Never Retire - 'Obvious' Research

It has been some time since I alerted you to academic research on Never Retire-associated themes.

As a result, Google Scholar emails with articles pertaining to semi-retirement and working in retirement litter my inbox.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll clear it out with concise summaries of the most interesting research.

As I often point out when we review academic literature, some of the conclusions researchers come to feel obvious. However, this doesn’t make the work a waste of time and money, as cynics of research-based higher education sometimes riff.

Amid this obviousness, consider two key points, central to our going concerns—

• We often base what we think is obvious on intuition. But sometimes what we think we know isn’t so. This is one reason why academic research can be valuable. It takes what we assume or take for granted and provides evidence-based theories and (alternate) realities.

• Maybe the finding is objectively obvious. Intuitive. However, it can still provide a wake-up call that we might need to change something in our lives to improve our the present and secure our futures.

An example pursuant to the second point—

The New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis published a paper, Physically Demanding Jobs and Involuntary Retirement Worsen Retirement Insecurity.

The obvious conclusions—

• Physically demanding work can make it harder to work longer.

• More than half of people who retired between 55 and 64 years of age did so involuntarily, leading to precarious financial outcomes in retirement.

This ties to the key work-related Never Retire themes we visit consistently.

Find work that’s easy on the body and mind so you’re able to work less now so you can work less longer, not to mention generate cash flow into and beyond relative old age.

Easy to say, however some people don’t listen.

Whether it’s work or exercise, many of us stubbornly hold onto jobs or routines that wear us down and might prevent us from enterting relative old age in sound physical and mental health.

Sometimes more isn’t better; it’s just more.

I do age-appropriate exercise so I’ll be able to exercise—hopefully—forever.

We should coin the phrase age-appropriate work right now.

If you’re lucky enough to pick and choose what you do, pick and choose something that’s sustainable.

In the coming weeks, we’ll review other interesting academic research articles.

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