I think it’s a combination of different things for different people. No doubt some people can’t imagine spending that much time with their spouse. But I think some of it is people who were born to be worker bees. They always need to be busily working away at something, often imagination is not, this types, strongest suit so they really can’t see doing something differently. So they just stick at what they know.
And, I think, tons of people become ‘what they do’, becoming so invested in that, it becomes one of the cornerstones of their own self worth. Literally can’t stop being that, they would kinda crumble. In a way it’s an emotional crutch. These are all sad reasons when you consider it.
I’m looking forward to the day my spouse retires, so we can have more cool adventures together.
Yes. I have the best of both worlds. I still have an office (shared until yesterday with another retiree who just died), I am still active in research and I don’t have to go to committee meetings of mark tests. I actually did give a course once about 10 years ago, an advanced course based on a book I had just published that had two registered students.
But I have a colleague that we predicted would never retire. Because he had no outside life, no family, no other purpose in life. He was also a lousy teacher. Finally after a knock-down drag-out battle with someone in another department whose students were constantly failing his course, he did retire. He was 77. Now he wanders around like a lost soul.
I have another colleague who is in the same situation. He is around 85 and has retired by continues as a part-time lecturer. He is, by all accounts, a wonderful lecturer and teaches an advanced course that many could teach but are not anxious. He has an SO who is much younger, but suffering advancing dementia and he is afraid to leave her alone, so she comes to his office when he lectures. Her dementia is such that they were in our house a month ago and she admired a painting on our LR wall and asked who had painted it. She had, and we bought it from her maybe 10 years ago and she had no memory of this.
The husband of another colleague of mine taught until he was 90 and could barely totter into the classroom. I guess he enjoyed it.
And my office mate who died yesterday was 91 and has just published a book. In fact, the very last thing he was doing until the final descent was proof read it.
Heh. I remember when D in Development retired. Someone else had announced a retirement in a different section, and the question of “how long do you have to go to reach 100%” had been mooted about. A couple of the guys got out the sheets and started calculating.*
You could hear the swearing in our section. It wasn’t prolonged, it was just loud. The next day was D’s last day. He had reached 100% the year before. Apparently he had enough sick leave and vacation to carry him until the paperwork went through. For those curious, the last year wasn’t a total loss. He retired at 102%.
On the other hand, R, in the same section, got an inheritance that would have let him retire in his forties, and he stayed.
I knew for myself, I am bad at unstructured time. My imagination is fine. I can imagine sorts of productive things to spend my time with. But when it comes to actually doing those things, I end up spending half the day on the couch
Some people never develop a hobby or a pastime to occupy themselves when they are not at work. They have nothing to do at home so after work they eat, watch tv and then go to bed.
Seems to me that having a passion outside of work will carry you through your days after you have left the workforce.
I have a friend who recently retired at 63. He’s all set with money, he and his wife travel and golf many days a week. BUT, he’s really really bored.
I have gently suggested he get involved in some board memberships, or helping manage a non-profit, or write a book (he’s written 2 in the past), something to put his executive experience for productive uses.
IMHO it is extremely difficult for a person at the end (of work, or productive life) to be energetic and imaginative about taking on something new. That is the specialty of young people. (As they say - youth is wasted on the young!) Even if the something new is just “not working any more”.
I’ll have no trouble filling up my life after retirement, which is still most of a decade away, alas. Projects, travel, cycling, hiking, politics, seeing friends. Looking after whichever aged relatives are still in this world. Taking the kid to new and interesting places.
I’m proud of the work I do, but I do it because I need an income. It’s enjoyable on the scale of “things to do that will support me in the style I’ve become used to.” It rates a lot less well on the scale of “things I could do if I could do any damn thing I wanted.”
I have my special interests and hobbies. I am not one who gets bored easily.
But I need contrasts in my life. The grind of work allows me to better appreciate my free time.
I am also asocial outside of work. If I didn’t have work, I’d never interact with other people. That’s not healthy.
I figure I’m going to try to work as long as I feel like, as long as it makese sense, and as long as other people need me. I will not be like the 66-year-old guy who works in the office next to mine who barely shows up every day and is more of a nuisance than anything else.
I think some of the disconnect that younger people have with the attitude is they haven’t found something they’ll out up with until retirement or still have many demands on their time. Someone barely scraping by on an entry-level job or with young kids soaking up every spare second has a different perspective than someone comfortable in an empty nest with decent money coming in from a job they’ve got down pat.
I know for both me and my wife we have loads of things we want to do. Her art, quilting, and raising sheep. Me - managing a farm and woodworking. Plus lots of travel.
My Dad. He was actually more busy in retirement than when he was working. He worked on many a church project.
My dad was forced to change employers at 57 or thereabouts and continued working for the new employer for some 15 years. They kept offering him one year extensions and he kept taking them until he had enough.
I’m 68 and still working – mostly because I can’t afford to retire. I never made it into the high income brackets so it was next to impossible to save anything. And that also means my Social Security won’t be a whole lot – but it will be better if I can keep working at least until 70 before I start to draw it. And better still if I can keep working after I start drawing my SS. If I did retire, I wouldn’t be able to travel or do anything much, but I’m lucky in that I do enjoy the job I have now, and it’s just the other end of town from where I live so I don’t have to commute over the highway.
I know one retired CEO who did just that - sort of. He retired and bought a farm. He likes nothing better than to walk around pulling weeds, hoeing, or other stuff.
Now his wife - she wants to travel the world. He doesnt because he had to do that for so many years when he worked.
Most of the people I work with who work past the usual retirement stage are doing it for the money. They’ve made some bad financial choices (stupid, really) or have a spouse who stopped working years before (whether for illness/job loss/or laziness) and it resulted not being able to make the numbers work so they can retire. Some have actually said that they will never be able to retire due to finances.
Everything I’ve heard confirms you need something to retire to, not just from. You still need something to occupy yourself, and give you goals of some kind to work for.
I’ve also heard, and seen, a lot of cases of retired business / military / organization leaders who can’t let go, who find ways to “participate” in every volunteer effort that lets their hard-driving managing instincts have an outlet, and succeed mainly in pissing off both each other and everyone else. So, there has to be some decompression period too - possibly available at the workplace, where I’ve seen a lot of cases not-so-jokingly called “in-plant retirement”.
A couple of other examples include Paul “Bear” Bryant and Joe Paterno.
The Paterno case is especially interesting to me because he was forced out because of the Sandusky scandal and passed away a mere two weeks after the national championship game.
However, there was no indication that the season was his last one: there was no “let’s hope Joe makes it through this last season” quotes, no “Can Paterno coach with his terminal case of cancer due to kill him at any moment?”-type stories, nothing. There was NO indication that people expected Joe Pa to succumb to his cancer anytime soon.
Hell, the big PSU debate on sports talk radio (prior to Sandusky, of course) was “Does Joe deserve another season? His teams lately have sucked, but now they are 8-1 and a possible National Championship contender” not “Can Joe make it through the season?” or “If Joe dies, who will replace him as interim coach?” If you were ghoulish enough to, in October 2011, to lay bets that Paterno would be dead by next February, you would have cleaned up.
But… once he lost his job, his reputation, and his purpose in life, he apparently had nothing to live for.
So, yeah… for a lot of men, retirement does kill. Hell, it happened (kind of) to my grandfather - once he became too infirm to maintain his house, he moved into a retirement community… and had nothing to do, which killed him emotionally. I don’t think he lasted a year.
Actually, I *did *bet on Joe Paterno to croak that year; had him in a dead pool. (I didn’t “clean up” though; the rest of my list sucked).
I’ve seen many an oldster pass away six or eight months after losing a long-time spouse. Losing a career that you used to define yourself is no doubt just as lethal.