The End of Retirement – a few comments

I was reading The Economists special report on ageing in the latest print edition of the magazine (or I should say newspaper) over the weekend. The leader is titled The End of Retirement – not sure I like that tag line. The report as you would expect from the Economist was interesting and though provoking, however it didn’t seem to give any cutting ideas or open a debate on how we might reboot retirement in the 21st century.

Now I am long way from being ready (or wealthy enough) to retire but I am taking a mini-retirement this summer in a style of life hacker Tim Ferris would be proud of. Anyway. lets not gloat about by 8 weeks with the kids and that beach house for now. I am also not clever enough to offer up a 10 point plan on how we should (at least in the developed western nations) look to reboot or rethink retirement just yet. But this is a topic I am interested in thinking about some more. For now here’s what stuck me when reading the Economist report:

More people should look at mini-retirements now. Actually maybe I don’t want to give this one away?! This would go well with the proposal or reality that more people will need to work longer. Anyway, the data says we should live longer if we work and stay engaged later in life. Maybe we can get some sponsorship here.

Work-life balance is not anywhere near where it needs to be – yet. Seems to me if the balance can be smoothed out over one’s lifetime then that would help finance the ’retirement’ phase in people’s live. I think this is an area where some government schemes could come in handy. I am not thinking socialist style but maybe something like a ‘retirement’ credit account that you can tap into early to cover you for certain things and payback later (with all the tax benefits of a pension etc). Perhaps we need look more at how to structure parental and compassionate leave schemes and flexible working with a long term view. Once the kids are gone we can all put in more hours at the office then. Let’s get more thinking going around this area

I am already assuming that any state pension I get is beer money at best and I am pretty sure others in my generation are making similar plans. I am not sure private pension run by bankers are going to be the answer. So would be a good idea for there to be other tax break schemes around in this area. Need some beta programs or even prototypes. Maybe ‘private’ programs to share holiday homes or autos when we retire could help. Let’s get some entrepreneurs thinking about how make that a business.

My last comment is The Economist point out that the prediction is for labor shortages in rich nations in the coming decades. I am note sure I see this. I am more worried we continue to get real good at automating things and that we need less workers overall in the economy. Now that’s scary unless we radically rethink retirement, economics and the wider role government needs to play.