’d love to hear from readers. Are permanent-vacation retirees common? Or are they are a minority—mostly fantasy and myth? What do you think—and why?

Adapted from Creative Aging by Carol Van Klompenburg, published 2023, available from Amazon and for Pella-area residents directly from Carol. Carol has an MA in theater arts and is available for reading performances of her writing on aging, moments in her gardens, and other topics.