Retirement, Stages, and Time for a Reboot

Apparently a retirement life based on using all this gear isn’t fully satisfying. Who knew?

Everyone who retires or contemplates retirement has a vision of what that phase of life will be like, even if the vision is “I won’t know until I experience it” (sort of mine). Richard’s version was “Pick up and go,” as in he/we’d have the freedom in retirement to come and go as we wished, released from career responsibilities. However, disparities frequently exist between one’s vision and how life plays out.

Retirement is a much written about life phase with everyone from researchers, financial advisors, clinicians, and life-style bloggers offering advice and perspective on how to live fully during these precious years. Michael Stein, CFP carved the retirement years into age-related stages, using health and vigor as guides. The stages are:

The Go-Go Years — ages 60 to early 70s, presumably one’s most active and healthy years, when one has lots of pick up and go
The Slow Go Years — roughly early 70s to early 80s
The No-Go Years — early 80s until the end of life, a time when retirees don’t really go.

When I was imagining my own retirement, it made sense to me to consider retirement in terms of Stein’s frame, a blueprint for how much R and I might “Pick up and Go,” particularly in the early years.  Stein’s stages, while reminders that it is best to “go” while going is possible, don’t capture the phase’s complexities, challenges, and necessary emotional adaptation. After a lifetime of working, I was eager to focus on “go-going” but in doing so excluded necessary aspects of a fuller frame for retirement.

For a more psychological understanding of this stage, I recently examined the frequently cited work of researcher Robert Atchley (1999, 2000) who has sliced and diced the phase, identifying behavioral and emotional tasks related to retirement.
Atchley’s frame is:

Pre-Retirement — Financial and life planning
Retirement– Actual event and Honeymoon Phase
Disenchantment —Is this it?
Reorientation — Creating something new
Retirement — Establishing a new norm
Termination ( aka death)

While the stages lay out in a linear fashion, like all phases they are looser, more overlapping than lock step. The first two phases are self explanatory — people plan and then retire. Because I currently find myself seeking more from my retirement life and attempting to figure out what that might be, I am most curious about the Disenchantment and Reorientation Stages, because disenchanted captures how I feel.

Atchley (2000) relates that certain factors can lead some people to feel letdown and disillusioned following a more blissful Honeymoon Phase. These factors include limited financial resources, poor health, over identification with careers, other role losses, and moving from communities where they’ve lived for years.

My little research project has left me with much good information to digest before I can figure out my disenchantment and a new plan. More to come. But first….

Let’s not forget about the summer gear……….