Never Retire - 'The Results Are All Over The Place'
How Retirement Affects Mental Health, Cognitive Skills and Mortality
As I was reviewing academic articles to include in future editions of the Never Retire newsletter, this one caught my eye—
How Retirement Affects Mental Health, Cognitive Skills and Mortality
I love this part of the abstract:
This paper presents an overview of recent studies on the effects of retirement on mental health, cognitive ability and mortality. The results are all over the place but on average it seems like at retirement mental health improves, cognitive skills deteriorate and mortality is not affected.
After reading the paper, it’s true. The results are all over the place.
But that’s okay. They’re still instructive.
Ultimately, how you fare physically, emotionally, and cognitively comes down to several factors. Some within your control. Some out of your control. Others, a blend of both.
We’ll leave unexpected events aside and focus on one of the key themes that emerged in this study and others like it:
The worker often does not have a choice about whether to make this transition. It is forced upon the worker, like it or not.
Here, the authors of the study are discussing forced retirement.
However, the inverse can also apply.
You have no choice but to continue working—or find a way to generate cash flow—in some capacity.
We deal with this—practically and theoretically—more than anything else in the newsletter. Because many of us who will Never Retire don’t have a choice in the matter. We don’t have the means to quit work altogether and retire traditionally with a large enough nest egg to support our lifestyle until we die.
While you might not have choice in the specific matter—as a turning point life decision—this doesn’t mean you don’t have choice going forward.
There’s nothing more important than wrapping your head around what sounds like a contradiction. There’s stuff that’s equally as important, but not more important. And, really, all the other important stuff flows from the conversation you have with yourself—and we have with one another—about choice.
At some point, you come to discover you simply don’t have and you’re unlikely to ever have enough money saved to retire traditionally.
Initially, it can be tough to accept this reality. Some people never do. They ignore the writing on the wall, start working even harder (because that’s essentially what the retirement planners and money experts tell them to do), and wind up in precarious physical, mental, and/or professional shape come relative old age.
You can make the choice to ignore your reality. Or you can choose to accept it, embrace it, and plan accordingly—creatively and comprehensively.
You have no choice but to choose to accept your reality. But how do you choose to accept it? Do you go kicking and screaming into the future? Or do you—
Embrace your reality. Even get excited by it. Charlie Brown, who publishes the Simple + Straightforward newsletter on Substack, said it best on Medium:
Most of us work the hours and live for the weekends and vacays — most hours of which aren’t even taken.
But what if you turned it on your head and designed a life you don’t need to “vacate” from?
Plan accordingly. Design a life you don’t need to “vacate” from. Come to the realization that the path to traditional retirement isn’t necessarily the most righteous one. That you can adopt a new way to live that puts emphasis on finding work—or some other way to make money—that’s easy (or relatively easy) on the body and mind.
A new way of life that could look a little something like this—
Plan A. Craft a plan that allows you to work, say, 20 hours a week for the foreseeable future, if not the duration. An alternative to the 40-hour+ work week. For most of us, this includes keeping a low cost of living, allocating our cash purposefully, and working on a Plan B.
Plan B. By the time you hit a certain age, you will have found a way to lower your cost of living even more. Particularly on housing.
Maybe you move to a less expensive place. Maybe you find an income property situation that generates enough cash flow to more than cover your personal housing expense. Maybe you pay off the mortgage. Maybe you find a way to pay cash for the place you’ll live in for the rest of your life.
The maybes are endless.
That’s actually part of what makes Never Retiring so easy to embrace, once you make the choice to accept it, not only as your reality, but as your new and better lifestyle.
