We’re all familiar with the art of faking. Whether it’s fake news, counterfeit money, faking a sick day at work or a fake apology. The term, “Fake it until you make it,” has also become a fun cliché.

But can people fake retirement? Yes.

There are two types “retirement fakes” I see. One is the recently retired person lying about how things are going. The other is someone who inches closer to retirement but keeps changing the date.

In the first case, when you ask someone, “How’s retirement going?” they are quick to respond, “It’s going great. I’m busier than ever. In fact, I have no idea how I even worked before.”

It sounds great on the surface, but it’s often a smoke screen. What they really mean to say is, “I’m doing a bunch of meaningless stuff that keeps me occupied because I don’t know what else to do.”

I’m a very curious person and I like understanding what makes people tick. So when people tell me they’re doing great in retirement, I want to know the secret sauce. What exactly are they doing and enjoying so much? So I finally started asking, “What are all the things you’re doing to keep busy?”

That’s when I heard a lot of dodges starting with, “Well, you know …”

“Well, you know … chores around the house … the grandkids … and golf league.” But then I did the math. “That’s like three to four hours a day, maybe three to four days a week.” Which isn’t exactly the definition of being busier than ever.

Before getting into financial services, I spent about a decade as a social worker, facilitating everything from case work to individual, group and family therapy. One of the things I was taught to do was chart body language. Every time we met with a client, did a group presentation or held family therapy, we had to chart an assessment for each situation.

That training starts to kick in when I’m asking people uncomfortable questions and they obviously aren’t being candid. When I’m talking to people about how busy they are in retirement, for example, they might be sitting back in their chairs instead of leaning forward to show engagement. They might provide very little detail and hide behind broad-based generalizations of what we are trained to think will be part of our retirement life.

The reality is that retired clients can’t really say that things aren’t going well because others would think they’re crazy. The conventional wisdom is that retirement is awesome. It’s the ideal phase of life that everyone works and saves so hard to get to. And on the surface, it does sound appealing to say you have enough money to no longer work and that you have all the time to do whatever you want.

But money and time alone can’t replace a person’s work identity, can’t fill a person’s time, keep someone mentally and physically active or help people feel relevant and connected. Nevertheless, clients have been trained to believe that having the right amount of money and hitting a magic age is the starting point for everything to fall into place.

So when people say, “I love retirement. I wish I would have done it before, and I’m busier than ever,” we don’t really dig any deeper. We take it at face value and move on. We simply reply, “So glad to hear.”

It’s one reason I stopped asking people, “How is retirement going?” and instead prompted them to tell me something else: “Tell me about retirement so far. What do you like? What do you miss about work? What have you learned the hard way? And what would you do differently?”

These questions give clients permission to share more than a cliché. The door is open for a more honest and fruitful answer.

Moving Target
The other major retirement fake is the person who treats his or her retirement date like a moving target and says, on more than one occasion, ‘I’m finally ready to retire.” It sounds like the alcoholic who says, “I’m finally ready to quit.” Some people can use work to avoid change and be so stuck in their current lifestyle that they can’t see the benefits of a different way of life.

I am a major proponent of people working as long as they like, but the person who avoids retirement might be doing it for a couple of bad reasons. One problem is that they are unable to strike the right balance in juggling work, family and friends, health, and leisure.

And sometimes they put off retirement because they just don’t know what else to do. These are people who have probably been working since they were age 10—whether it was a paper route, babysitting or something else, they have been working so long they don’t know anything else.

That’s why this group is likely to relapse back into some form of work. Studies suggest that about 40% to 60% of those with alcohol or drug problems relapse within 30 days of leaving an inpatient drug and alcohol treatment center, and up to 85% relapse within the first year. For similar reasons, I think, you see increases in the number of people who plan to work at least part time in retirement.

What I have found is that this group needs additional support in figuring out what life after work can actually look and feel like. Just as rehab gives people a sense of what life can be like when they are sober, an extended time away from work can give people a different view of how they might spend their days. By helping clients develop an actual plan to replace their work identity (by taking on volunteer work, perhaps, or by filling their time with lost hobbies or passions) you can help them overcome their fear of being bored or out of sorts in retirement.

Trench Science
Clients who fake various aspects of retirement often do so because they don’t know what else to do. They aren’t hurting anyone or profiting from it. But they’re wrapped up in a vicious cycle of negative social stigmas that they don’t know how to break through.

So they fake it.

This isn’t an epidemic. It’s not something we can study like we would the number of people every year who take sick days when they’re feeling fine. I think of this more as a trench science, based on what I have seen day to day in client meetings, conference presentations and advisor trainings over the last 22 years.

In many client meetings, I would have loved to write down what I felt was really happening, something like, “Client was avoiding the conversation, refused to be specific, showed no remorse and was pretty much blatantly lying the entire time.” But you can’t do that. So instead I wrote things like, “Client sat stiffly in the back of the chair, crossed their arms, avoided consistent eye contact, frequently changed the direction of the conversation to incorporate new things and ideas that didn’t appear to correlate with the previous factors, and stated several times that, ‘It wasn’t his / her fault.’”

The description of body language in the latter case still tells you what’s going on. I think we can all apply common sense and look for clues in what clients are really saying and doing about retirement and use it to spot clients who may be struggling with their transition and not know what to do about it.

I’m not asking you to become a therapist, to hypnotize clients or to buy a chaise longue for your office. But we do need to be more in tune with what is really happening to people in retirement.

After all, people don’t fake being depressed. They fake being fine. And that’s an important starting point, because just being fine or OK isn’t what people want out of retirement. They want more and often need help to achieve that.

Overall, spotting fake retirements is all about helping clients adjust to their new life and roles. That means looking past superficial responses to generic questions or adjusting dates on a calendar. It’s about opening new lines of communication, giving clients permission to talk and going beyond the dollars and cents to help them on a more personal level.

Robert Laura is a best-selling author, nationally syndicated columnist, and president of Wealth & Wellness Group. He is a seasoned conference speaker, corporate trainer and pioneer in “The New Era Of Retirement,” which focuses on the non-financial aspects of life after work. He can be reached at [email protected].