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.