Will We Ever Retire?: Everyone, Back in the Labor Pool

• Share

(5 of 8)

This attitude sets boomers apart from their parents, who have traditionally been content to travel, golf and play a lot of pinochle. The emerging retirement ideal is far more active. The University of Miami Institute for Retired Professionals arranges for anyone over 50 to audit regular university courses or take five-week summer sessions, with such classes as creative writing, literature, drawing, computers and a newly added course on Middle East politics and Islam. "A lot of folks are here every day," the institute's director, Noreen Frye, says of the over-50 set. "Others are active with their church or synagogue, and some have gone back to work or consult or have started new careers." Most of the students are between 65 and 70, Frye says.

One of their instructors is Jay Jensen, 69, a retired drama teacher who now works as a drama coach and teaches music appreciation, as well as English as a foreign language. "I'm incensed," he says of scandals rocking the stock market. "Every time I look, I'm getting poorer." But he's not letting that slow him down. "My theory is, you die if you don't keep moving," he says. "The people I hang out with are in their 20s and 30s. I want to be around people who want to paint a picture, be in a play, become a lawyer--not people who are planning their funerals."

Another willing older worker is Frank Dillon, 65, of Concord, Calif. After 37 years as a marketing executive at PG&E, Dillon enjoys a generous pension benefit and has personal assets of more than $1 million. He spent his first golden year exactly as he had envisioned--reading, playing some golf and, one by one, knocking off several odd jobs and improvements such as building a deck at his home. But then something he had not envisioned intruded on years of planning: he got bored. So he took a part-time job supervising tee times at a nearby golf club. "I just wanted something to do," Dillon explains. "I like to meet people and keep active." He later went back to work full time as a consultant to his old employer. "A lot of people in business haven't been honest with us," Dillon says, noting the recent headlines. Yet he believes this will all pass in a few years and vows not to touch his stock investments until they recover.

So working to an older age is not necessarily a curse. It's the have-to part that hurts, and according to Dychtwald, the number of older people working involuntarily is expanding rapidly. Many of them--22% in the survey--are used to living well (free spenders with good incomes while in their careers) but did not save enough and have already run out of cash or will soon. This group is "flipping out," Dychtwald says. Take George and Maria Rudd of Miami. Together they earn $280,000 a year but have more credit-card debt ($45,000) than savings and investments ($40,000). George, 69, is a construction manager and wants to retire in two years. Both he and Maria, 62, a financial-services compliance officer, rue their profligate lifestyle--for instance, they cashed in 401(k) savings to buy a $58,000 sailboat. "We lived dangerously," Maria concedes. Now the couple are scrambling to save what they can before George's current project comes to an end in two years. "My mother and father were able to live on Social Security," Maria says, deflated. "I don't think we'll be able to. If push comes to shove, I guess we could live on the boat."