Snuff Out The Fire

We are getting older. I live in the state with the second highest median age in America in a rural community which is older still. But coast to coast there are people living longer, and fewer being born, so that seniors will outnumber children by 2035. The trend holds through most of the West. It is going to change the way we live, work, and care for each other. Changes that will be even more noticeable in rural areas. But there are things we can do to make this "silver tsunami" feel like more of a gentle wave. Like stop retiring.

No one is asking you to spend your final moments on the cubicle farm, or factory floor, or turning a tractor over on yourself as my great grandfather did. But the idea that you should spend a quarter of your life on leisure is a recent one. When The Social Security Act of 1935 passed, with an official retirement age of 65, life expectancy for those who survived into adulthood was about 65. If you made it to 65 you could expect to live about 13 years. Currently you would live about 19 years. And people who are still working at age 65 live longer than those who are not.

But this is not a post about Social Security. It is about our whole idea of retirement. When you ask most people about it, they will list a handful of leisure activities and little else. Nothing that you could build a life around. Because they just want out. But work also gives us structure and purpose and meaning. Without which we can end up in a kind of directionless second childhood. Which is why one of the worst ideas out there about retirement is the so-called FIRE movement. Financial independence, retire early. The goal of which is to accumulate enough wealth through frugal living, aggressive saving, and investing to be able to quit working young and live off of passive income. All of which is laudable except for the idea that work is a bad thing we need escape from.

Work is good for us. Most of us would be better off if we stopped trying to be happy and tried to be useful instead. Work gives us a sense of community in an atomized world, which is an important factor in healthy aging. The activity can help keep us healthy and stave off cognitive decline. Which is why my "retirement" plan is to find important work, that goes undone because you cannot earn a living at it. I am proposing a FINR (pronounced "finer") movement. Financial Independence, Never Retire. People who having done well for themselves now choose to do good for others. Because the best sort of person you can be is someone who helps others. There are 516,000 members of Reddit's FIRE forum. Can you imagine what half a million FINRs could do?

I have mentioned the concept of finding important work to do once you no longer need to work in other places. I find the conversation usually turns to volunteer work. Which I love. I know my town and church could not go on running without many retired people who give their time. But I think it is also important to go on doing some amount of remunerative labor. To keep incentives aligned and give one a sense of worth and that what you do is valuable. Whether it is a phased retirement from one's career, a second career, or part time work at some enjoyable or needful thing.

Which is not to say that we should hold onto the reins forever. Few things are worse to see in a rural area than the 50-year-old farmer whose 80-year-old father is still calling the shots. But some of the businesses which provide important services where I live are run by older entrepreneurs. Who seem to go on in hopes that an heir will appear, and because if they did not it would not get done. So, they work until they cannot anymore. We should follow their example.