Seeking Financial Comfort For Retirement [1]

          A search of my Third Age Learning blog posts reveals little mention of the financial aspects of retirement.  Financial planning is probably the single most important factor in successful retirement.  It has been reported that 75% of the participants in a retirement workshop in Nigeria felt that the discussion of investment opportunities and other financial matters best suited their expectations. They also indicated that they would like to have been exposed to these ideas earlier in their careers. In the end almost 90% “agreed that the gains of the workshop would assist them in adjusting well in retirement.”

         The team of workshop coordinators, led by Jack Noone at Massey University in New Zealand gathered this next information.

They used the Process of Retirement Planning Scale (PRePS) to find out how people are preparing for their futures. The scale explores responses to financial, health, reflection on roles Issues, thinking of ways to spend one’s time, and ways to prepare for retirement. My goal in this blog entry is to concentrate on people’s thinking about finances. Along with non-financial items people were asked to explore:

1. How much thinking they had been doing about future finances

2. How clear they were about financial issues for retired people

3. What financial goals they had developed.

         They found that:  “…those undertaking higher levels of retirement planning showed a greater tendency to look to the future and felt more in control of their lives.”  In addition they found that  “…financial planning leads to greater well-being regardless of household income.” We can begin by developing knowledge about our pension systems and investments.  The sooner the better! I am meeting with my pension and investment planners next week

NOONE J.H., STEPHENS,C. AND ALPASS F. (2010)  The Process of Retirement Planning Scale (PRePS) Development and Validation, Psychological Assessment, Vol 22, (3), 520-531 

Controling our Lives: Before and After Retirement

       I have for the most part enjoyed the independence provided by my career choice to become a university professor.  It is occasionally stressful when students have difficulty distinguishing between the amount of effort they put into studies and the quality of that effort.  Some post secondary institutions have adopted a “business model”.   In this regard, students may see themselves as customers and their instructors as service providers who are there to entertain them.  All this considered I continue to enjoy working with my students. 

         So what does this have to do with retirement?  One of the key factors in pre- and post-retirement literature is the amount of control a person has over his or her life. This has been connected with the amount of stress experienced. Another factor is about having the opportunity learn new things.  For sure over the years since I began work I have had opportunities to develop and learn new ways of being, in part through interaction with many persons including students, staff and colleagues.

         Because I have only been working part time during the past five years and due to my wife’s broken ankle I have taken on more activities at home including shopping, sweeping, cooking and yard maintenance. These activities help me stay active and take some of the burden off of my wife who taking courses in her third year studying Fine Arts at our University.

         It is important that we engage in activities that are motivated by our own interests and feelings rather than doing things as a means to an external goal e.g. finding new employment so we can continue to pay or bills. (Yes of course the bills do need to be paid!) It is best if we can concentrate on developing internal desires without forgetting about external needs.        

         An important thing about retirement, expressed in Continuity Theory, is maintaining some connections with our sense of self during our years of employment. I am doing this in part by creating and marketing my retirement and other workshops (wisdom &memory). I will still be a learning facilitator. I am beginning to make contacts in the volunteer and business communities; the bridge I am creating between work and retirement is getting stronger.

         In summary successful retirement is about being able to maintain self-control and continue to face new challenges throughout our lives.   I hope this is happening for you. If you know anyone who might be interested in sponsoring a workshop please let me know.

Retirement and Lifelong Learning [1}

         Most people tend to see retirement as an event or an episode.  We prepare for it, or don’t, and then we experience it in either positive or negative ways.  There is a growing body of literature that supports the idea of retirement, as a continuation of a lifelong learning process.  The following material builds on ideas from Hodkinson et al’s study, which explores ways to enhance our retirement and pre-retirement experiences.

         The researchers followed 120 people between 25 and 80 years old for four years, and accumulated 750 hours of interview material.

They used this data to gain understanding of how the retirement processes work.  The foundation of their thinking is that the “third age” as a concept and process has only been used for the last few generations. Prior to that, in agricultural societies elder farmers, like my grandfather & grandmother, “stepped down” and let younger people in the family take charge.

         The major premise of Hodkinson et al’s research is that retirement is not a single event. It is an adjustment process, which must be examined.   For some it may involve a somewhat long period of uncertainty.  For others, it is “a way out of an undesirable situation” rather than something that is attractive in it’s own right. 

In my own history, I fought being forced into mandatory retirement a few years ago.  Since then I have remained at work as a part-time instructor. This coming August I am now preparing to voluntarily retire with a much more positive attitude.

         Hodkinson and his co-researchers report that sometimes retirement can become very burdensome.   For example one person was forced into retirement when he was 50. Then his second marriage broke up. He sold his house and got a mobile home. Then he unsuccessfully started a new business.  It floundered and he also got Parkinson’s disease.  He is unable to drive his car and has become a “bit of a hermit”

Retirement as a Process

         Retirement can be seen as an extended transitional process including pre-retirement anticipation, planning and preparation.  In the researcher’s words “…retirement itself is a process of becoming and learning that is an integral part of the process—not something separate from it.” 

         The things we learn are part of everyday life. We are in the process of becoming all of our lives. With our skills, knowledge and understanding we are constantly constructing and reconstructing our lives and interpretations of our surroundings.

         Besides our work, it is helpful to see our family, homes, community and leisure activities as part of our learning culture and we must remember, “The retirement process entails a complex mix of continuity and change.”

         How can we improve our retirement learning?  There are courses that can be taken often sponsored by senior’s organizations attached to universities. For instance where I teach we have a very active seniors group appropriately called Third Age Learning at Kwantlen (TALK).  It produces workshops and seminars concerning all aspects of the Third Age. They sponsor recreation also encourage volunteering as another helpful activity.

         The article concludes with the following paragraph.  “If we are to help people to face the challenges and to benefit from the opportunities that retirement can bring, we need to do three things; (a) find ways to increase the chances of productive retirement learning; (b) find ways to support those learning in constructing their own sense of fit; and (c) find ways to help them to increase their understanding of the processes and stages by making these transparent.”

[1]  Hodkinson, P. et al (2008).  Retirement as a learning process, Educational Gerontology, 34, 1521-0472 online

Who Am I As I Enter Retirement: Additional Thoughts

         Some time ago I created a post entitled: “Who am I Now: The Challenge of Retirement”.  At that time I concluded with the words,  “Retirement is a good time to drop labels and be who we really are."  This type of thinking may be connected with the process of elder wisdom, which concentrates on re-evaluating what behavior is really important in the here and now and resolving the conflict between integrity and despair.

     The following ideas are based on an article by Ursina Teuscher, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego.[i]  In Teuscher's research, the question  is asked about the changes people have in self-image after they retire.  Whatever I say to myself, beginning next September it is highly likely that  it will include being a former Psychology Professor.   

      Teuscher used a survey, which she had translated from German into English.  First, I will go through the questions in the survey and answer  some of them from my own perspective. 1. How satisfied am I with my body fitness? Well I feel pretty good about it. I ride my bike in pleasant weather and currently walk back and forth to work, (about 45 minutes) once a week and I accept that I am no longer a university football player.  2. Building on the last question I also go on brief hikes with one of my son’s when he visits.  3. I believe that I have good relationships beginning with the love of my wife and ranging to members of the department where I work and members of the Senior's Centre Board where I am a member.  Severeal days ago, as I left a department meeting early, several professors waved goodbye. They are not my closest friends but they cared enough to wave.  4. My interests, besides teaching include, being on the board of the local Seniors Centre, and designing workshops to take into the community, including retirement, wisdom, and memory workshops  5. My mental capacities are ok but I do experience a growing problem with remembering people’s names. 6. I believe that I am respected by members of the community as well as my family and friends. 7. I don’t think that I am the best looking guy on the block but I look at my self in the mirror and I feel ok.  After all what are you supposed to look like when you’re 71.  8. Financially I could be in better shape.  I’ve been working part-time for the last five years and my pension and workshop fees will be ok but I don’t expect to be able to fly around the world on vaction.  9. Finally, my life in general is ok. My dad died in his mid seventies from cancer. My mother is still alive at 95 and I hope that to some degree longevity has certain genetic factors and that I got those genes from my mom.

         The researcher's  next set of questions have to do with attitudes toward “old age.” I am particularly interested in ageist attitudes, I designed our department's aging course and have taught it for the last 12 years. The only research studies I have ever put my heart into are about ageism. My interest of old age focuses on exploring several things including the rise of Wisdom and the importance of memory and longevity..

     Getting back Tuescher's main interests, the participants in the research  were asked questions about the “different domains” of their identity.  There are fourteen of them listed below.

 “If you had to characterize yourself, which of the following points are important to you?  

1.   My Nationality

2.   My roles within my family (parent-,grandparent etc)

3.   My partnership

4.   My profession or occupation (for retirees: my former profession

5.   Honorary posts or volunteer work

6.   Characteristics of my body/ my appearance

7.   Characteristics of my personality

8.   My age

9.   My life story

10.      The associations and organizations I belong to

11.      My circle of friends

12.      My leisure time activities

13.      My values or my belief

14.      For retirees: the fact that I am retired

       She was surprised to find out that the professional domain was as important for the retired persons as it was for those yet to retire.  In conclusion“The loss of the professional role after retirement apparently did not lead to a loss of professional identity."

Teuscher, U (2010) CHANGE AND PERSISTENCE OF PERSOAL IDENTITIES AFTER THE TRANSICITON TO RETIREEMENT , INT/L J. AGING AND HUMANDEVELOPMENT 70(1) 89-106

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[i]

Counseling and Retirement Preparation [1]

          I recently came across a very interesting article focused on retirement counseling.  Information about how to access to this article is displayed at the bottom of this post.  The authors live in Nigeria. As with most retirement studies much of the article concentrates on financial issues. But there are also some valuable social and psychological comments.

         The authors suggest that  “… at the real retirement stage, the individual is expected to have completed all necessary arrangements on retirement and can now decide on what to do with life…” 

         They also cite an article in which more than half of the sample reported that they were not fully prepared for retirement.  Failure to be adequately prepared can lead to “…feelings of guilt, anger, denial, fatigue or a blurred future” 

         The researchers suggest that people should identify what they want to do and continually review and revise their plan to accomplish their goals.  In the article the first set of questions are very compatible with the financial questions listed on most financial retirement planning websites (google and see).  For example: “How much money will it take to support my household?” and “How will my assets, liabilities; expenses and savings change during retirement?

     The authors also give some social suggestions that I find very useful.  For example:

1. Persevere and remain optimistic – No matter how difficult the circumstance, have confidence that the basic values you stand for will sustain you, and don’t give up on yourself.

2. Before retiring decide how you are going to spend the eight hours or more you used to devote to work. Retirement is another vocation you have to prepare for.

3. If you want to volunteer work to fill you time then find an activity you enjoy. If you don’t it will be boring.

         If someone asked you about dealing with non-financial factors of retirement, what activities and relationships would you give? 

[1] J.B. Asonibarev  Retirement and Retirement Counseling: Issues and Challenges.  (Google)

Use it or lose it and Mental Retirement [1]

         Most people have probably heard the phrase “use it or lose it.” In this blog entry the term is connected with the process of cognitive aging and retirement.  It suggests that as we grow older we can at least slow down the process of mental decline by engaging in cognitively demanding activities that exercise the mind.  Recent research, however, has raised some questions about this “mental-exercise hypothesis”

         To explore this question the researchers surveyed a large number of persons from the USA, England, and eleven European countries. They were able to conclude that retirement may cause a decrease in a person’s cognitive ability relative to staying in the labour force and refer to this process as the “mental retirement effect”.

         They cite a recent article that asks if retirement leads to depression. The authors reach an opposite conclusion that people who are depressed select retirement. Surprisingly it was found that retirement often reduces depressive symptoms.

         Another area of mental losses in retirement may be seen in the relationship between Human Capital and Cognition, specifically fluid and crystallized intelligence. Human capital refers to the stock of competences, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to produce economic value.  Fluid intelligence is the processing part of intelligence including reasoning, memory and self-focused thinking. Crystallized intelligence is our accumulated information over our lifetime.  It has been theorized that as we age our thinking process (fluid intelligence) slows down but our potential for finding wisdom increases.

         The authors formulate a conclusion about Mental Retirement.  It is that we engage in more mental effort while we are working. In fact the term “use it or lose it” assumes that after we retire we may lose cognitive stimulation and environmental challenges.  Unless we take specific action to keep cognitively active, mental retirement involves moving into an “unengaged lifestyle.” 

         It’s more than doing crosswords or finding words in my Giant Book Word Seeks that I mentioned in an earlier blog entry.  Retirement is a major change in life style.  Early retirement in particular, “… appeared to have a significant negative impact on the cognitive ability of people in their early 60’s.

         In the North America the trend toward early retirement is being reversed.  People like myself are working beyond 65, the standardized retirement age.  So, in the end the researchers conclude that longer time at work can be good not only for the society but for the older person’s cognitive capacities.  This appears to support the phrase "Use it our Lose it."

[1] Much of this material was taken from a journal article “Mental Retirement” by Suann Rohwedder & Roberth Willis. The title of the article is Mental Retirement. it was downloaded through google

Aging and Wisdom

I have taught the Aging course at my University for many years. One of the topics I still have difficulty with is being able to accurately understanding the similarities and differences between intelligence and wisdom. For instance Albert Einstein was very intelligent, but was he always wise?

         Recently I came across a very interesting pair of definitions in a book, written by Virginia Burlingame, that I had ordered thorough Amazon.ca. It is entitled Gerocounseling: Counseling Elder’s and Their Families.

         In the book intelligence “…is generally seen as the ability to combine available information to pursue a specific goal—such as effective utilization of environmental resources.” A look on the Internet suggests that intelligence includes:

•  Adaptability to a new environment or to changes in the   current environment

•  Capacity for knowledge and the ability to acquire more

•  Capacity for reason and abstract thought

          The book goes on to describe wisdom as the ability to combine cognitive and emotional qualities including “…mastery over emotions, experience, introspection, reflection, empathy, deliberation and avoidance of the impulsive, unconcern with trivia and cautiousness.” Another definition is the “…power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, and understanding.  This important because  older people, to successfully age, are expected to acquire wisdom.

         Paul Baltes, an explorer of wisdom and one of the founders of the Max-Plank Institute designed material to help us explore life management problems. One technique is the use of brief vignettes and scenarios.  For example:

“A little, fourteen-year-old girl is pregnant what should she, what should one, consider and do?”

And

“A fifteen-year-old girl wants to marry soon. What should she, what should one, consider and do?”

According to the Max-Plank Institute wisdom has five components:

1.   Rich factual knowledge (general and specific knowledge about the conditions of life and it’s variations)

2.   Rich procedural knowledge (general and specific knowledge about the conditions of life and its variations)

3.   Life Span Contextualism (knowledge about the contexts of life and their temporal [developmental] relationships

4.   Relativism (knowledge about differences in values, goals, and priorities)

How would you answer the following questions?

What brings happiness?

How have you overcome fear in your life?

When do you do your best work?

What advice would you give for success?

Do you see yourself as a creative person? 

How do you express your creativity?

What do you think the world needs?

What is the best way to resolve conflicts?

What are our main responsibilities as adults?

What are our responsibilities as citizens?

What do you think is society’s main problems?

What makes marriage successful?

What advice would you give parents?