Chapter 13: The stages of acceptance in retirement
Even if you have a solid financial plan with professional advice, once the pay cheque stops coming in, retirees will experience a tremendous amount of stress. But is retirement just stopping work? We need to establish what retirement is. Retirement may vary as we will see when we look at different retirement circumstances. These circumstances could include the following situations:
For many people the thought of staying home and tending the roses equates to “shoot me now please!”
These active individuals simply change lanes, for some it is a new employer, for others a new business, while for others it may be back to school or writing a book on brewing.
It is all good, because life is not made for a one size fits all person. For me the thought of retirement will always involve being able to write my stories with no criticism- I know I am an idealist, but give me credit as you are reading this book aren’t you? However, income and ego needs dictate that I need to be valued and earn my own way. Not earning a salary, was stressful, and just collecting a pension felt wrong, mainly because of my early years in a poverty background and an upbringing where hard work was expected.
Pensioners often feel this way. Psychologically some people need to work. I therefore still work doing training and travel the world giving lectures. In fact after being retrenched, I re-invented the me! That was important to me, because like retirement, retrenchment destroys the person and their sense of self-worth! Today, as a pensioner, I know that the best thing to happen for my personal growth was losing my well paid job. While I have not gained financially and I certainly still miss my large corporate bonuses, my self-worth quota is in the black. It helps if you love what you do and the money becomes a secondary consideration. While working for a high salary, I often felt resentful and distressed as I fulfilled my corporate obligations, according to my orders. Now I have a company where I use my skills to improve peoples’ lives, which makes up for the loss in income, by the increase in self-worth. This situation is a typical ‘change of jobs’ retirement.
Life in a change of job situation, is often about finding a balance between income, expectations and happiness!
Unfortunately, this is a type of retirement often inflicted by circumstances on a person. When it is unexpected, the person may not have time to prepare and the result may be dis-orientation and depression. Often these people become hard to live with. Mood swings are common as they enter into a grieving process. My husband and my friends have had this form of retirement and for none has it been a happy transition.
If premature retirement is due to retrenchment, if you can, demand counselling from the employer and ensure that you understand what tax benefits and company benefits you are entitled to. If necessary get legal advice. Check whether there’s any support you can claim to replace your lost earnings– for example, employment and support allowances or unemployment insurance.
For those who live with a person who undergoes this form of forced premature retirement, you need to have oodles of patience. Expect anger and disorientation for a sustained period. It may be an idea for the family to also get psychological counselling or join a support group.
There is another premature retirement, which is the happy kind. The individual has the means to leave permanent employments and of their own will, embraces the freedom of no longer working. It can get to be a little boring, and we will look at the stages the normal retiree will go through later in this section.
Sadly sickness and ill–health forces some unfortunates to retire. If this is before normal retirement age there may be insurance coverage. Insurance is in the form of an income replacement of a portion of the salary. If no insurance then you will have to deal with the double whammy of ill health and no income. You normally have to wait until you’re at least 55 before you can start getting your pension. But if you have to retire early because you’re ill or disabled you might be able to get your pension earlier.
Get advice and make sure you claim everything you could be entitled to because of the extra costs associated with being disabled or having a long-term health condition.
For some people leaving full time employment is welcome, but the thought of all those hours in the days is not. They just want to wind it down. I love the fact I work three days a week now, my five day weekend is always eagerly awaited and I am fully ready for work on a Monday.
Sometimes you get the opportunity to work until 70 and then you have to retire. It means extra money to make. With our life spans extended you may still be looking at a long life ahead.
This is where the company decides on the retirement age and the individual may have very little say in the matter. Often characterised by a feeling of resentment due to the lack of control, these people may show anger and depression.
When a person retires fully and no longer participates in paid employment, they have entered into retirement. A person will experience retirement in different ways. There are different types of retirement that affect an individual and{6} not all individuals will experience the same thing in retirement. It helps to provide a framework for thinking of retirement as a process that involves both emotional and financial adjustments, rather than as just a one-time event.
Busy business people who have a planned retirement with sufficient income normally experience the "honeymoon" feeling. A yay, we are on holiday attitude, with so much to explore feeling! These people become very busy doing many of the leisure activities they never had time for previously, especially travel. This is the point where most people are enjoying themselves. Many decisions are made, and some of these decisions will not prove to be wise in time, while others may take you down a new path. The most common decision is selling the family home and moving to a new smaller home or retirement village. It is advised this decision is not made in the honeymoon period, but in pre-retirement or in the next stage of retirement. Honeymooners should rather go on holiday and leave business to the time when they return.
People who have been experiencing a full and active schedule in addition to their employment may be fortunate as they will experience a synchronous retirement routine and quickly establish comfortable, yet busy schedules soon after retirement.
Persons who have had very busy careers with limited time to themselves frequently choose to do very little in their early post retirement period and this honeymoon period may be for weeks or even months where they just want rest and relaxation. Often they will be the ones who choose to retire in an area far away from family and friends.
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Norah and her husband retired in the June. They sold their home the year before and had bought a place in the beautiful Cape area, where both of them enjoyed the sea and sun on holidays. By July they were in the new retirement village where they had purchased life rights. The two were exposed to the wind and the rain of this area in winter. It was miserable weather. Norah quickly found telephone conversations with her daughter and son, were not nearly as satisfying as having a lunch with them. In the summer the weather was hot and the village had no pool for the couple to cool off in. Within a year the couple were spending more time back in Johannesburg than in the Cape. Norah says that they cannot afford to get out of the Life rights situation and will have to resign themselves to the fact that they will have to live in the Cape, but is now bitterly unhappy with the decision and wishes they had rented a place in the Cape first, to see if such a move was the wisest decision. Life rights means you get to stay for the rest of your life in the village, however this also means should you change your mind, the initial investment will not be repaid. We will investigate these property rights in our next section, so you understand them. |
A Professor of Gerontology, the late Robert Atchley, developed a six-stage process retirement process in 1975. His gerontology interests included adult development, spiritual development, long term care, public policy, work and retirement, health change and disability, and family issues.{7} Atchley developed descriptive phases of retirement to represent a transitional process that individuals go through when they permanently exit the workforce. Let have a look at what some people can expect after retirement according to his findings:
These phases do provide a guide for thinking about what some individuals may encounter when they transition into the retirement stage of life.
Why do we need a retirement structure?
Retirement has two arms- the financial arm and the well-being arm. We focus financial planning on the financial arm. As Financial planners we are taught to ask you- what do you need to retire on? We do not ask what you want to do as we are not trained to be retirement coaches.
If you say: ‘When I retire I want to travel the world” we know you need more resources than “I want to fish from the beach while living in my caravan.”
However for a full retirement planning both questions do need the next question- then?
Do you move to an old age village, will you keep your home, do you live with your children?
For example: In my thirties, I wanted to save the world, today I want to be near my family- I am allowed to change my mind. It is my right to do this. I cannot tell you when I am thirty that holding my grandchild will mean more to me than climbing Everest. I had never experienced holding a grandchild at thirty. I could never have given my retirement plan at thirty, the same detail as I can next year. My experiences will change me both before and after retirement. This is why a retirement coach or mentor can be extremely effective in pre and post retirement.
As you approach the retirement date, for most of us, fear of the unknown is the overwhelming feeling, but the attitude will shape the feeling. Retirement coaches understand this attitude versus feeling and will help you develop such a positive attitude.
Retirement is not the end of a life, it is the beginning of an exploration. This period of exploration will likely be for twenty to forty years- in essence as long as you have been working.
In our next section we look at how to keep the excitement and financial means to continue that exploration. For our next chapter in this section, we will look at what has become known as purposeful aging- or as I like to call it, how to stay young.