Why I should never retire: because I’ll starve on the street. Unfortunately I’m getting old enough that no one is going to want to employ me. So I guess I’ll starve on the street and serve as an incentive to others to work harder for the man.
You’re ahead of your time. The trend of most of our futures right here.
Cruises and golf? What a shallow, sad view of retirement. My uncle goes to Florida in the winter and fishes off of various docks and camps, and spends time with his grandkids, and ducks around with gadgets the rest of the year.
They’re cliches that only apply to affluent boomers.
When I worked at a bank I went to a work-sponsored golf outing and it was both way more fun and required way more physical effort than I was anticipating. I’m not going to go out of my way to go golfing again but I certainly won’t turn down an invite if I’m ever invited golfing again
I think its good to keep working, but only doing the things that you actually enjoy or have value outside of a paycheck. When I “retired” I found it kind of hollow and it was not all it was supposed to be.
I think that’s called having a hobby
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I have my hip replacement this week and next week the grandkids are in town. Week after that I have a bad fall scheduled. After that I should be free, might be dead idk.
18 year old DM to the group: “Alright, let’s all plan to meet up this time next week + 50 years. We should have the campaign wrapped in another session or two. Hopefully John can make it”
My father lasted a year in retirement, after which he got so bored he went back to his last job as a “consultant” to his successor, effectively continuing what he had been doing in the previous ten or so years, except only visiting the office when he felt like it.
I don’t recall him ever enjoying this job at all, but it seems sitting around with a sole purpose of waiting to die is even less fun
I am going to the office once in a while when I feel like it. Am I retired?
you get a paycheck and pension? :D
I have so many things I’d like to do, except I’m so tired after work and the things I need to do to maintain my life that aren’t called work for some strange reason. Provided I have the money to retire and afford the things I want to do, I will have plenty to keep myself busy for another lifetime.
If you can’t find ways to keep busy in your retirement, that’s on you. If you would rather spend that time working, that’s fine, too, but society shouldn’t expect that of us. If you can’t afford to, that’s a separate problem, and partly due to society, too.
100% agree
Just don’t confuse wanting to work for having to work.
My grandmother, who had been retired for 30 years, turned her music-writing hobby into a second career after my grandfather passed by taking on artists, getting involved with concerts, etc.
I’ve met plenty of very old dudes in my hobbies of archery and shooting guns who are absolute masters and charge too little too profit or nothing at all for tuning, gunsmithing, and coaching.
These have nothing to do with keep a roof over your head, and everything to do with staying sane when the expectation seems to be waiting around until you die
Doing nothing for years is a good way to die younger. If you can turn a hobby into a 20hr a week “job” where you pick your hours, that can very easily keep you alive.
To be fair, all of those activities sound like shit.
If I’m retiring I’m playing games, reading, hiking etc.
Same, I feel like I never have enough time to do what I want. To have the time to indulge in all my hobbies, that’s the dream.
What portion of the population do you think finds their job more fulfilling than the specific activities listed - let alone being able to spend your days as you please.
…ohhhh - “We’ll make sure you can’t afford to do as you please, let alone survive, so you’ll have to work, but making sure the workers are responsible for it means we can keep our bullshit and economic vandalism up.”
Within the confines of the neoliberal-capitalist societies most of us on Lemmy reside in, only the most privileged get to have a fulfilling and well paying occupation. Totally agree with you. My take on the peice is that it’s parodying the notion that you have to turn a hobby or unique skill into capital even well past retirement.
I’ve always believed that people desire an ‘occupation’, just something to do with your time. Anything a person finds fulfilling to do. I also believe that we’ve confused occupation with payed work and now the two are perceived as the same. Or maybe I’m nuts.
My stepfather was a managing partner at an accounting firm. He got bought out by one of the big guys.
4 months after retiring he started consulting. He doesn’t need the money, he needs something to do other than golf and he has no hobbies.
The kids want him to travel etc but he’s happier working… which is fucked in my view.
My father has retired multiple times. Then he keeps going out and finding new jobs like in real estate and making more money. My parents were very stingy with sharing, they spent all their money on random shit and properties that they’d then take a loss on. It’s really sad.
I know a guy who left retirement because he felt purposeless. The reason we likely hate work is because we have to do it.
If I knew I didn’t have to worry about money, I would consider focusing on my tech career as it’s something to do rather than worrying about how to keep a job. Maybe focus on charity maybe.
Definitely keep saving for retirement, last thing you need is to HAVE TO WORK for the rest of your life.
I’m with you. Aimless wandering through night and day, and consuming stuff to distract from the lack of direction in life is pleasing only to a certain point.
I’d do a different job every year just for fun and learn everything
Probably… I mean nothing stops you now. Assuming it’s somewhat in the same field.
Pleasure cruises, golf and tracing the family tree are not that fulfilling
I agree with this opinion.
… you should never retire.
I’d retire tomorrow if I had the financial security to do so.
“Pleasure cruises, golf, and tracing the family tree.”
What the authors’ retired parents did while waiting for grandkids.
A wild guess, but I’ll make it.
I’m convinced half these kinds of articles are rage bait.
It doesn’t help that you don’t see the contents.
Economist is for sure a mouthpiece of the political class, but the Bartleby column is satirical.
Why The Economist Can Get Fucked
I’ve been ten years disabled to the point that I don’t have a job. My life has been more fulfilling in that decade than it ever was in my able bodied, over worked previous life.
I take care of my household, I volunteer where I’m able to, I seek out new topics to learn just out of curiosity, and I have a heap of different hobbies I bounce between. Sure, I get bored sometimes, but it’s a much cleaner boredom than the kind I got at work.
No way I’m the only one who can very much enjoy an unemployed life. That article is a bunch of bullshit.
This has got to be satire right?
I don’t think it is… I really thought it would be, but it appears to be dead serious.
I’m gonna guess this is mostly a ploy for registrations, so here’s the full article text.
In an episode of “The Sopranos”, a popular television series which started airing in the 1990s, a gangster tells Tony, from the titular family, that he wants to retire. “What are you, a hockey player?” Tony snaps back. Non-fictional non-criminals who are considering an end to their working lives need not worry about broken fingers or other bodily harm. But they must still contend with other potentially painful losses: of income, purpose or, most poignantly, relevance.
Some simply won’t quit. Giorgio Armani refuses to relinquish his role as chief executive of his fashion house at the age of 89. Being Italy’s second-richest man has not dampened his work ethic. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s sidekick at Berkshire Hathaway, worked for the investment powerhouse until he died late last year at the age of 99. Mr Buffett himself is going strong at 93.
People like Messrs Armani, Buffett or Munger are exceptional. But in remaining professionally active into what would historically be considered dotage, they are not unique. One poll this year found that almost one in three Americans say they may never retire. The majority of the nevers said they could not afford to give up a full-time job, especially when inflation was eating into an already measly Social Security cheque. But suppose you are one of the lucky ones who can choose to step aside. Should you do it?
The arc of corporate life used to be predictable. You made your way up the career ladder, acquiring more prestige and bigger salaries at every step. Then, in your early 60s, there was a Friday-afternoon retirement party, maybe a gold watch, and that was that. The next day the world of meetings, objectives, tasks and other busyness faded. If you were moderately restless, you could play bridge or help out with the grandchildren. If you weren’t, there were crossword puzzles, TV and a blanket.
Although intellectual stimulation tends to keep depression and cognitive impairment at bay, many professionals in the technology sector retire at the earliest recommended date to make space for the younger generation, conceding it would be unrealistic to maintain their edge in the field. Still, to step down means to leave centre stage—leisure gives you all the time in the world but tends to marginalise you as you are no longer in the game.
Things have changed. Lifespans are getting longer. It is true that although the post-retirement, twilight years are stretching, they do not have to lead to boredom or to a life devoid of meaning. Once you retire after 32 years as a lawyer at the World Bank, you can begin to split your time between photography and scrounging flea markets for a collection of Americana. You don’t have to miss your job or suffer from a lack of purpose. If you are no longer head of the hospital, you can join Médecins Sans Frontières for occasional stints, teach or help out at your local clinic. Self-worth and personal growth can derive from many places, including non-profit work or mentoring others on how to set up a business.
But can anything truly replace the framework and buzz of being part of the action? You can have a packed diary devoid of deadlines, meetings and spreadsheets and flourish as a consumer of theatre matinees, art exhibitions and badminton lessons. Hobbies are all well and good for many. But for the extremely driven, they can feel pointless and even slightly embarrassing.
That is because there is depth in being useful. And excitement, even in significantly lower doses than are typical earlier in a career, can act as an anti-ageing serum. Whenever Mr Armani is told to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labour, he replies “absolutely not”. Instead he is clearly energised by being involved in the running of the business day to day, signing off on every design, document and figure.
In “Seinfeld”, another television show of the 1990s, Jerry goes to visit his parents, middle-class Americans who moved to Florida when they retired, having dinner in the afternoon. “I’m not force-feeding myself a steak at 4.30 just to save a couple of bucks!” Jerry protests. When this guest Bartleby entered the job market, she assumed that when the day came she too would be a pensioner in a pastel-coloured shirt opting for the “early-bird special”. A quarter of a century on, your 48-year-old columnist hopes to be writing for The Economist decades from now, even if she trundles to her interviews supported by a Zimmer frame; Mr Seinfeld is still going strong at 69, after all. But ask her again in 21 years.
It’s so stupid to compare working as a broad umbrella of action and say anecdotally: hey business owners are getting vitality from it, why wouldn’t you from your corporate job?
It’s like no shit, the people who have control over what their timelines and deliverables look like find out find work rejuvenating
Even the person in their little splash graphic looks like they’re hiding their pain
Wait, it’s a column called Bartleby about working more than you want to?
They aren’t even hiding it anymore.
What’s the significance of the name?
Story by Melville about a guy who doesn’t want to work.
I would prefer not to consider this angle.
