Yet an entire industry has grown around the idea of compulsory retirement. Del Webb, former co-owner of the Yankees, made a fortune in real estate building Sun City retirement communities. Anthony credits Webb for inventing the terms “golden years” and “golden age.”
“It was from that that we invented the idea of retirement entitlement—that you’ve worked long enough, you’ve toiled hard enough that you’ve earned your day in the sun,” said Anthony. “Financial services globbed right onto that idea because we needed a way to get people to save more money, and there’s a good one right there.”
But advisors may now be doing clients more harm than good, he said.
In today’s world, mandatory or compulsory retirement make little sense, said Anthony, and may actually be harmful to individuals. He referred to British studies that showed workers suffer a 30 percent short-term memory loss within the fist year of retirement. Another study, from Yale, showed that working an extra year instead of retiring may increase life expectancy by as much as 11 percent.
One reason is that people spend time and resources funding their retirement without spending much time thinking about what they’re going to do while they’re retired, said Anthony, noting that most people spend more time on average planning for a two-week vacation than they do for a 30-year retirement. Today, successful, healthy retirement means that people must remain engaged with others, have purpose in their lives, integrate work with leisure and continue to face challenges.
Anthony laid out this blueprint for what he describes as an “EPIC” retirement:
Engagement
“The ‘E’ in EPIC retirement is to engage at any age,” said Anthony. “Age is absolute, but old is an attitudinal marker. One does not get old until they decide to get old.”
Older people should be treated as assets, said Anthony, but Western society venerates youth rather than age.
That also means that retirement and financial life planning should be available to people at all ages, as the meanings of work, leisure and retirement change with the lengthening lifecycle, said Anthony.