What Boomers want in retirement 2

The authors are clear, however, that one size does not fit all. They divide us into four categories, which may help us understand how society may change.

There are “Ageless Explorers, who see retirement as a time of opportunity, adventure, exploration, and personal reinvention”. This is the group that bends the rules and march to the tune of their own drummer.

And then there are the “Comfortably Contents,” who “approach retirement with a more traditional, less driven view that retirement is a reward for a life of conscientious work. They tend to be well-educated and their work provided a good income. They are less likely to work in retirement. Their focus is on recreation, fun, and relaxation.”

Next, the “Live for Todays” who “seek continued personal growth and want to keep reinventing themselves. They have the biggest list of things they’d like to do and would ideally like their retirement to be an extension of their free-spirited lives,” according to the authors.

Finally, there are the” Worried Strugglers,” who “have fewer financial resources and fewer hopes and dreams for what they’d like to do. They report being more worried, less active, less healthy, and less happy because they did relatively little planning and preparation.

The act of retiring is the 4th box of life. The first box we lived in was with our immediate family, from ages 0 to 6. At age 6 we entered the second box of life, which was school, and we stayed until about age 18. At age 18 some of us entered the third box of life which was working while others continued at school a few more years. However, by the age of between 22 and 25 we all were in the third box of life which was working.

When we moved through the first boxes of life, we followed rituals and were prepared for the next step. Retiring is a sequence of shifts over time, and for most of the changes in our lives there is a ritual, in high school when you contemplated college, you visited campuses. When it comes to retirement, people are basically told ‘good luck, have a good time, there is no formal preparation or help. I think retirement is scary because it is a transitional period, and many people feel unsettled, anxious or bored, but eventually, they realize that ‘I can be fresh. I can be new, or they drift away and die.