Is Early Retirement In The Cards?
As the full-grown baby boomer generation, a wave of Americans that totals all of 50 million people, prepares to enter retirement over the next 10 years, it’s becoming quite an intrinsic issue for many, when exactly they should do it. With the recession having reduced or depleted many a retirement account, retirement advice columns routinely dispense advice on how people should give up the idea that they could retire early. The received wisdom in retirement advice these days routinely recommends having people working to their 70s. As important as it might be for senior citizens to continue working so that they may pay their bills, is this in the best interests of their employers when they employ people who may no longer be on their game?
There are federal upper age limits for air traffic controllers and firefighters, for instance, that they need to retire by certain age. The senior management at the large corporations have generous packages of incentives that help ease them out. When it comes to CEOs though, it can be very difficult for any board to tell the person who built the company that he is no longer serving the company well. Some of them, like Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation try to hang on until the day they die. Others like Andrew Grove of Intel retire, but remain a kind of Jimmy Carter for the company, heading out on missions much as a retired dignitary would. Some go on to work for government.
In the legal profession, there is no set “walk into the sunset” that’s been established. Federal judges occupy their seats to the day they die with no retirement age established at all. There is one federal judge who still presides on cases at over 100 years of age. Independent lawyers work into their 80s. For lawyers in law firms, there happens to be an established pattern by which they are shown that they need to retire early. Once their billable hours decline, people just no longer respect them that much. They begin to resent how everyone used to be so or differential when they were successful but isn’t anymore; and they just drop out on their own. One guesses that it can be hard for anyone to break the news of a breakup. Even if they are hard-bitten lawyers speaking to other lawyers.
Sometimes, the news is broken through a letter. At other times lawyers and senior management employees learn that they are being pushed to retire early when they discover one day that their computer password doesn’t work anymore. Those kinds of hints can really hurt people who used to have proud and admired careers at their companies.
How does someone stave off such a situation? Usually, the answer lies in establishing deep and significant personal-professional relationships with company clients. When one has relationships with clients, the company knows that those clients will refuse to work with anyone else.
The author is a retired expat living in Thailand and loves Khon Kaen Thailand and Pattaya Walking Street
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