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The End of Retirement as We Know It Recognized Industry Expert Introduces Americans to the New Retirementality
The days are long gone when people work a job for 30 years, retire at 55 with a gold watch and a pension, rock away on the porch for 10 years then die. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, life expectancy has lengthened from 68.2 in 1950 to 77.9 in 2003. (The most recent data currently available). According to financial industry expert Mitch Anthony, with people living almost 10 years longer, we need to change our retirementality.
(PRWEB) October 3, 2006 -- According to a survey by American Demographics, 41 percent of retirees say retirement was the most difficult adjustment of their lives and many still struggle with the boredom, monotony, lack of purpose and lack of traditional intellectual stimulation that traditional retirement offers. That’s compared to 12 percent of newlyweds that reported that marriage was a difficult adjustment and 23 percent saying parenting was a difficult adjustment.
So, why are Americans in such a rush to retire? According to Mitch Anthony, financial industry expert and author of The New Retirementality: Planning Your Life and Living Your Dreams… at Any Age You Want, it’s because Americans are spending their prime productive years in jobs they hate.
“It makes no sense for us to spend 40 prime productive years toiling away at a job we hate,” said Anthony. “We sacrifice those years so we can have free reign to do as we please in our twilight years? That’s insanity. The trick is to find a job that you love to do and never feel the need to retire.”
Many Americans dreamed of a retirement where they’d work a job for 25 years and ride off into the sunset with a hefty pension and gold watch. But once they retire, they find they quickly become bored.
“Retirement as we know it today is a relic from a time that has long since passed,” said Anthony. “Retiring at 62 is really an artificial finish line. The New Retirementality™ is not a cliff that people will jump off, it’s a bell curve –people will not jump off the retirement cliff, they’ll gradually slow down.”
According to Anthony, the way people think about retirement needs to change.
“We are constantly confronted by what I call ‘retiremyths’ – things we assume about retirement that are simply not true,” said Anthony. “The truth is that 65 is not the point where you’re considered old. Retirement doesn’t mean that you have to rock your life away on a porch. You do not have to wait until age 62 to live the life you want.”
Mitch Anthony is a recognized leader, author and keynote speaker in the financial services industry. Anthony is founder and president of Advisor Insights, Inc., a Rochester, Minn.–based training firm that advises the financial services and insurance industries. Anthony is a contributing editor for Research magazine and his column “Financial Life Planning” appears in Financial Advisor magazine. He has been named one of the financial services industry’s “2006 Movers & Shakers” by Financial Planning magazine. His radio feature, The Daily Dose, is heard daily on 200 radio stations nationwide. A living example of the new retirementality, Anthony has no plans to ever retire.
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