Friday, August 7, 2020

Friday Feature: Don't Tell Me How to Retire

Eight years ago, I made a decision that turned my life upside down and stunned a lot of my friends. At the ripe old age of 51, I retired from my career in public education.

At the time, I knew I wasn't finished working; I was just closing a door on that particular chapter of my professional life. I had no idea what lay ahead, nor could I have predicted that I'd land in a second career, closely related to the first, that I'd love just as much. 

It didn't take me long to discover that this is how retirement looks for a lot of people. While researching a book sometime in my first year of retirement, I discovered the concept of encore careers -- a new career carved out in the second half of adulthood. Sometimes an encore career is related to the first career, as mine is; other times it's the fulfillment of a dream that seemed too impractical to follow in early adulthood.

The point is that this is not our fathers' retirement. For many people, retirement now has less to do with travel and sitting on the front porch than staying active and following new roads. For some, this emerges out of economic necessity, for others, it's the fulfillment of long-held dreams or side hustles pursued during the years of holding down a "real job." For many, it's both.

Next Avenue's "Don't Tell Me How to Retire" (love the title!) looks at how the mainstream definition of retirement is changing and how people like me (an anomaly to most) actually fit right in. 

I like to joke that I retired, but it didn't take. I guess that all depends on how you define retirement.

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